This price guide is a book for the collector rather than the scholar & as such has to be pocket-sized & inexpensive It assumes that the reader will be more interested in assigning a coin to its proper period or Emperor than in working out the meaning of the design on the reverse & therefore whilst most of the usual obverse portraits & legends are illustrated the reverses are dealt with in a much more cursory manner As an aid to identification all illustrations are as close to life-sized as possible Remember that often Roman coins are not completely circular like modern coins Further not all Roman base-metal coins are included This is a selection of the available material including the vast majority of the coins the collector is likely to encounter in 'real life'