Do you specialize in ONE emperor (or one theme) ?

[Barnaba6]

22 hours ago, Ocatarinetabellatchitchix said:

Probus, with over 2000 different coins (200 reverse types, 50 bust types, around ten mints and up to 10 officinae …

You underestimate the coinage of Probus. Probus has way over 10,000 coins. The biggest collection of Probus coins in the world is in the Vienna Musuem. It is mostly based on the collection of Alexander Missong who collected about 11,000 different Probus coins in the 19th century.

I have not counted all the reverse types and bust types, but 200 reverse types and 50 bust types sounds about right as far as antoniniani only are concerned. There were indeed ten mints operating under Probus with up to 9 officinae in some mints. However, if we add Probus gold coinage and bronze small and large medallions, we get more than 200 reverses and 50 busts (especially when considering that there were e.g. at least 10 different decorations of the shield alone under Probus). You also forgot to add almost 100 different obverse legends, including various combinations of desirable titles like DEO ET DOMINO, PERPETVO (Probus was the only emperor to use such a title in his regular coinage) , BONO (a title unique in the whole Roman coinage), INVICTVS, CONS II, III, IIII and V. So that is a potential for thousands of combinations!   

I myslef specialize(d) in Probus and Aurelian coins. In the past 12 years I collected about 1,900 Probus coins and almost 400 Aurelian coins. My whole collection is online:

www.colleconline.com/en/collections/3268/barnaba6

I am currently in the process of selling my specialized Probus/Aurelian collection. I have already organized about 15 auctions in the past 2,5 years and there will be more this year so stay tuned. 

regards,

Barnaba 

 

  

Edited April 17, 2023 by Barnaba6

[DonnaML]

12 minutes ago, Barnaba6 said:

You underestimate the coinage of Probus. Probus has way over 10,000 coins. The biggest collection of Probus coins in the world is in the Vienna Musuem. It is mostly based on the collection of Alexander Missong who collected about 11,000 different Probus coins in the 19th century.

I have not counted all the reverse types and bust types, but 200 reverse types and 50 bust types sounds about right as far as antoniniani only are concerned. There were indeed ten mints operating under Probus with up to 9 officinae in some mints. However, if we add Probus gold coinage and bronze small and large medallions, we get more than 200 reverses and 50 busts (especially when considering that there were e.g. at least 10 different decorations of the shield alone under Probus). You also forgot to add almost 100 different obverse legends, including various combinations of desirable titles like DEO ET DOMINO, PERPETVO (Probus was the only emperor to use such a title in his regular coinage) , BONO (a title unique in the whole Roman coinage), INVICTVS, CONS II, III, IIII and V. So that is a potential for thousands of combinations!   

I myslef specialize(d) in Probus and Aurelian coins. In the past 12 years I collected about 1,900 Probus coins and almost 400 Aurelian coins. My whole collection is online:

www.colleconline.com/en/collections/3268/barnaba6

I am currently in the process of selling my specialized Probus/Aurelian collection. I have already organized about 15 auctions in the past 2,5 years and there will be more this year so stay tuned. 

regards,

Barnaba 

 

  

Wow. Do you think Probus issued more different types of coins than any other emperor? How many are listed at https://probuscoins.fr/ ?

[Barnaba6]

32 minutes ago, DonnaML said:

Wow. Do you think Probus issued more different types of coins than any other emperor? How many are listed at https://probuscoins.fr/ ?

There are 5,041 Probus coins in total in the probuscoins.fr database. Many however are duplicates. I would say that there may be roughly 3,000 different Probus variants in the probuscoins.fr database.

I am insufficinetly versed in the coinage of the remamining emperors to authoritatively say whether Probus was indeed the emperor to have struck the most different types among all Roman emperors, but I would bet my money that Probus is at least in the top three. Perhaps specialists of remaining emperors may weigh in.

Though we should be aware that when talking about more than 10,000 Probus types, we are talking about sometimes very minor details and minor differences e.g. different types of cuirass (within the same genral bust type), different shield decorations, whether the wreath ties of Probus' corona radiate are spread or joined, whether the obverse legend id dotted or not etc. Not all of these differences would be caracterized under a different "number" in a standard catalogue (e.g. in the revised edition of RIC V.2 if such revised edition ever is completed, which I start to have doubts about).             

[DonnaML]

Thank you. In terms of other emperors, the recently-published RIC II.3 volume devoted to Hadrian Imperial coins lists about 3,200 different types. If one adds to that number the 3,828 Hadrian Provincial types listed in RPC III, the total is approximately 7,000 different Hadrian types. I doubt that there are many emperors who issued more, keeping in mind that neither RIC nor RPC generally engages in "fly-specking," that is, assigning different numbers to types that differ only in minute ways such as the presence or absence of dots in a legend, etc.

Edited April 17, 2023 by DonnaML

[Ocatarinetabellatchitchix]

3 hours ago, Barnaba6 said:

You underestimate the coinage of Probus.

You are right. But I was talking about collectible coins, so I’m not sure we can include medallions and the gold coinage into this, since they are out of reach for 95% of collectors. And about the number of  « 2000 » coins, it’s an estimation made by Michel Prieur about 20 years ago. 

[Barnaba6]

7 hours ago, Ocatarinetabellatchitchix said:

You are right. But I was talking about collectible coins, so I’m not sure we can include medallions and the gold coinage into this, since they are out of reach for 95% of collectors. And about the number of  « 2000 » coins, it’s an estimation made by Michel Prieur about 20 years ago. 

Even of we exclude medallions and the gold coinage, 2000 coins is still a big underestimation of the Probus antoniniani types. Much has changed in the last 20 years.  But again, it’s also a question of which details we take into account when distinguishing various Probus types. I guess if we arbitrarily exclude some details, we might arrive at ‘only’ 2000 types. I am very curious to study the future revision of RIC V.2 volume if it ever is completed to see how many Probus types the authors will distinguish and which criteria they will use to distinguish various types: where will they draw the line? 

[arizonarobin]

I collect mostly "The Ladies of Rome". With a very heavy interest in Julia Domna. I have approx. 350 coins in this category, with about 1/3 being JD.

I also have an interest in roman provincial coins of Stobi and have 110+ in that category.

[DonnaML]

On 4/18/2023 at 1:17 PM, arizonarobin said:

I collect mostly "The Ladies of Rome". With a very heavy interest in Julia Domna. I have approx. 350 coins in this category, with about 1/3 being JD.

I also have an interest in roman provincial coins of Stobi and have 110+ in that category.

@arizonarobin Your post reminds me that I should have mentioned as another area of special interest that I have always enjoyed collecting coins of Roman empresses and other royal women, for the obvious reasons. Of course I don't have nearly as many as you do, either overall or for any particular empress, but I still have coins with 28 different empresses/augustae, either on the obverse or depicted on the reverse, from Julia (assuming that's she on the reverse of the Tiberius "tribute penny" denarius) through Aelia Flaccilla. The most coins I have of any one empress are the dozen or so I have of Faustina II (again, not remotely comparable to the likes of @Roman Collector!), most of them depicting her on the reverse (in the guise of one goddess or another) with different numbers of her children.  My favorite is probably the Antoninus Pius aureus I've posted many times, depicting Faustina II and her daughter Lucilla in the guise of Ceres and Proserpina:

Edited April 19, 2023 by DonnaML

[Pellinore]

Where to start...

The earliest coins from the lands where I live and that I feel a link with, i.e. Northwestern Europe: Celts of Gaul and Britain, early medieval sceattas, and of the towns where I lived - 11th century coins of places in the Netherlands. 

Roman Imperial coins is where I started when I was 13 or 14. Moreover, it was my second start decades later, when my father-in-law died and I inherited his small but pointed collection of Romans and Byzantines. I want all emperors, empresses and princes, be they Imperial or Provincial. Some emperors are more interesting to me than others, and I like expanding and deepening areas of interest. Alexandrian coins for instance, or Ryro's interest: where Roman culture differs glaringly from ours, in the history of sexuality. Also, what he calls the dopest coins: with a madly dancing pot (Antioch Provincial, 68/69 AD), an emperor with thick-rimmed glasses or a running king in sport shirt numbered 8 (Siglos, 4th century BC).

As for Byzantine coins, I'm collecting only one emperor: Phocas. Because of my interest in history, I'm not averse to earlier coins like Anastasius and Justinian, and my interest in the Persians brings me to Alexandria, that was Sasanian for a decade or so in the 7th century. 

Yes, Sasanians! I started to collect these, too, when I was fifteen, to the point where I pondered going to study Middle Persian. This interest expanded into imitations and developments (the area of @Finn235), and to the prequels: Persis, Elymais, Parthia and the Achaemenids. 

Imitations and developments are to be found in the Roman and Greek worlds, too, and there I have a few hundred 'barbarous imitations' of all kinds. In the earliest place, the Celtic imitations (see my avatar, an imitation of a Philip of Macedon horse reverse). Western Celts are interesting as my 'forefathers' (don't know if they really are, naturally), the people living where I and my (partly British) family lives now. Eastern Celts are interesting as a development of Greek coinage. They were followed by imitations of Roman coinage by the Sarmatians and the mixed cultures (Chernyakhiv-Goth) after them. For some time in my collecting life, these coins were not so difficult to acquire, and there I am. 

And then there are the fringes. The transition from Christian and Zoroastric religions to Islam, and the fringes between these are engrossing me. In the 7th century a lot happened: you may see a Sasanian-like drachm with a Buddhist-Hindu obverse, and an Islamic coin that looks very much like a Byzantine coin. And 400 years later the Normans conquered Sicily, where they issued coins with both Arabic and Western legends (this red-and-green coin was issued by the famous Norman king Roger, but it was also the first coin with an Arabic numeral date: 533 AH = 1138/1139 AD). 

Some years ago I started collecting medieval Islamic coins. That starts in the 7th century and for me it ends in 1336 AD. I'm interested in the history and in calligraphics. History says (for instance) Genghis Khan - and calligraphics are (for instance) to be found on 11th century silver of the Qarakhanids, a forgotten dynasty reigning in what's now Uzbekistan. 

(This is a large AE coin, 34 mm, dating from the time and realm of Chingiz Khan, minted in Balkh, 1222/3 AD, see Zeno 208241)

( A Qarakhanid silver dirham, 25 mm, dating from 1005 AD, Zeno 265532)

So many areas and eras! But I want to place firm boundaries, too. I'm collecting only ancient and medieval, the end year being 1336 (that is when the Ilkhan ruler Abu Sa'id died, who issued many different, finely crafted coins). Not collecting Spanish coins (only some Islamic medieval coins and a few Celtiberians), no Chinese (I started but stopped soon). Some later coins have been drifting in that attracted me because of the design, and I'm collecting funny political banknotes and notes of the Notgeld kind - these are more or less political too, 1920-1923. 

Feel free to ask for more pictures.

Edited April 19, 2023 by Pellinore