I have the
complete Millennium Edition of the Sear book -- 5 volumes.
The introductory material -- 74 pages of it -- is exactly the same in all 5 volumes. That is about 300 pages of duplicate material I don't need. In using volume 1 -- The Republic and the
12 Caesars -- I have never
had to consult the section on the "Mints and
Mint Marks of the Later
Roman Empire." In using volume 4 in studying the coins of
the Tetrarchy and
Constantinian Era, I have never
had the need to consult the section "
Countermarks on the AE Coinage of the Early Empire." I would have preferred extended essays pertinent to the coins listed in each volume -- similar to those in the volumes of
RIC.
Anaximander mentions above there is no Table of Contents in these volumes. The alphabetical
Index at the end of each volume is OK for finding individual Emperors, even though it references
catalog numbers rather than page numbers. For example, in
vol. 3:
Florian is indexed like this: "
FLORIAN, AD 276 nos. 10078-533." The rest of the
index is
poor. For example, again in
vol. 3, the extensive 74 pages of introductory material has only 7 entries in the
index. For example: "CONDITIONS OF COINS page 74." There are at least 14 or 15 other headings in these 74 pages that should be in the
index, such as Mints and
Mint Marks. (Yes, these 7 entries are interfiled with the list of names.)
There are page numbers on the top corner of every page. But since
1.) there is no table of contents,
2.) the
index references
catalog numbers rather than page numbers, and
3.) the 74 pages of introductory material is basically un-indexed, these page numbers are irrelevant, and don't even need to be there. I wish someone
had thought through these issues before the books were published. When looking for a specific Emperor, it is much easier to look at the top corner of each page for one page number, than having to scan the left
side of each page (which has numerous
catalog numbers) looking for a
catalog number that is up to 5 digits long.
For an experienced collector this isn't such an issue because we more or less know the order of all the Emperors. But for beginning collectors, this is a serious problem. Even deciding what volume to look in can be a problem for a beginner. If you want to find
Victorinus, for example, what volume do you
pick up? Having a comprehensive
index to all 5 volumes in
each volume would have been more useful than the same 74 pages of introductory material in each volume. (But since the 5 volumes came out over a period of 15 years, I guess this would not have been possible.)
On the plus
side: I appreciate that the pages of each volume of the Millennium Edition are sewn into individual signatures. If the glue in the spine ever gets brittle, at least it won't
crack and leave you with a handful of individual pages. That is what happened to my copy of Sear's
Greek Imperial Coins.
(The things they teach you in Indexing class about evaluating the usefulness of indexes in books . . .)