Collectors generally don't make a
choice whether to specialise or not. They collect what they want and what is available. I didn't say one morning "eureka, I will specialise in the
Roman Republic". I got drawn in like 99% of other collectors by first collecting everything from Irish gun-money to
German zinc pfennigs to
Italian aluminium lira to
LRBs to Macedonian bronzes to
Anastasius 40 folles to African barcelet
money. Later I thought it nice to concentrate on ancients, then on
Roman, then on the
Roman Republic. I did so because I wanted to, not because of any commercial logic or supposed advantages.
Still, in 2002, I concentrated for a while on collecting the 96 circulating coins of the new
euro from my small change. I got to 91 out of 96, and was
still missing a few one and two cent pieces when my nation (although not generally in Europe) decide to adopt a 5 cent rounding rule so those last few Finnish cents and Luxembourg two-cents slipped out of reach and I broke my principles by purchasing examples. My first "
complete"
collection was the Esso 1970 World
Cup medal collection:
http://www.tvcream.co.uk/?p=15960 : the lads in my petrol station helped me
complete the last couple when I was close to
complete. Since then I have always been a "completer". Every
Euro circulating coin, from change. Every Esso 1970 World
Cup medal, from petrol stations. And now every
Roman Republican coin (I'm pretty close to
complete...). I don't think I ever thought there was an "advantage" to being a completer. I just am. It's in my genes. I've never been a "whatever catches my eye" collector.
I have to disagree with TRPOT however about the "advantage of having less books to buy". Specialist/Completers need every single book, in a way the generalists don't. I can't survive with just a
Krause catalogue and a few volumes of
Sear. I've hundreds of books. All on one subject.
Dealers however have entirely different motivations. Unlike me, who can let my genes lead me wherever they want, dealers have to sell what sells. Unfortunately for a specialist, that doesn't generally mean a specialist focus, it means a
bit of everything in as high
quality as possible. For me, the January 2010
New York auction series is a
complete dissapointment, most of the big name
auctions consisting of a very limited range of coins I mostly already have (albeit in excellent condition).
When I come to sell my coins I despair that any dealer will want them. Who will want to sell every variety of
Roman Republican bronze, or every
rare silver variety in worn condition? No-one. All that the current market wants is EF
Caesar portraits, on which a dealer can make a profit of $1000/coin. No-one wants my pile of scrap metal. So I guess from that perspective there is an economic disadvantage to specialising. Not that I ever
had a
choice of course. I'm hooked.
