Since the picture was posted twice, I am copy-and-pasting the reply:
I suspect that by the time that the majority of the
still unpublished regional
collections and private
collections are available for counting, say in two generations if the world holds steady that long, collectors (or numismatists, anyway) will no longer be dogged so much by
rarity.
Rarity ratings really belong to Cohen's time, but
Cohen knew only the
auction value of 'collectible' coins. If a Provençal paysan
had a boxful of coins from
his land, if a thousand such persons
had them, they did not have the expensive publications, they did not have the contacts, they did not have the advanced education to make those coins count statistically; the collecting that 'counted' was a men's club (yes, there were a few ladies) of the well heeled and well connected. They were the ones that
Cohen wrote for--and a few academics, then as always statistically unimportant. The present state of coin-study is much more broadly based, in every respect; the principal division (it seems to me) is between numismatists (and general Classics persons, like me), on the one hand, and collectors (though many of them very well informed, in some cases extremely expert in their
area); the difference is not one of expertise so much as of motivation. While hardly immune to the charms of beautiful coins, the numismatically motivated person, whether he or she personally collects, or not, cares for what the coins mean in their historical contexts: plural, because there are many sub-contexts: epigraphic, economic, artistic,
military, religious, literary, and many more. The collector, while not uninterested in general Classics, of which ancient
Numismatics is
part, is typically more interested in completeness as such, condition as such,
rarity as such, Coin Cabinet virtues. The line is not hard and fast, of course, but it crops up here all the time. And the sellers? Not myself one of them, I have, nevertheless, the impression that they break down into
selling numismatists and
selling collectors, just as their buyers do.
This is a simplified statement of something really many-sided, and no one should try to classify himself or herself by it--or suppose that I do.
And neither is 'better' than the other; there are
good and bad scholars, serious and frivolous collectors; there are wonderful amateurs, like
Ruzicka, and much less than wonderful professionals, like Nameless. Yet, our
Numismatics and Collecting are not those of our great grandparents, either intellectually or socio-economically (polite for Class) or technically (books are
cheap and using the internet, so far, is cheaper; digital technology is more important that metal detecting!).
P.S. If someone wants a
good Honors thesis topic, let him or her undertake Harpokrates or some such topic, for which the raw material is only emerging.
Pat L.
