Uncleaned Ancient Coins

A little while ago when I realized the mistake of overpaying for rolls of "unsearched coins" on the bay I started seeing lots of uncleaned ancient roman coins and wondered if it was the same scratch off type "investment." I say that from the standpoint of someone buying a bag of coins and thinking that if they pay $500 for the bag there must be a $500 coin in there. I understand that part of this venture is the fun of an archaeological preservation (which the dork in me would love to set half of the dining room table up to do) and I get that the process of cleaning brings a different angle of fascination to some, but is it the process that you're paying for or do some people really find some rarities while cleaning?

I have no experience with this area and haven't found much on it, but I will also admit that I haven't tried to look too hard as you guys here really know your stuff and I'd rather learn from the CT fam than a stuffed shirts book

 

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Years ago I thought it might be fun and who knows, one might find a decent coin in the bunch. It never happened to me. Mostly junk coins and the cleaning process got old real quick, especially since I'm rather impatient (and not very good at cleaning coins). The best I ever got was a silver bent nearly in two and very well worn. Obviously I don't bother any longer. But some others on CT have had some luck, cleaning up some very nice LRBs. Good on 'em. Here is the one silver:

M. AEMILIUS (POMPEY Victory v ARETAS ); GENS AEMILIA
AR Denarius
OBVERSE: M . SCAVR / AED CVR above king Aretas kneeling beside a camel r., EX on ,S . C on right, REX ARETAS in ex
REVERSE: HYPSAE (vs) / AED CVR above Jupiter in quadriga left, CAPTVM on right, c. HYPSAEVS cos PREIV (ER) in ex. scorpion below horses
Rome 58 BC
3.1g, 17mm
Cr422/1a; Syd 912

 

Yes and no. If you're buying the average buck-or-two a coin lots you see from most sellers you won't find much of anything worth more than a buck or two, most of the coins will be coins that few collectors would want, else the finders would have cleaned them themselves. Occasionally you can find rare varieties and things buying smaller groups or single uncleaned coins but you tend to pay more for them and you really need to know what you're looking for. I paid $105 and $75 for the last two uncleaned coins I purchased, in both cases they were rare varieties that were priced similarly to common varieties, and in the second case I probably don't have a coin worth much more than $75, I just have a coin that I might otherwise never find if I hadn't bought that one.

Really, if you want to make money cleaning coins, the best way is to clean others' coins and get paid for it. I've met a handful of people(mostly dealers) who do this for other dealers, auction houses, and occasionally collectors such as myself. They get paid the same whether the coin is a winner or loser, and they're cleaning the coins that got picked out of the group before they got put on eBay or wherever.

 

Ah. An old topic. Some people buy these types of coins for the fun of cleaning and attributing. None make any money (except those that sold them to you). What you will buy will nearly in all cases be 99.9 infinite % worth exactly what you paid or significantly less. Buy them if you want, but dont expect much. Sure, people have found rare things. Nearly all dont. Nearly all get, well, what they paid for.

My advice, buy something nice. Not uncleaned junk.

 

I think we have all gone this route a few times before and almost always end up with only a few 'keepers' out of whatever size lot purchased. Very few of us are luckier than that but there are always exceptions. I recommend purchasing a coin you really like from a reputable source and research it, post it and learn from what all of us have discovered about it.

 

Exactly the same thing. The amazing part to me is how well the people who don't search these lots can tell the ones worth cleaning themselves and the ones better sold to you. I do agree that many people find cleaning the coins and hoping for a miracle to be very enjoyable. If you want a nice coin, buy one.

 

If you buy a bag of $500 uncleaned Romans do it because you A. Want to learn how to clean ancient bronzes and B. You have an interest in learning what you have. Most of the time you will just break even or even lose money. On these lots 10 or 20% will basically be throw aways not showing enough detail or desirability to resale at any price. I have not seen decent uncleaned lots on ebay in a long time.
Out of 10,000 plus I maybe found 20 or 30 that I considered well beyond what I paid(Tiberius tribute penny, Hannibalianus, ect...)

 

How about a visual?

You could buy $500 worth of these:


Which after cleaning might possibly be as good as these (but not likely):



OR, you could buy a few of these:


OR a few of these:



QUITE a number of these:



Or a HUGE number of these:

Which would you rather?

 

I started buying uncleaned hoards 2.5 years ago. I bought four bags with over 900 coins. Of these, 35% or so were complete duds, another 35% were attributable but had major flaws (flan cracks, heavy corrosion, uncleanable due to impregnable crust), 20% were OK but nothing to write home about, and about 10% were collectible and basically dealer-quality.

The source I was buying from was not ebay but in fact an outfit that sold mostly uncleaned coins. I did buy one bag "cleaned" and those were better than the other bags. The marketing pitch from the supplier was that they were the best source for such coins because of extensive relationships with the primary sources of supply and traded widely throughout the Meditteranean (not just the Balkans) and further they claimed that the hoards were completely unpicked with nothing taken out.

I enjoyed it at first because I had been out of the hobby for many years and it was great to attribute so many coins of a variety of emperors. However, the duplicates began to get to me. I have I would guess almost 100 FEL TEMP REPARATIO coins of Constantius II. I did get a number of nice coins - a few high quality Judaean and Nabatean coins including provincial bronzes, a denarius of Septimius Severus, a rare Constantine type, some Byzantines and several others some of which I have shared on the Forum, but by and large that's a rare experience.

So I would say it can be fun to buy uncleaned as a way to kind of jump start your collection, but the cleaning process quickly becomes tiresome. I found using the olive oil treatment left the coins too dark, the descaler treatment destroyed patinas and once completely removed the reverse of a coin of Arcadius, and the distilled water treatment didn't make much of a difference. I felt almost like throwing the coins into a rock polisher and seeing if that worked.

I would estimate that the value of the coins gleaned from uncleaned hoards exceeds the price paid for them, but not by a large margin. And as somebody above posted, you kind of get what you pay for. CAVEAT EMPTOR.

 

buying a pig in a polk's what they say round here..

 

Ha. I use that saying all the time. Mostly I get quizzical looks when I do.

 

haha! well, i meant "here" where i live in the hills of Missoura...

 

I wouldn't go into it expecting to strike gold, it would be for the fun of cleaning and putting on a bush cap and feeling like Indiana Jones for a couple hours a week. Well, maybe not quite that ridiculous, but you know what I mean. I guess I just wouldn't want it to be a flop like an uncirculated roll of Peace dollars I went in on. I was green to the hobby, paid 2x what I should have and it took a lot of work on eBay to keep the two I wanted and only lose a couple bills. If I come close to breaking even is be happy with that. Nothing fun should be entered without expecting cost, but it would be cool to make out better.
I was talking to my sister about it, who has no interest or thorough knowledge of coins, but with her background and understanding soil types she had some pretty good insight that made logical sense. She said she believed it could be a gimmic because the people that are willing to sell them must know that they aren't terribly valuable because, like a couple of you said, they would clean them themselves. Judging by soil type and depth one could guess what era that pocket of ground was at surface. Taking a few samples at similar diameters and weight could tell you, roughly, what they could have inside the ball of dirt.
That said, since I would be going into it with a non-scratchoff mindset and just to tinker and learn about the pieces (because I'm more o a hands on learner, or hands on motivator), where besides eBay should I look to find some lots and what should I expect to pay for the tools to do it properly? I could get a set of gun cleaning picks, but I'm not sure if I should be buying specialty tool set or only need a few things.

 

Please explain! I get the context, but not the origin. I love idioms lol.

 

Cleaning ancient coins is not easy. There are no magic chemicals or tools to do it (especially for bronzes). It takes time and effort. That is why people are willing to sell them to you uncleaned. You can spend 60 minutes to clean one coin, with perhaps months of soaking mixed in. It is not easy to learn how to do it either. Check out NobleRomanCoins.com cleaning guide. It is 100s of pages long. You will ruin lots of coins learning how to do it. Every group of coins has different deposits on them that react differently to various techniques. Buy no more than 10 coins to start with and see how it goes. You will probably be over it by then.

 

it refers to buying an item that you know nothing about other than the shape of it

 

I plan on buying nice, clean examples, but only once I've done some homework and the gears are turning. I learned a lot from my mistakes in jumping into just US coins and don't want to repeat the same in this arena. I feel like if I start cleaning I'll respect the coin more because I worked to get it to the point of identification(as well as the state of the coin allows), I'd want to learn where it came from and any history of that time and place, and I'd start to wrap my head around what I REALLY want to buy rather than go for an expensive example with a cool marking from an era/emperor/knights I know little about.

 

The Polk part?

 

a "poke" is a burlap sack

 

The phrase is "pig in a poke", and the poke is a bag (poque, poquette). In other words, don't buy [whatever] without examining it first. The bag might contain something other than what you were promised.

I second (or third or fourth or whatever number we're up to) the advice to buy already cleaned coins. My first purchases were "uncleaned" coins. I thought it would be fun and educational. It was educational... I learned that "uncleaned" coins have already been cleaned enough to determine if they are anything identifiable and desirable (99+% no).