Nowadays the trend amongst collectors is to collect perfect coins. For ancient coins this is extra hard as all coins were hand-struck and the chance of imperfections therefore increased.
During some periods and in some places, a higher level of production was reached than in other periods and places, what resulted in a higher number of (almost) perfect coins in said period or place.
From talks I had with fellow dealers it emerges that we are somewhat surprised at this dominant search for perfect ancient coins because it produces similar collections.
Ancient coins that are numismatically very interesting because of their representation or die combination, but have a slight flaw, regularly do not do very well at auctions.
Actually it is very easy to collect perfect coins: there is little numismatic knowledge required and all a collector has to look for is quality. The representation, the meaning of it and the historical value are of secundary concern.
However, to give a collection value and signification one needs to apply diversification. It won’t take long for a collector of perfect ancient coins to be facing the dilemma to incorporate one or more coins in his collection that are not perfect, but do have an interesting story to tell and will give his collection more meaning.
A terrible dilemma, but fortunately one easy to solve.