THE COIN COLLECTOR - World eBook Library

THE COLLECTOR SERIES
inexperienced amateur, must be regarded as incon-
venient ami imdesiinble. •
For
surely it is far better
for all concerned to start, if not with eyes quite open,
at all e\e; i t; not with ejtes quite shut.
It is perfectly true, when we narrow the discus-
sion to numismatics, that coins are sought by different
persons from different motives or aims. The col-
lector who chooses to buy specimens regardlessly of
condition and value, just for the sake of forming
a sort of assemblage of the currencies of older and
extinct communities or of the former monetary sys-
tems of existing ones, does not perhaps perceive
the necessity or utility of counsel. There have been
thousands of human creatures who have lived and died
under the hallucination that they were the proprietors
of important and interesting cabinets of coins, whereas
those which were really valuable might have been
counted on the fingers. It is so, always has been, and
always will be, perchance, with every kind of curiosity
and relic, so long as money is to judgment and taste
in the ratio of 1000 to 1. We have associated with
individuals who had succeeded, much to their appa-
rent satisfaction, in amassing archaeological remains of
various sorts, and if in their entire length and breadth
there was an item or so above mediocrity, the fact was
to be ascribed to some fortuitous circumstance, for
which the owner was not immediately responsible.
There are already two or three works belonging to
the category of General Handbooks of Numismatics.
Akerman's "Introduction to the Study of Ancient and
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