Roman Coins and Their Values: Volume 1

Bought book as a gift for my husband so can't comment on the contents but he was very happy with it and the service was first class from the buy, more than happy to recommend.

Looking forward to reading this

Excellent

Very good

This is undoubtedly the Bible for the collector of Roman coins. It is the first of four volumes and covers the period: The Republic and the Twelve Caesars, 280 BC - AD 96. This first volume covers approximately 375 years, from the origins of Roman coinage in the Republican period through to the end of the second Imperial dynasty in AD96. The volumes that follow will cover similar periods in time.Volume I has a list of about 3,000 coin types, with a large number of them being illustrated. The volumes are not cheap and are undoubtedly aimed at the serious collector. As I have said before I personally am always wary of prices in books. Firstly because they cannot stay current for very long and secondly the prices in them usually bear little resemblance to what you can sell the coin for on the open market. The prices are undoubtedly a guide, but the reader should not think they are written in stone.

Having an interest in Roman Republic coins, I found this book a rather mediocre successor to it's predecessors "Roman Coins and their Values", 1988 edition, and the superb "Roman Silver Coins Vol.1" first published 1952, last updated 1978. Although listing many more coins than before, the listing is very unbalanced. For example hundreds of distinct varieties of early Republican silver are summarised in just a couple of pages with their prices rather uselessly indicated as "from ...". In contrast there are some 100 pages listing countless very rare varieties of the Republican struck copper series that most collectors will never see in a lifetime, together with spuriously accurate pricing for this notoriously illiquid series. It would have been better to have had a representative selection, including most common and a few rare coins, and to have reserved significantly more space in the book as a whole for illustrations, of which there are not enough. For the Imperatorial series this book has a quite complete listing but again not enough illustrations. I have given up referring to this book and instead look to my trusted old copy of Roman Silver Coins Vol.1, which illustrates and prices every variety in a far more compact form (the prices have to be adjusted up by some 50%, but that is easily calculated). I would recommend to collectors that they search for a copy of RSC1 on the second hand market rather than buy this book.