The Confessions of a Collector

by William Carew Hazlitt

The cabinet stood half empty; I felt the reproach; and I proceeded not only to fill it, but to gather tenants for a second—and a third, with an overflow capable of furnishing one or two more. Such a development might have had comparatively slight significance, because a coin, which is worth a penny, may occupy a larger space than one, which is worth £10; but in a parallel ratio with the increase in number was the rise in the qualifying standard, or, in other words, I was constantly and heavily adding to my stores, and putting in rigorous force the principle of exclusion. There could be only one result.

Now, in the hope, that certain general particulars, which have cost the writer an infinite amount of trouble to collect for his own benefit and instruction during a series of years, may be acceptable and useful to others, proposing to embark in the same undertaking, I shall reduce the fruit of my own efforts to a summary, indicative of what has seemed to me, after long and deliberate consideration, to be adequate to the purposes of anyone of moderate views, who seeks to assemble together a fairly representative corpus of the various chronological monuments of European rulers and regions and of the successive schools of numismatic art. Completeness in any given series is by no means essential to the mastery of a competent idea of its character and merits from all ways of looking; and the study of mints and mint-marks is a mere technical detail, which owes its leading interest to its incidental illustrations of topography and of the careers of engravers—many of them otherwise distinguished.

Many persons start with the Greek or Roman, or perhaps both, from a belief that they are the most ancient and the most instructive. My first Roman coin was a most disreputable specimen of a very common first brass of Hadrian, handsomely presented to my son by a captain at a watering-place, and my first Greek a forgery of one of the numberless tetradrachms of Alexander the Great. I was in the berceaunette stage; but I was not quite so long in it as some are. I am indebted to Lincoln & Son for having conferred on me the rudiments (if not something more) of my education in these two very important divisions of every cabinet of any pretensions whatever; and I may at last presume to offer myself as a counsellor of others, who may be situated as I was in my nonage.

It entirely depends on the breadth of a new collector’s plan, which is usually influenced by his resources, how far he proceeds in his selection of the Greek coinage, for under any circumstances a selection it must be. No individual, no public institution, can boast of possessing a complete series in all metals. I resorted to the principle of choosing under each coin-striking region of ancient Hellas a sufficient number of pieces in electrum, gold, silver, and copper or bronze to represent a chronological succession of its products, and I also observed the rule of comprising, if possible, all such as exhibited the portraitures, or at least titles, of rulers of personal eminence. A numismatist pure and simple attaches, very justly attaches from his special point of view, emphatic weight to many examples, of which the sole attraction and value are their accidental rarity without regard to their intrinsic interest; this is not a wise policy for the private amateur, whatever his fortune may be. Such relics ought to find their resting-place in a public repository, and a full record of them should be preserved in one of the learned Transactions for general reference. How immensely one was pleased to learn that Sir Wollaston Franks had fallen in with a Bactrian dekadrachm; and the satisfaction, so far as I was concerned, was augmented by the news, that he had presented it to the British Museum. If it had been submitted as a purchase or even gift to myself, I should have declined it, as it fails to respond to my postulates. It is merely a voucher.

It is my impression, based on a long experience, that about three hundred Greek coins of all varieties and types will be found to embrace everything of real note, and will provide the possessor with numismatic specimens in all metals, of every region, of every period and style, of each denomination, and of all such great personalities as are known to have struck money, not only within the limits of European Greece, but in the countries and colonies subject to its sovereigns in their varied degrees of power and prosperity or by its cities from their first rude development to their zenith in political influence and commercial wealth. A proportion of gold is highly desirable, particularly the Athenian, Syracusan, and Egyptian; the copper must be very fine and patinated; the silver is the easiest to find, except in certain series. I succeeded in furnishing myself with the majority of typical examples alike in silver and bronze, and indeed (except under Attica) in the most precious metal. I could never meet with more than a single Athenian specimen—a ῆμίεκτον; but the most beautiful and fascinating productions are the gold tetradrachms and octodrachms of the Ptolemies, so rich in their portraiture, costume, and design. Three or four of these gems suffice for a moderate programme. I found fifty pounds inadequate to the purchase of even three. There is a particularly charming one of Ptolemy III., and no one must forget that great, if not very good, lady, the Cleopatra of history, whose portrait appears both on her brother’s and her own coins in Egypt and on those of Mark Antony in the Roman consular series. To any collector aiming at the not unreasonable object of securing her likeness it may be useful to mention, that her veiled or deified bust accompanies certain bronze pieces of moderate price and excellent quality.

The writer has attentively scrutinised the catalogues of all the sales of Greek and Roman money, which have taken place in his time, and the conclusion to be drawn from the descriptive accounts and the realised figures is so far a consolatory one for the great majority, who cannot afford to go beyond a comparatively low figure. For it becomes clearly apparent that the costliest pieces are not the most powerful in their appeal to us on historical or artistic grounds. Remember that we have to take into account these points of interest: history, with which is closely embodied religious cult, biography, topography, and art. A thoroughly well-meaning dealer exclaims, if you challenge the quotation for some indifferent specimen of a not too remarkably executed tetradrachm or drachma:—‘But look at the rarity! the last one sold for so much.’ And I am sorry to say, that this plea too frequently prevails. I have always turned a deaf ear to all attempts to induce me to acquire on any terms coins, which were not highly preserved, whatever their scarcity of occurrence might be. I preferred to examine them in other hands, or even to contemplate engravings derived from superior examples.

Let a person in my position lay down for himself this principle for his guidance:—My space is limited; my means are the same; the material or means of supply, as time goes on, is infinite and inexhaustible; no collection in the universe is complete; therefore, incompleteness being a relative expression, I will take here and there, from this sale or that, from this or that place of business, just as many coins as serve to gratify my love of the beautiful, my reverence for great names, my curiosity to hold in my hand pieces of currency which, alike in the case of Greece and Rome, united with their monetary import and use symbols of an earnest religious faith and proud records of national achievements by sea and land.

To possess an even extensive assemblage of such monuments I found in my own experience, and others may do the same, that a man has not to be quite a Crœsus; nor in truth is it peremptory to insist in such extreme measure as I have on faultless beauty of state. I may have been too luxurious, too dainty. At any rate, all which contributes to render coins of all periods and kinds serviceable and agreeable is within the reach of individuals of very straitened purchasing powers. But it is necessary to guard against disproportion, which is very likely to arise in all sections from the occurrence of the products of trouvailles in tempting condition at a modest tariff.

My recommendation is to avoid even the semblance of duplicates, where the sole difference is the date or the mint-mark, or possibly a slight variation in the legend. My natural sympathy is with the poorer collector, who has perchance to exercise a little self-denial to enable him to carry out successfully and profitably his hobby; the rich have only to buy and to pay; and those, who may choose to follow in my footsteps more or less, will soon discover, as I did, that to arrive at a satisfactory result under pecuniary disadvantages is a task demanding knowledge, discretion, and patience.

Of the passions of the human mind that which directs us to a certain object or aim, if not to more than one, with irresistible vehemence, and holds us bound within its range as by a spell, is one of the strongest, most ancient, and most unreasoning. My own life during the past thirty or forty years, or in other words the best part of my career, has been mainly engrossed by the pursuit of two or three fancies; the serious business of existence seems to have been a secondary question; and the most substantial testimony to my earnestness of purpose and (I have to own) my thorough subjection to the influence of the taste, is to be found in my irresponsive surroundings and my sacrifice of other interests to what my less sentimental friends would call an ignis fatuus.