Hi all!!
If nothing else I would have to be called an "eacher", but that is not what I was when I started. At first I was just fascinated with this whole
Roman coin and
antiquities thing and found that
buying 'lots' of uncleaned coins would provide the
joy of trying to make heads or tails of what I
had uncovered. This led to my first purchase of a book and founded much of what is in my Late 4th century
collection. I think the first actual coin that I bought during this period was a
Crispus for which I way overpaid.
Then I found
Ebay and a rapid building of the
Constantinian era began. More books. By then I
had a few nice examples of
the Tetrarchy and began my first serious effort at collecting one each as
Caesar and as
Augustus. That is
still the one that gives me the most satisfaction. Another book. At this time I remember having an aversion to the third century. Too many emperors. Too confusing. No understanding.
By then I
had purchased a few very nice, but pricey, coins of the Julio Claudians and combed
ebay to fill it out. Then disaster struck. I bought an
Otho that was too
good to be true. Lucky, lucky me! I
had become active by then on
Forum and was politely informed that it was a
fake. Actually it was the best 100 bucks I
had spent so far because it taught me much on the need to be informed. More books. Much reading here on
Forum. Much more caution. That drove me into a lengthy period of collecting Prov
camp gates of the
Constantine era. My objective was to find one example of each for each ruler by
mint and
officinae. Nice, safe and forced me to learn my
RIC VII! But lets
face it. In the end it was also pure boring!! I have maybe 250 of the buggers. I would post them in my
album to form the basis of a
style study, but because you can't create sub-albums by
mint it would be too messy (at least to my mind).
Then I
had begun an appreciation of the 2nd and 3rd century. I quickly found that they were relatively
cheap and more or less easy to find. The
collection continued to build and whalla. I was an 'eacher'.
Everything else in my
album is pure serendipity, except for a few of the Greek silvers. After all who would not be fascinated by holding a Tet of
Alexander or an Athenian
owl?
Ecoli and Potator.... Just took a quick look at your albums. Wow! Will spend more time looking and providing comments on your coins tomarrow.
Bob