Uncleaned Roman coins
POSTAL INSURANCE
We offer you uncleaned roman coins of good quality. We buy them directly from the excavators in Serbia, so there are no other dealers between. Please notice that one bid is for ten coins! Example: If you wish to buy 10 coins, write the number "1" in the bidding lag below. The price for 10-40 coins would amount on 9.10 -36.40 GBP plus postage .
The shipping cost for 10-40 coins for one sending is 4.95 GBP insurance
The shipping cost for 41-200 coins for one sending is 6.65 GBP insurance
Restoring and collecting Roman coins is getting more popular all over the world by the day ! It is truly a fascinating hobby which combines numerous areas of knowledge such as numismatics, ancient history and a feeling of treasure hunting (you never know what is under the dirt); learning new things, training mental agility, discovery (there are so many different types to discover including types and variations previously unknown) and handicraft (cleaning the coins).
You can clean them using a variety of methods (e.g. using olive oil, or by simple electrolysis or using chemicals). You can find the cleaning instructions and appropriate links by clicking on the "Information" button.
In case you are dubious: I guarantee that these coins are absolutely genuine! The coins are at least 1500 years old!
Quality
Almost all of the coins I sell are from the Roman Imperial era. (approx. 100 B.C. to 450 A.D.), a few are from earlier or later times. The coins are good quality, with no lower quality Hungarian coins mixed in. I can guarantee that the sales lots are totally unpicked by myself. There are no broken coins in the lots, but small edge damage is of course possible.
Sizes: The lots include all sizes coins from 10mm to 30mm (Ases, Folli, Sestertii, Antoniniani, Maiorine, Denarii etc….), many are of the smaller size because those were the coins that were used most every day, similar to dimes, nickels and quarters in the USA today. Very large coins over 30mm are rare. The lot often includes silver and rarely a gold coin but most of the coins are bronze. Gold coins are extremely rare (about one nice Aureus in every 5,000 coins).
In ancient times the coins were designed and struck by hand, every coin being struck using a die on white hot metal. As a result, all the coins are unique, because of the die and its amount of wear, the temperature of the metal, the centering of the die on the metal and the strength applied to the actual striking.
Source of the coins
The coins come from places such as Viminacium (a Roman town near Kostolats in Serbia ). There were no banknotes in those days and the only banking system (a very basic system offered almost exclusively to the ruling classes) and so all transactions were made in cash (= coins). These were often buried in the cellar, beneath trees, next to local landmarks such as aquaducts and bridges. When the owner died (many of the owners were soldiers sent off to serve elsewhere), the coins were forgotten. Today, nearly 2,000 years later they are being found using electronic means and you can buy them.
Cleaning
The Roman coins which I am offering here are all uncleaned. In this condition not much - if anything - can be seen of what the coin represents in the way of emperor or the illustration on the reverse, because they are covered with a layer of earth. The coins can be cleaned with the help of olive oil, a simple diy electrolysis bath, or using chemicals. Every customer gets detailled cleaning instructions with the coins. During the cleaning procedure you can judge which coins are better than othes. There are always coins which are more worn than others or whose details are less clear, and which need to be sorted out from the rest. How long does it take ? Beginners usually try to rush things and clean frantically for a minute or so. With time and a little experience you will take longer over each coin, taking more care to retain the details. But even using the recommended methods described on the Information page, cleaning can take anything from a couple of minutes to many weeks, depending on the hardness of the dirt layer. On average, let's say a couple of days.
Market value and identifying the cleaned coins
After cleaning, the coins can be identified , a book (e.g. by David Sear or David VanMeter) or using auction catalogs which can often be bought quite cheaply on ebay. There are literally thousands of different coins from over 200 Roman emperors. Some types of coin have over 1,000 different variations. Every emperor and empress issued his or her own coins in numerous values and variations. The general value, or value class is often given in books, as well as on Wildwinds.com although the values given in books older than 3-4 years old (which gives values from $15-$10,000) can no longer be fully relied upon, due to the number of hoards currently being found. Normal values these days are between $15 and $200 for nice, not over-cleaned examples.
"Why should you collect them?"
Some of my clients invest their money in Roman coins. They sell any multiple copies and invest the money in more coins to increase the size of their collection. Such collections will never lose their value because Roman coins are a limited commodity, no matter how many are being found. They will never be made again ! Other buyers collect them just for interest, from a love of history and of our common past, others are teachers who use them to make history classes more interesting, parents buy them as a project for their children, as talking points, to make jewelry, as a unique gift for their friends and loved ones etc.
What do the uncleaned Roman coins look like?
What can you expect after cleaning them ?
Some weeks before I wrote the original, German-language version of this website I took a batch of 50 coins and put them into olive oil. The result is shown in the first scan below. The remaining 27 coins were not quite as nice or were so unclear, or worn that they were worthless to me. The results are always different (you never know what is under the dirt), but there are always some really nice ones in every batch.
The other scans show some really lovely examples of cleaned Roman coins: Agrippa, a gold aureus of Faustina, Maximinus, Constans, Diocletianus etc.
Why you are really getting unsorted and unpicked Roman coins here!
I am mentioning this for several reasons. Firstly, many sellers of uncleaned Roman coins sort and pick through their lots and take out what appear to be the nicest ones - primarily silver and gold coins, and they sell these separately. The rest are then sold as uncleaned Roman coins.
I do it differently. I simply don't have the time to rummage through thousands of dirty coins for hours at a time just to pick out what might be nice ones. I sell them as I get them, 100% and do not take out a single coin.
Secondly: you are getting coins here from very far up the ladder of supply. They come straight from the country in which they were found. Coins from many other suppliers have gone from dealer to dealer, being picked at every stage of their journey to you and increasing in price at every stage.
Why Roman coins are a good investment
Roman coins have been collected for about the last 100 years. Before 1960 there were very few found and these were mostly sent to museums, and so it was extremely difficult for collectors to get hold of them. But once electronics came to the assistance of detectory, the export began to grow. At first they came from Yugoslavia, the Lebanon, and, as Communism ended and borders were re-opened, also from Eastern Europe, where they were found in huge numbers and exported. The prices at first were lower than they are today because of the sheer numbers being found.
During that time there were a few people who earned a lot of money by buying millions of coins on spec, as it were and simply putting them into storage. Amongst these people were some US soldiers serving in Bosnia after the civil war there who smuggled huge numbers of cheap coins into the US when they returned home.
The past few years has seen a slight increase in price (also in view of inflations). Recently there has been the threat of a shortage because less and less coins are now being found and so the prices are going up. There will always be a demand for Roman coins but it is very likely that soon there will be no more large numbers available. When that time arrives the prices will rise sharply because there is no longer the supply to fill the demand. That is when the hamsters will begin to draw from the coins they have feretted away and sell them at high prices. And when those have been sold, the price will take another jump upwards.
You still have the chance of buying uncleaned Roman coins at a sensible and acceptable price. The assurance that these make a good investment comes from the fact that their value will increase faster than inflation.
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