I'm a newbie here, I mostly have silver coins, plus a few gold. Are they ancient coins on ebay real/worth while? So of them look amazingly cheap (under $100) and in amazing condition for being over 1500 years old, although they are NGC graded. Are these worth collecting at all? Why are they so cheap given how old they are. Surely there can't be that many of them out there, can there? TIA
just because a coin is 1500+ years old doesn't mean it's worth big money. popularity, demand, supply, etc. affect a coins value, not age. yes, there are millions of ancient coins out there because hundreds of millions were made back in the day.
Also many ancients in NGC slabs are VERY overpriced. A example is some are listed for $150 in a slab while a dealer on some ancient sites can have the same type, sometimes in better shape, for half.
First rule of coin collecting: Age does not equal value. The ancient romans, at the height of their empire, struck tens of millions of coins every year. Couple this with lack of banks and the need to bury your fortune to protect it, and it leads to huge numbers of coins found every year. There is nothing nefarious about ancient coins not costing a lot. Now, a lot of ancients on EBay are junk, there are some forgeries, but on the whole its a fine place to buy coins. I buy some every week from there, but also buy at major dealers, auctions, etc.
Yes there are a lot of fakes, but yes you can buy very nice ancients in the $100 range. Just be careful about which dealer you buy from.
Heck, there are very nice ancients worth collecting in the $10 range. Hang around here, read past post, visit Doug Smith's website, and educate yourself how to do it Abefroman99!
I dig up ancient Roman and Celtic coinage from some of the rural land near my home, some of them are in remarkable condition. I have yet to dig a slabbed one up.
Welcome to the Forum.:hail: Yes, ancient coins can be low cost. I have limited experience with ancient coins but I would recommend that you only buy with a return policy & only buy from reputable dealers. Always feel free to post a coin here for comment before you buy it. I recently purchased these four Roman coins for a $20 bill. I'll need to post obv & rev photos in a thread here so the experts can help me sort them out.
Another 'problem' with ancients is that there are something like a million variations available to be collected including some that exist in only one example and others that can be bought by the bag. I once saw a plastic bag containing 1000 denarii of the emperor Tiberius - all the same type. As a result almost no one tries to get a complete set (impossible!). People tend to buy what they like rather what some catalog says is rare. The oldest ancients are about 2600 years old while the 'newest' ancients are half that. Relatively few of us are impressed by the difference between these two extremes so age is not a major factor. Ancients are not for everyone. If you need order in your collection you might be better off collecting something that a book will spell out with perfection. If you want to collect something where you never know what tomorrow will bring, ancients may be for you. Thanks for the plug, medoraman, but next time drop a link: http://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/ I don't even know how many pages there are --- 200 maybe? I'd suggest starting here: http://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/voc.html
