Foreword Andrew McCabe Four decades of evolution are invested into this, my collection of Roman Republican coins, and are reflected in its present state coverage, rarity, provenance, condition, strike, and patina. For much of this time I used Robert Carson’s, Principal Coins of the Romans, as my model of a perfectly displayed collection, and I encourage collectors who would like a guide on how to balance coverage and rarity in assembling a collection to acquire Carson’s three volume series, The Republic, Principate and Dominate, British Museum, London 1978-81. The collection has passed through several distinct stages but there might have been some shortcuts had I known how important demonstrable provenance would become in time. In the 1980s I collected whatever Roman Republican denarii looked interesting and were available in retail shops and through retail offerings of Baldwin’s, Seaby, Spink etc. My mentor at the time – everyone needs a mentor – was Thomas Beverley Curtis at Baldwin’s who would say “buy this coin, you won’t regret it”; I recall him being pleased that I was interested in rare varieties and not just in condition: Mr. Curtis regularly said that collectors who only focused on condition and didn’t consider patina, provenance, rarity etc, were missing out on a great deal of interesting coins. I discovered NAC auctions in the 1990s, and the quality of my coins improved. Early NAC sales included great coverage of Roman Republican bronzes and I started forming an all-metals collection, including aes grave, silver, struck and cast bronzes. I made many mistakes – I bought an EID MAR denarius of Brutus, in poor condition but evidently genuine, and sold it some years later on the basis that it was a fairly common type and I would soon find one in VF or better. I didn’t. Oh dear. For the record, here it is:
Some collecting areas, adjacent to the Roman Republic, proved too difficult to play a serious role in. These included the Social War, the Restoration Coinage of Trajan, and the Fleet Coinage of Mark Antony. I didn’t at the time know that Richard Witschonke was assembling the world’s best collection of Mark Antony Fleet Coinage, which he was to donate to the American Numismatic Society. In the early 2000’s my collection entered a new phase - I set myself the impossible task of collecting every Roman Republican coin type in all metals, regardless of condition. Many coins cost 50 dollars or less. I added 48 coins in 2001, 99 in 2002, 147 in 2003 growing to 285 new coins in 2009, and a peak of 310 new coins in 2013. I was adding a new coin to my collection every one to three days for two decades. The numbers were extraordinary. Over my entire collecting career I have owned perhaps 5000 Roman Republican coins, a rather similar number to the collection sizes of Richard Schaefer, Richard B Witschonke and Roberto Russo who all became firm friends in this time. My study collection of Roman Republican bronzes enabled me to do serious research work and I was honoured that Roberto Russo invited me to collaborate with him on a book on Roman Republican bronzes – forthcoming – and a special study on the coinage of Luceria and Canusium – published in the Revue Belge de Numismatique, 2024. This study collection, mainly of bronzes but with many silver coins, was dispersed to collectors in the period 2013 to 2023, as I completed research on each series in turn. From the time of the RBW sales, 2012 and 2023, I focused on a new area: provenances, and have spent the last twelve years narrowing my collection down to the most important coins of the best possible provenances. This collection is so different from the study collection that I dispersed from 2013, that it is important for it to have a different name. Lambeth Bridge has a special association with luck in coins.
10