Classical Numismatics Discussion
  Welcome Guest. Please login or register. 10% Off Store-Wide Sale Until 2 April!!! Explore Our Website And Find Joy In The History, Numismatics, Art, Mythology, And Geography Of Coins!!! Expert Authentication - Accurate Descriptions - Reasonable Prices - Coins From Under $10 To Museum Quality Rarities Welcome Guest. Please login or register. 10% Off Store-Wide Sale Until 2 April!!! Explore Our Website And Find Joy In The History, Numismatics, Art, Mythology, And Geography Of Coins!!! Support Our Efforts To Serve The Classical Numismatics Community - Shop At Forum Ancient Coins

New & Reduced


Author Topic: How many Ancients do YOU have?  (Read 10084 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Benjamin Aho

  • Praetorian
  • **
  • Posts: 74
How many Ancients do YOU have?
« on: April 17, 2009, 05:32:58 pm »
How many Ancients do you have?
I have 15, I'm a new collector. [now 25]

You?

Offline fordicus

  • Consul
  • ***
  • Posts: 171
Re: How many Ancients do YOU have?
« Reply #1 on: April 17, 2009, 09:18:14 pm »
roughly 1000... almost all uncleaned  :-[

Offline wileyc

  • Caesar
  • ****
  • Posts: 1426
    • Forum gallery:
Re: How many Ancients do YOU have?
« Reply #2 on: April 18, 2009, 12:12:57 am »
I hear this question occasionally and reflect that it sort of is like asking how fast does your car go.......its not a measurement that many think about..at least for me. However... :) that being said the software I use has a count that keeps track of howmany coins I have referenced and I recall I am up around 650, mostly byzantine. Many coins I have a number of the same. I do not know off hand how many different  types I have, I hate to think of how many uncleaned I have. My wife give me the lonely eye ::) with my bowls of soaking coins in the downstairs bathroom!

  I have certainly shifted from uncleaned to being more selective in the quality I buy, but thats is all relative. I know I am certainly low end in the coin field.!!

cordially

cw

Offline Enodia

  • Procurator Caesaris
  • Caesar
  • ****
  • Posts: 2582
Re: How many Ancients do YOU have?
« Reply #3 on: April 18, 2009, 05:39:10 am »
i have around 70, i think. i had another dozen or so, but one i traded, one i buried, and the rest i gave away.

Offline frgreg

  • Praetorian
  • **
  • Posts: 54
Re: How many Ancients do YOU have?
« Reply #4 on: April 18, 2009, 06:26:23 am »
I have about 60 ancient coins

Offline Tiberiusjulius

  • Comitia Curiata
  • Caesar
  • ****
  • Posts: 451
Re: How many Ancients do YOU have?
« Reply #5 on: April 18, 2009, 09:12:24 am »
100-150 coins. About 35 have been identified and flipped(or bought), all the rest are uncleaned,need identification, or need to be sold.
Josh

Offline SVLLAIMP

  • Consul
  • ***
  • Posts: 210
Re: How many Ancients do YOU have?
« Reply #6 on: April 18, 2009, 03:54:05 pm »
Two.  My tastes and budget conflict.

Offline areich

  • Tribunus Plebis Perpetuus
  • Procurator Monetae
  • Caesar
  • *****
  • Posts: 8706
    • Ancient Greek and Roman Coins, featuring BMC online and other books
Re: How many Ancients do YOU have?
« Reply #7 on: April 18, 2009, 03:59:00 pm »
Sorry to hear that. I have a somewhat more discriminating taste than I used to with essentially the same budget
but I'm still able to buy lots of coins I like. Care to show your collection?
Andreas Reich

Lloyd Taylor

  • Guest
Re: How many Ancients do YOU have?
« Reply #8 on: April 18, 2009, 05:03:48 pm »
......., but one i traded, one i buried, and the rest i gave away.

Without seeking to pry, can I ask why one was buried?  Perhaps to pay the ferryman for a loved one?

I think SULLAIMP has hit the nail on the head ...a collection being two or more associated items...so the sky's the limit in terms of a maximum.  The biggest recent private collection I am aware of is that of BCD who auctioned off his mainland ancient Greek collection in about half a dozen auctions commencing around 2001. Its dispersal still continues, as evidenced in the latest CNG catalogue.  He assembled it over 40 years and just eyeballing the various catalogues of the auctions through which it was dispersed it must have been of the order of 10,000 coins and perhaps was twice this number.  This means he averaged around 250 coins collected per year, or almost one a day, and these weren't low end, uncleaned varieties, bought in bulk.  Rather, each was an individual acquisition. That is serious collecting!  Very few people  would be privileged to have the time for such an undertaking, let alone the money to assemble such a collection. I often wonder whether his collecting broke the bank in the end. To disperse such a massive effort of work and research during one's lifetime would be pretty traumatic. His wife must have been far more tolerant of his obsession than my wife is of mine!

For my part, it has taken me over twenty years to do what BCD would have done in less than one year and my effort has been accompanied by the odd occasion of marital disbelief, if not discord!

Offline stainless

  • Praetorian
  • **
  • Posts: 39
  • College boy
Re: How many Ancients do YOU have?
« Reply #9 on: April 18, 2009, 07:31:19 pm »
I currently have 12. All cleaned and attributed. I plan to buy an uncleaned lot soon.


TIVS

Offline Arminius

  • Procurator Caesaris
  • Caesar
  • ****
  • Posts: 2405
  • carpe diem
    • Arminius-Numismatics
Re: How many Ancients do YOU have?
« Reply #10 on: April 18, 2009, 08:51:20 pm »
Not enough! I´m in the (looks like never ending) process of filing them.
There is actual state:

my coin database

regards

Offline Ardatirion

  • Procurator Monetae
  • Caesar
  • *****
  • Posts: 498
  • Veni, vidi, vomui.
Re: How many Ancients do YOU have?
« Reply #11 on: April 18, 2009, 08:59:32 pm »
Over 200 now, according to my gallery. But there's at least twenty that aren't imaged yet.

Offline slokind

  • Tribuna Plebis Perpetua
  • Procurator Monetae
  • Caesar
  • *****
  • Posts: 6654
  • Art is an experimental science
    • An Art Historian's Numismatics Studies
Re: How many Ancients do YOU have?
« Reply #12 on: April 18, 2009, 11:16:00 pm »
At one time my database would have given me a close to accurate count, but now so many have been re-photographed and so many files, even, have been uploaded more than once (as when a reduced file is loaded besides the full size) that I can only say that in a decade I have acquired about 2000, and not by any means the sort of Serious Collecting that BCD did.  On the other hand, I never have cleaned an unclean lot.  Pat L.
Arminius has a very nice database!

Offline Sap

  • Consul
  • ***
  • Posts: 132
  • It's already tomorrow in Australia.
Re: How many Ancients do YOU have?
« Reply #13 on: April 19, 2009, 12:11:02 am »
My database says I've got 354 ancient and mediaeval coins, out of 8357 coins total. All my ancients were bought cleaned; I known I don't have the skill and patience to do a proper job with uncleaneds.
I'll have to learn Latin someday.

Offline Bacchus

  • Procurator Caesaris
  • Caesar
  • ****
  • Posts: 1124
  • http://www.diadumenian.com
    • Diadumenian
Re: How many Ancients do YOU have?
« Reply #14 on: April 19, 2009, 02:27:32 am »
I really am not quite sure - It is somewhere similar to Sap's total overall - with a slight increase in the ancients percentage.  The reason I am not sure is that I have alot of coins lying around that are not attributed yet (and may never be if they are too worn) - not necessarily ancients but medieval Indian, Song Dynasty cash, Gupta Empire, Sassanian, Abbasids, etc - all that kind of thing.  There are also a few lesser quality duplicates of coin types that I don't really count but technically they would be another coin in the total.

The Diadumenian provincial coins total is at 330 or so (details available at all good bookshops   ;D), miscellaneous denari at 150 or so, and probably another 100 or so bronze Roman and Greek.

I'm in the process of photographing the non-roman stuff at present and trying to knock together a good database. 

One of the things I have found is that there is no good database available that covers all off the above coin types and the other odds and sods that are out there - (for example how do you fit in a the Kissi penny -from Loma and Bandi peoples- or Chinese scyee  into a "one size fits all database"?). I tried to write my own in Access but it was not a great success. Possibly some sort of html attempt would do the job (similar to my webpages - put for personal use only) but first the photographing - and labeling the images with as much info as possible.

Malcolm


"These kissi pennys are not ancient - but here is a short article about them which you may find interesting -- not that many people know of them
http://www.liberiapastandpresent.org/kissi.htm

Offline Potator II

  • Procurator Caesaris
  • Caesar
  • ****
  • Posts: 1636
  • Error communis facit jus
    • Monnaies de la Dombes
Re: How many Ancients do YOU have?
« Reply #15 on: April 19, 2009, 06:36:07 am »
About 400 (my gallery says 415, but two or three are posted twice, as belonging to different categories), speaking of Roman, Greek, Parthian and Medieval. Most of them are visible in my gallery (need to add the Parthian ones), I believe none of them coming from uncleaned lots.

As stated above, I"m quite sure number has little to do with collecting pleasure (from 2 (SULLAIMP) to 20000+ (BCD). My thematic collections (Divi series, Plautilla, Dombes) give me much more fun than the modern ones, with 1000 + items, ever did

Regards
Potator

Offline areich

  • Tribunus Plebis Perpetuus
  • Procurator Monetae
  • Caesar
  • *****
  • Posts: 8706
    • Ancient Greek and Roman Coins, featuring BMC online and other books
Re: How many Ancients do YOU have?
« Reply #16 on: April 19, 2009, 07:17:06 am »
While I more or less agree with you I think it's a sad thing
if your tastes and your budget are just incompatible.
In SULLAIMP's case it must be his expensive taste that is to blame since you can
collect ancients on a tiny budget, but that is easiest with late Romans, of course.
I can't imagine it being as much fun if you only have two coins but I'd be happy to be proven wrong.
Andreas Reich

Maffeo

  • Guest
Re: How many Ancients do YOU have?
« Reply #17 on: April 19, 2009, 08:37:59 am »
Been a collector for more than thirty yrs now, but mainly of the Renaissance and Early Modern Papal series. Have only been seriously into ancients (Tetrarchy to Valens) for three or four years now. Don't have many so far, perhaps 100,  and I limit myself to bronzes, AE1s in at least EF - but more are on the way  ;D ;D ;D

Offline Jochen

  • Tribunus Plebis Perpetuus
  • Procurator Monetae
  • Caesar
  • *****
  • Posts: 12278
  • Omnes vulnerant, ultima necat.
Re: How many Ancients do YOU have?
« Reply #18 on: April 20, 2009, 06:01:15 pm »
As Arminius has said: Not enough! Most of them you can see in my gallery.

Best regards

Offline SVLLAIMP

  • Consul
  • ***
  • Posts: 210
Re: How many Ancients do YOU have?
« Reply #19 on: April 20, 2009, 08:11:53 pm »
Just for the record, my coins are by no means fantastic.  I have a denarius of Q. Caecilius Metellus Pius in EF condition and an Alexander tet about VF.  My budget constraints mostly come from being in college and having a girlfriend.  It's hard to have an expensive hobby on top of those.

Offline commodus

  • Tribunus Plebis Perpetuus
  • Deceased Member
  • Caesar
  • ****
  • Posts: 3291
Re: How many Ancients do YOU have?
« Reply #20 on: April 29, 2009, 03:08:22 am »
Attributed and in albums I have 614 Roman of which 159 are Republican. The balance have every emperor represented except for the first two Gordians and Pupienus, as well as many other personalities appearing on Roman coins.
Of other ancients I have 52 various Greek, Parthian, Judaean, and Egyptian. I don't collect these but have examples I like for one reason or another anyway.
Additionally, I have a box containing 1,000+ late Roman bronzes, unidentifiable Romans, and uncleaneds.
The numbers change all the time, though.
I also collect French coins of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras and early Soviet coins.
Eric Brock (1966 - 2011)

Offline mdelvalle

  • Caesar
  • ****
  • Posts: 991
  • Mi nombre es Mario
    • My collection on the web
Re: How many Ancients do YOU have?
« Reply #21 on: May 04, 2009, 06:54:51 pm »
Hi all,
556 coins already atributed and referenced in my gallery. About 200 more in process. The vast majority of them from lots of uncleaneds.
I live in the Patagonia Argentina, and is difficult and expensive to get ancient coins and literature in this part of the world. But I continue to search.
Regards
Mario

Offline Philoromaos

  • Caesar
  • ****
  • Posts: 550
  • NVNC EST BIBENDVM
Re: How many Ancients do YOU have?
« Reply #22 on: May 05, 2009, 12:53:05 pm »
I currently have in my collection 35 republican denarii, 3 imperatorial denarii, 229 imperial denarii, 44 Ar Antoninianii and 20 Roman Ae's. I also have 19 Greek silvers and 8 Greek Bronzes, my new love at least for the moment! Regards Adrian

Offline Luc Andre D

  • Praetorian
  • **
  • Posts: 28
Re: How many Ancients do YOU have?
« Reply #23 on: May 08, 2009, 11:32:44 pm »
32 roman coins (about 20 more on their way), 5 greek ones, 5 byzantines... Plus many ancient indian, persian, chinese, celtic and anglo-saxon coins. Lots of medieval coins too (european and islamic) but I think those are not what we mean by 'ancient'.

Offline Danny S. Jones

  • IMPERATOR
  • Caesar
  • *****
  • Posts: 980
  • Danny Jones
    • FORVM Library of Ancient Coinage
Re: How many Ancients do YOU have?
« Reply #24 on: July 20, 2009, 06:36:34 am »
Less than I want and more than my wife thinks I need. Lots of them are in the low end and uncleaned range. Lately I've been collecting fewer but nicer coins, trading up and selling off the ones I have multiple examples of. (Keeping the best). I just bought a really nice lot in Europe of some late Roman coins.  I can't give an exact figure because it seems to change (go up) every week. I can't help myself. ;D

 

All coins are guaranteed for eternity