How do I organise my constantines?

[Diederik]

At the moment I have some 600 coins of the tetrarchy and Constantine's offspring.
My aim is to have all the emperors/caesars/all the types/from every mint.
This I will never achieve, I know, but it is about playing and not about winning.
I wonder how other collectors have organised their collection, physically, that is; by mint, by emperor, by....
At the moment I have :
type first, emperor next, mint last.


Frans

[Jeremy W]

I have mine by emperor then type and I will now put them by mint after that.

I love you line about playing not winning, I find that to be the case as well.  I hope have gold, silver, bronze of the twelve caesars and know that this will probably never happen but sure will be fun trying.

Jeremy

[Robert_Brenchley]

Mine (and I have nothing to compare with your collection!) are currently by emperor and mint. I'm finding this more and more unsatisfactory though. Take the two coin pics here; both have Constantine's ugly face on them, and are currently filed in that part of my collection. But neither has anything to do with the coinage struck by Constantine! The first is part of Maxentius' coinage, the second belongs to Max Daia. The only thing they tell us about Constantine is that he was on speaking terms with the two at the times the coins were struck. The first has some significance as an issue of Maxentius in honour of his eventual nemesis. I haven't done it yet, but I'm more and more tempted to reorganise that part of my collectin under the emperors who actually struck the coins.

[Lawrence Woolslayer]

I know of one man uses RIC number to organise; another uses mint, then ruler that had the coin struck, and lastly date [earliest first]

[Diederik]

I am making an inventory of types: which rulers produced that type and in which mints. It is the hell of a job, but I am making progress. The next example will show you how futile our attempts at completeness are:
(the order is randomly)

Genio Populi Romani   Constantinus I Aug
Genio Populi Romani   Constantinus I Caes
Genio Populi Romani   Constantius I Aug
Genio Populi Romani   Constantius I Caes
Genio Populi Romani   Diocletianus Aug
Genio Populi Romani   Domitius Domitianus Aug
Genio Populi Romani   Galerius Maximianus Aug
Genio Populi Romani   Galerius Maximianus Caes
Genio Populi Romani   Licinius I Aug
Genio Populi Romani   Maximianus Aug
Genio Populi Romani   Maximinus II Caes
Genio Populi Romani   Severus Aug
Genio Populi Romani   Severus Caes

These 13 people struck this type in just over a hundred mints; when you start differentiating on officina, there are  
 of course many, many more Iin Helvetics'a list there are nearly 4000 of this type!

I have no answer yet as to the organisation of my collection.

Frans

[Jeff Clark]

I think it depends a little bit on how you are going to measure your completeness.  If you are using RIC as a guide for coin types, mints and officina, then it makes sense to arrange something similar to RIC.  In my collection of this type, it is arranged by Ruler, then alphabetically by mint and then RIC # and officina.  Of course many of these coins of the Constantine era overlap Volume VI and VII and the kids go on into VIII, so that has to be dealt with too.  That is not a big problem in my collection as overlaps are rarer and if they do occur, they are placed in volume order first within the particular mint.  It is a big job but completion is theoretically possible.  I am over 60% and counting now after nearly 40 years.  I think I can be nearly done in another 40!  Of course finances become a big part of things once you begin dealing with rarer material.

[Diederik]

OK Jeff,
First of all, let's hope we still have another 40 years of coincollecting ahead of us!
I believe, that, basically, your and my arrangement are the same: type, ruler, mint, (officina)
I don't intend to go into the level of officinae and minor variations, although I always try to get the rarer variants.
So for me it means finding another 60 GPR coins over the next 40 years - I'll manage
Thank you all for venting your ideas!


Frans

[Robert_Brenchley]

Everyone struck the GPR coins, I agree, but not everyone struck the CONSERVATORES URBS SVAE type, for instance. This is where classification according to the emperor it was struck for breaks down, at least as far as I'm concerned.

[Diederik]

That is true Robert, but it depends on how important you find the issuing authority. A Constantius II struck by Vetranio is still a Constantius II to me and not a Vetranio, although it may make a nice footnote.

Frans

[Heliodromus]

I also collect Constantine (200+ coins) and his peers (500+ coins), and to emphasize the history of the coins I sort first by issuer (not who appears on the coin), then by date. Within a tight date range with no new type introductions I sort by type then mint for the most pleasing groupings. I don't think that it historically makes sense to prefer to sort by obverse emperor rather than issuer since the history is concerned with the issuers; it is of course interesting to see how their recognition of peers varies by date, and this comes naturally with my issuer, then date organization.

I like to think that there's a progression of sorting from alphabetic by reverse type (Cohen - useless) to mint, date (RIC - numismatically useful) to issuer, date (most historically useful). Failmezger's "Roman Bronze Coins" covering this period is odd in that it emphasizes the history and therefore sorts by date, but lumps all issuers and common reverse legends together (even if they are different types!) and therefore loses much of the history and individual motivations.

Ben

[Diederik]

I agree that Cohen's way of sorting is totally obsolete if not totally obsure as well.
RIC by mint is clear in showing which rulers and princes minted there; it does not show the geographical distribution of types and issuers. That is only accomplished by putting all the mints on a row by date.
Logistically it is virtually impossible to do that in my coincabinet's drawers as they can only contain 64 coins, but the arrangement would be a logical one.

Frans

[Robert_Brenchley]

That is true Robert, but it depends on how important you find the issuing authority. A Constantius II struck by Vetranio is still a Constantius II to me and not a Vetranio, although it may make a nice footnote.

Frans

That shows how much peoples' emphases differ. To me that's a Vetranio, and speaks eloquently about the man's eagerness to show his loyalty to Constantius. But then it's often the historical background which interests me most.

[ecoli]

Well, Robert unfortunately I believe in this case, the market place sort of determines how we classify the coins.  I happen to have both of the Vetriano coins; however, if I post the Constantius coin as a Vetriano in auction, I believe I will be accused of deceptive selling practices.

[Robert_Brenchley]

You probably will, but I'm not having my approach to coins dictated by the market; the only thing that affects is my buying. I normally describe this particular issue as 'Constantius II, struck by Vetranio', which leaves it open.

[Diederik]

Perhaps nasty question: did the Caesars mint on their own authority? (I really don't know)

Frans

[Robert_Brenchley]

It probably depends on the situation. I very much doubt whether, say, Tetricus II did. But maybe during the Tetrarchy? The way to approach it might be to see whether any emperor started minting a distinctive type as Caesar, then continued as Augustus. But you wouldn't end up with anything better than an educated guess.

[Robert_Brenchley]

One further thought; Constantine was hailed as Augustus in 306, but only recognised as Caesar by Galerius. At first he struck for himself at London, as Caesar, only striking as Augustus from the autumn of 307, at the same time as Rome started striking for him as Augustus. But Siscia didn't strike for him as Augustus till 311. So either Constantine needed permission for his types, or he didn't dare strike as Augustus till he was recognised as such elsewhere. But he didn't care what they thought in the east! I need to go into this in more detail.

[Diederik]

This poses a bit of a dillemma how to organise the coins, if you strictly look at who authorised the striking of certain types. The authorisation for Constantine's coins from Siscia might well have been granted by Licinius. Then are the coins Constantine's or Licinius'?

Frans

[Robert_Brenchley]

That's exactly the issue I have.

[Heliodromus]

I'm not sure that everyone here has the same understanding of who authorized coins to be issued... just to be explicit, I assume that whoever controlled the territory controlled the mint. The only possible unknown seems to be whether a Caesar controlled the mints in his territory or his Augustus did, but as far as I can tell it seems that the answer is that the Caesar did.

For example:

-- After Constantius's death, Constantine assumed his territory, and was clearly his own man even as Caesar. He almost immediately stopped recognising Galerius, and additionally started his own types (GENIO POP ROM, MARTI PATRI, etc).

-- In the east we see the independence of Maximinus II as Caesar from the unique types he issued (esp. at Antioch, closer to Galerius's death).

-- c.318 when Constantine delegated control of Gaul to Cripsus Caesar, we see Crispus's independence via the different types he issued (e.g. Beata Tranq. vs VOT XX).

I can't see room for any doubt that ALL coins issued by a mint under control of one emperor were issued by authority of that emperor. There's no evidence to suggest that, for example, Licinius only issued Iovi's for himself and that Iovi's from his mints with a Constantine obverse had instead been issued under authority delegated to Constantine!

Of course there's no right way to organize a collection, but if you want to organize by issuer, then I believe that in all cases (at least during the period under discussion) that means organizing by who controlled the mint.

Ben

[Diederik]

It is true what you say Ben, only Constantine Caesar was raised to Augustus by his father's troops, immedialtely after his death..
The issue was: how do you organise a coin which was issued by A and had the titels and effigy of the absent B like Vetranio issuing coins for Constantius II and Constantius Gallus.

In the meantime it is clear that, depending on the collector's personal point of view, a general collection consisting of verious emperors/caesars/types and mints can be arranged in various ways and that there is no standard I was not aware of.

Frans

[Heliodromus]

It is true what you say Ben, only Constantine Caesar was raised to Augustus by his father's troops, immedialtely after his death..
The issue was: how do you organise a coin which was issued by A and had the titels and effigy of the absent B like Vetranio issuing coins for Constantius II and Constantius Gallus.

Franz, as I said, my way is to organize by issuer, so all coins issued by Vetranio (whether for himself, Constantius or Gallus) would group together, then be sorted first by date, then type/mint... this would give the clearest view of the actions of Vetranio if that is what you are interested in.

I choose this issuer, then date, organization because I am mostly interested in Constantine. For example, Constantine issued some types ONLY for other emperors, and not for himself (e.g. HERCVLI CONSERVATORI from London for Maximianus), and if I grouped my coins by obverse emperor then a coin like this would be in the Maximianus section rather than Constantine. I prefer to have all coins issued by Constantine together, sorted by date, so that I can turn the pages through my collection and see the timeline of Constantine's history and the coin types he issued.

Of course there are also coins issued for Constantine by other emperors, sometimes ONLY for Constantine (e.g. VIRTVS PERPETVA AVG issued from Ticinum by Maxentius), and I prefer to see these at the appropriate date in the section for the emperor that issued them (in that case Maxentius) because again I want to see the history of that emperor all in one place.

Incidently, this organization only refers to my albums (and will also be the same on the web pages I am building). On my computer I keep the photos of all my coins grouped by obverse emperor because this organization is a quicker way to find things (like an index).

Ben

[Diederik]

Thank you both, Ben and Robert. I have some new ideas that I will work out and if I ever get to putting my collection on Forum, you will see what I made of it.

Frans