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A
Review First published in Minerva issue 5, London Sept./Oct. 1998, p. 54 This book
is an invaluable compendium of prices realised at public auctions for
Roman coins from 31 BC (Octavian's victory at the battle of Actium) to AD
138, the end of the reign of Hadrian. It is ten years since the
publication of the last edition of David Sear's Roman Coins and Their
Values (although a new edition is in preparation), so the present volume
is extremely welcome for dealers and collectors who like to keep an eye on
market trends. Sear has the advantage of more description of the
emperors and the types, as well as illustrations, but in the present
volume there is the advantage of indications of grade and differences due
to that and, by virtue of the greater or lesser appearance at auction,
there is a very good guide to rarity.
An initial
glance at the close-packed tabulated pages may be daunting, but persevere
because you will find the basic types listed with date, references to RIC,
Cohen, BMC, Sear, and Kankelfitz, plus mint followed by auction sale
identification, and specific comment, grade, estimate and hammer price
realised in US dollars. There are over 10,000 auction prices listed
drawn from some 200 worldwide public auctions held in 1995 and 1996.
Obviously not all of the rarest Roman coins have necessarily appeared
under the hammer in those years, this could not be expected, but the range
and coverage is, nevertheless, quite incredible. Some coins that
appear infrequently have a few lines of information added but other,
commoner types can fill a page and therein lies the true value of the
compilation to the collector ~ he can assess a particular type or indeed
the coins of a specific reign at a glance.
Not to be
overlooked are the introductory pages which set out the way to use the
book to best advantage, and describe the basic reference works cited and
other details. Bearing in mind that coin lists in tabular form can
be understood by almost anyone, the compiler has provided the introductory
pages in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish and Danish that really
is forethought for a work of international interest ! Hopefully, volume
two, which is promised and takes the listing from AD 138 down to AD 253,
will soon be available. There can be no doubt that a sequence of revised
editions of the Roman Coin Price Yearbook will become an invaluable tool
for dealer and collector alike.
Roman Coin Price
Yearbook, Republican vol. A
Review First published in
Spink Numismatic Circular issue 3, London June 2000, p. 108
As its title announces,
the book is intended to display prices for the individual issues of the
whole of the Roman Republic, not editorially suggested but actually
achieved in auction sales. The editor has surveyed several hundred sales
for the period (actually 1995+1996) - - "a random selection",
too modestly, for it includes almost every sale of any importance. For
each coin the price estimated and realized is given wherever possible,
along with the condition of the piece and any pertinent catalogue text.
The prices themselves are converted to US$ so that a single comparison is
possible throughout. Given the variety of dealers and collectors - - and
of coin condition - - the results for any issue can only be suggestive
within certain limits (and some dealers seem more successful than others
in achieving high-value sales). The book is crammed
with detail, but is not difficult to use once the scheme has been
absorbed. Seriation and dating follows Crawford Roman Republican
Coinage, but references are included with each issue to Sydenham,
BMCRR, Babelon, etc. Then the individual coins by dealer, date,
condition, price, etc. In short, anyone
wishing to follow the market within these limits should find this a useful
book. But its value extends
beyond, to serious study. First, in such a brief period of activity one
cannot expect examples of every issue to have come to sale; yet the
results are abundant. MEM lists references to (at a guess) perhaps 8.000
Republican coins. These are largely pieces otherwise unknown to us,
for which the catalogues are the major evidence. So much material has been
and is being put on the market that no-one can keep up with it all; and
the catalogues themselves can be expensive even if obtainable. Hardly
any proper numismatic library today concentrates on building and
maintaining
a proper research library of numismatic auction catalogues and illustrated
price lists. So that this volume contains numberless references in
helpful concision which probably no scholar would have the time or the
facilities to accumulate. In addition, MEM notes
the cases where the piece is illustrated (which is usual) in its
catalogue. This is an immense help in viewing at once the specific
material one is working on. In the past, our institutions provided this
service by the construction of photo files - - e.g. at the British
Museum, the ANS, or the Institut für Numismatik in Vienna. But the flood
of new material which has come on the market over the past several
decades, and the squeeze on museum resources, has meant that no-one
can any longer maintain such a comprehensive service. Thus, the photo file
of the ANS is still enormously useful for what it is, but hardly anything
new has been added for the last fifteen or twenty years. It is now too
late to recover. So MEM's volume, while
it is itself unillustrated, leads us directly to the catalogues which, for
this period, illustrate the issues which particularly interest us. That
includes some surprises. Everyone knows the denarius of Labienus, which we
rarely expect to see; yet MEM has provided the refences to no fewer than
five appearances of the issue at auction. Or again, while the
material published here is limited to these ca. 250 auction catalogues,
that ought to be enough to provide at least a general indication of
relative rarity. Of course the rarer material, and the better preserved,
will tend to appear in these sources; but it cannot be accidental that,
in this survey, the Mars/eagle gold of the earliest denarius system
appears in 56 examples of the 60-as coin, 0 of the 40-as, 3 of the 20-as. (One caution: M., as he
makes clear, has gathered the dealers' references. If these are awry the
entry here can mislead. Such cases must be few, but I note the single
reference to RRC 483/1, an immensely rare coin: the dealer's error, for
the piece is actually the common 483/2.). These are indications
of the riches which this volume contains, and of course the same is true
of the (so far published) two volumes of Roman Imperial coins. An
earlier review put the point justly, "an invaluable tool for dealer
and collector alike". But it is far more than a guide to prices.
In this regard the title understates: with the practical demise of the
comprehensive
classical numismatic photo file a work such as this provides a most
helpful alternative. In a perfect world MEM would continue to produce a
series, with an annual or biennial volume. In any case this is a book
which should be in every serious numismatic library, and which every
student of the Republican coinages will find useful.
Roman Coin Price
Yearbook, Republican vol. A
Review This compilation is a
true product of the computer age and exhaustively covers the auction
results of some 9.000 coins of the Roman Republic, from c. 280-31 BC,
offered in auctions by the principal international numismatic firms in
over
a staggering 200 public sales between 1995 and 1996. The general
introduction is comprehensive and properly translated by numismatists in
six languages, followed by an interesting essay by Wayne Phillips on
Roman Republican scholarship. Bibliography, indexes, lists of dealers'
auction sales and price lists abound as well as currency exchange rates. The rubric used fore
this compilation starts with the date of the issue followed by the page
number of the main reference, Michael Crawford, Roman Republican
Coinage (2. vols., Cambridge, 1974) followed by Sydenham, Babelon, BMC
RRC, Sear and Cohen. This is followed by the mint, condition and estimates
and hammer prices in US dollars. There is a brief description of the
obverse and reverse of each type, followed by the list of sales in which
it appeared as well as any defects noted and weight. Luckily 1995 and 1996
saw some very important Republican collections on offer and here assembled
and recorded in a most valuable index and cross-reference for dealers,
collectors as well as scholars of a series widely collected and studied. The commercial
orientation of the numismatic trade has over the years evolved from its
origins, the private knowledgeable dealer with a large and mixed stock
of coins, gems and antiquities acquired mostly from casual finds and old
collections. These stocks were in all grades and usually sold at
reasonable prices that satisfied the needs of a large city of district
with a large well educated middle class that considered a classical coin
collection part and parcel of its cultural patrimony together with a
library, decorative paintings, statues, and not least a specimen cabinet
of curiosities that would encompass all manner of things from crystals to
fossils. These early collections often were bequeathed to the local
museums, as in the case of George III, king of England, whose collection
formed that of the British Museum. Scientific cataloguing
based of national and private collections is greatly enhanced by the
inclusion of the large body of coins published in trade sale catalogues
often reflecting recent finds and new discoveries. This outstanding compilation
greatly helps the study of the coinage it deals with and is part of
greater series of coin price yearbooks published by the same editor.
It suffers one shortfall in not covering a longer period. Let us hope
others volumes will follow.
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