12 Caesars' Set - Advice!

Thanks FR and Medieval...! Very nice set FR - did you find most of these on the 'good' auction sites individually?
Great information Medieval - that gives me a solid starting point.
I'm going to see what I have when those unattributed denarii arrive...I'm hoping that I have at least a few of the 12 to start with.

I'm just looking at his site now...there seem to be 5 volumes. I'll look for this on Amazon.

Dutch - my hope was that buying them 'in bulk' so to speak, that it might be easier to get somewhat of a deal...plus if I could find one very good supplier that was reliable, it'd be less likely that I'd end up with a fake. But I'm guessing that neither is necessarily the case...!
I think I will try to collect them one at a time now....haha so you will likely be seeing a number of posts from me seeking counsel!

As an aside, I think that a lot of posters here are American or Canadian. I don't know if anyone has tried this before, but I found a few sites where you can go on 'metal detecting holidays' in the UK, or mainland Europe. I went to Glasgow for a conference a few months ago, and nearly took a side trip to try one of these:

http://www.colchestertreasurehuntin....uk/home.htm

hmmmm Ok thanks, I'll see if I can contact him and see if can give any estimated date of the full 5-volume set being released.

Agree that the new edition is quite extensive, the big advantage of it is that there are a lot of pictures integrated in the text, so you can see the type. While the prices always have to be taken with a grain of salt, the ones given in the new edition at least give an indication (and relations between various issues of the same period).
Personally I like references I can put my hands on, but if 'markbaer' does not want to go well outside the 12 Caesars then obtaining the whole set is probably not worthwhile. But still would consider the money for volume one well spend for a journey to obtain the 12 Caesars on a one-by-one basis.

If you want to establish a nice reference library for Roman coinage, then the 5 volume set is an excellent start. To make it complete you will have to think also about Roman Provincial coinage though. While Sear's "Greek Imperial Coinage" is quite good, you might want to look at Ivan Varbanov's "Greek Imperial Coins". Unfortunately only the first three volumes have so far been translated into English (those cover very extensively Dacia, Moesia, Thrace and Macedonia), with the fourth volume only in Bulgarian so far - also wonder how well the Alexandrian issues are covered in that one.

In that case I would recommend that you only order the first one for now. You can then later decide if you add volume by volume or want the boxed set (selling one volume is easier than more). Volume one covers everything for your first adventure and with the book in hand you can decide if that is the style to put into your library or if you rather rely on other references for other coins.