I started collecting coins at age 8. Over the years I acquired a broad range of coins (mostly as gifts) and in researching them, gained a great deal of useful general knowledge. I also acquired an interest in ancient
history, particularly
Roman, but it was not until my early thirties that I was able to afford commencing a serious specialist
collection of
Roman Republican coins, although my study interests
had focused on the RR for quite a few years. It was those early general interests that gave me the study skills not acquired via my appallingly bad schooling and developed the desire for the more detailed research that gives me so much pleasure and meaning today as I ease my way far too rapidly to 70. I’ve never sold any of my general pieces. They get slowly given away to the young who show them an interest.
The summation of that experience is that any focus of investigation develops useful mental skills and broadens our knowledge of the world. Any object / coin becomes a focus for gaining knowledge. The major purchasing limitation is usually financial; more for some of us than others. I think it is often that, not a primary study focus, which limits what we buy, even if we can’t study everything to the same depth. Who among us wouldn’t
pick up a decadrachm or an
owl just for the ascetics if we could afford it?
If I were able, I would broaden my collecting to coinage of the Long Eighteenth Century. I have made more than a passing study of the period for reasons I won’t go into. It was a period of great social change and what could be called the birth of the modern world. The coins of the period, like Greek and
Roman, become an affordable physical link to the period and, with
types reflecting the sociology of the period. It is that which makes us collectors isn’t it? Not simple, mindless fondlers of metallic objects. If it interests and can be afforded, buy it!
Ted