Hi guys, I have recently got back into my ancient coins and have always enjoyed buying uncleaned lots and going through the cleaning and identification process. I use to buy them from the crustyromans website (based in the UK) and had great success with them. They were all ethically sourced and never seemed to be properly cherry-picked. I always at least got my money's worth in monetary value after cleaning and identifying them, and actually most often ended up with two (sometimes even three) times what I paid for. I know cherry-picking is unavoidable for pretty much every seller, as often these lots of coins have swapped hands multiple times and the best ones are taken out. But unfortunately, crustromans have been out of business for a number of years due to changes in EU legislation (although maybe this will change now that the UK are no longer part of the EU? Or maybe they sourced their coins from other countries in the EU, who knows). So now I am left with not knowing what sellers I can trust. I live in New Zealand so they would have to be able to ship internationally, and I really want to find a seller that doesn't cherry-pick and just send out junk or invaluable coins. I often ended up finding coins worth $40-80 USD from crustyromans, but never had this kind of luck buying from sellers on ebay. In fact, I don't think I ever found a coin worth more than $10 buying from uncleaned lots on ebay and never really got my money's worth. I know to avoid those sellers that claim that their uncleaned lots 'may contain' gold and silver, these are often laughable and unethical sellers. I also don't like sellers that have pictures of generic uncleaned lots - I like to be able to gauge the quality of the coins I am buying. Any tips will be greatly appreciated, cheers!
Ancient coins are a thing of the past.. I believe member @hotwheelsearl recently was able to get a mixed lot of 300 uncleaned ancient coins somehow.
It's been a long, long time since I've been able to buy decent uncleaned ancient coins. I'd be interested in hearing what everyone else has to say.
To develop on this: the only uncleaned i got that i had the feeling i could find anything were the ones from @Suarez (dirtyoldcoins). Anything, but within the limit of AE4 - AE3... Last uncleaned lot (40 coins) i got from ebay user igornaisus. He was mentioned here before. He has bigger lots. Coins in his smaller lots are partly cleaned and photogaphed from the nice side, so expect potentially interesting lots to go high price and coins be worst than expected. For pure pleasure of cleaning, a bigger lot might be worth buying. Smaller lots - not so much. Expect at most breakeven. I also got a few obscure coins that are within or closely around my area of interest, for 10 EUR/piece max. Bigger chance to not find a slug, but something that i would be happy to keep (and yes, less chance i will destroy something special). Like the one below.
All of my ancients started out in uncleaned lots. Since I don't plan on selling them, they suit my needs in most cases. I would like to get some better quality coins. But, it is very difficult to find any on line.
There are two main places I’ve seen with decent prices. One is based in CA, and that’s who I buy from. The coins are 90% cleaned. However only about 25% are identifiable, 60% are slugs, 5% are Byzantine slugs, 1% are Seleucid or “other.” You end up paying a lot for slugs. Average price per coin ranges from $0.70 to over $1.00 There’s also a guy based in Serbia that sells what I believe are pretty quality uncleand. They appear to be simply dirty with clay or other non-rock encrustations. There’s isually enough showing to have a good idea what you’re getting. I haven’t bought from him, but prices seem to go to around $2.00 a coin. After buying a total of 800 coins from the first source, I’ve concluded that you can’t profit from these lots. Generally you’re lucky to break even. And, I haven’t found anything spectacular for my efforts. 90% are the usual suspects - Constantines, Constantiuses, Constanses, Valenses. The best and most valuable so far have been: Maximian x1 Antoninus Pius x4 Commodus x1 Elagabalus x 2 Severus Alexander x 3 Gordian III x 4 Diocletian x 1 If you’re down to be buried under countless generic Constantius II FTRs, then these are the lots for you!
Looking around on ebay I think you're right, there doesn't really seem to be anywhere you can get your money's worth in terms of buying uncleaned.
I used to get pretty good uncleaned long ago...haven't bought any in a long time. Did buy a few decent lots from dirtyoldcoins as well but it got so they were harder to find and lots were disappointing. I never planned to sell anything I found but when multiple lot produce few if any coins I could ID it got frustrating. Here are few I liked. Most were Constantine and his sons...this one would be indicative of the best in most lots
I thought this was a blank. I had it for years. When I started lightly cleaning it I found that it ended up being a very scarce Germanicus. Caesar on a chariot. I was mad at the seller at first.
