The Coin Collector - 1896 Author:William Carew Hazlitt Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II VALUE OF COINS The estimation of ancient coins of different countries and periods depends on such a variety of considerations and circumstances that it ... more »is almost impossible and useless to attempt to form, for the instruction of the younger school of collectors, a scale or standard for judging either the merits or commercial worth of any class of currency. The interest with which this pursuit inspires those engaged in it is singularly diversified. Some are governed by topographical, some by chronological, and others by internal lines and limits; and the prevailing motive has, of course, a tendency to render others of secondary weight and influence. One man collects the coins of a particular country or epoch, and does not study their preservation; another looks exclusively to the state of his acquisitions, and disregards the places of origin, treating each item on its own individual merits as a curiosity or work of art. The choice of metals is a further contribution to the wide diversity of taste and fashion in these matters; there are collectors of gold only, of silver only, and of copper only. Then there are such as will buy a small coin and will not entertain the notion of a larger one,and vice versa. It must be evident that the coexistence of so many numismatic faiths or tenets unavoidably operates on the market, and sways it in different directions from time to time. A call for a given series, type, country, on the part of a small knot of amateurs suffices to inflate for the moment the quotations. These vicissitudes and fluctuations are incessant; and to them have to be added the surprises and perils which equally beset the buyer and seller in the shape of periodical finds of rare coins, with the result that the balance is at once disturbed, and prior investments de...« less