Hey, I collect mainly US coins...a few foreign, and I have one ancient...but I would like to get more into them However I hear there are a ton of fakes, is there any PCGS for ancients?
There are but unfortunatly i dont know much about them so i cant personaly recomend any.There are repubable dealers. www.forumancientcoins.com www.vcoins.com both come to mind
Your best bet would be to study the methods used for fakes: http://www.forumancientcoins.com/fakes/index.php Then, try to buy only coins you know are genuine. That, and from a dealer like Randy mentioned, were you have a lifetime guarantee (make sure he is a reputable dealer, ignore when the ebay sellers say that). stainless
NGC Will slab ancients but they offer no guarentee of authenticity so why one would worry about using them is beyond me. Its a shame to lock a lovely ancient away in a cheap plastic container...american...well...people wont stop until all US coins are locked away...but its a damn shame to lock away ancients. There are people and places you can send a coin to be authenticated...David Sear being one of the more well known.
There isn't any such service in the same way that there is for modern coins. There are a few places that will authenticate what you have (David R. Seer being the best, but Forvm offers such a service as well), but they won't slab or anything like that. Your best bet is to stick with reputable dealers who offer lifetime guarentees. Forvm, Common Bronze, and anyone on VCoins will be fine. I would be very surprised if you got any fakes from them, and their return policies would make that a simple thing to fix. If you want to get stuff from eBay (and honestly, that is where the best deals are, though I wouldn't recommend it when you're starting off), then make sure that you don't buy from anyone on this list of known fake sellers. Also take a look at the fake reports that Stainless linked to, and check out the rest of the fakes board at Forvm to see if the coin you wish to purchase is being discussed. If you really are unsure about your purchase, post about it there, as they should be able to tell you if you need to worry. If you keep at this, after a while, you'll get a sense for what ancients are and aren't supposed to look like, and that'll make things easier.
Thus far, the NGC Ancients division seems to be more of a tool for drawing collectors in from the US field. Most of what I've seen are common coins, in decent grade that major dealers have a great surplus of. Shiny stuff, but nothing rare or exciting. As mentioned before, the best bet is to buy from a reputable dealer, such as any of the ones mentioned in this thread or others. From them, you will get a nice coin, possibly nicer than a slabbed version, at a reasonable price. Rest assured that ancients dealers aren't slabbing anything they don't think they can make a decent margin on.
Thanks guys, I'll post a pic of mine later its at Constantine 307-337 A.D. Probably not rare, but i got it at the Isaeli airport (had a certificate, but I lost it)...How do I know what the rare ancients are? and what to pay for them as well?
Largely, you have to tell from what you can find on places like vcoins or at auctions. You'll eventually get an understanding for at least the rough price ranges for each emperor. Getting accurate rarity and prices is always really awkard when it comes to ancient coins, since there are so many minor variations that people often don't care much about, and someone with a metal detector in Bulgaria can dig up a hord full of something that was rare until just then. That has happened plenty of times. There's also the factor that since the dies for these coins were all carved by hand, the quality and style of work can vary substantially even in what's considered the same exact type. The conditions of and problems with these coins are also extremely diverse, since so many things can happen to them over the centuries, so they can often be awkward to grade (you'll notice that ancients collectors almost never bother with the 70 point system). Because of this, prices and rarity are usually a bit harder to determine with certainty than with modern coins. There are a some books that provide rarity and prices. The major reference for imperial Roman coins is a series called Roman Imperial Coins (usually referred to as just RIC). It has a rarity system based on how many examples of each type were found in British museums when each volume was researched. There are problems with this, as such things can easily go out of date in the age of the metal detector (and most volumes in it are decades old), and museums often try to aquire coins of particular historical interest and probably won't put much effort into acquiring minor types of things they already have, so the data can be a bit skewed. Some people say that one shouldn't pay attention to these ratings at all. These volumes are very expensive, but your library may have them. For some of the more common coins from the third century or later, you may want to check out the RIC spreadsheets that Helvetica made here, as they do provide the rarities from RIC. Another source you may want to check out is David R. Sear's Roman Coins and Their Values series. It's a bit expensive as well, but the rarities should be more up to date, and it does in fact provide prices (though I don't know how accurately, as I do not have any of this). When you collect ancients, you don't get to have all the clear, easy answers and ways to collect that you find in modern coins, but I think that that's half the fun.
Thanks, do you guys think you could maybe link to some nice ancients maybe off ebay for a good deal, (Under $150.00)
well you'll have over a 1000 (depending on what you mean) year period the pic from. Check out www.forumancientcoins.com and look at the junk box, coins $40 and under. I want a ps3
Stick with VCoins, Forum Ancient Coins, Harlan J Berk, Ancient Imports, Chris Rudd, Ancient Coins Canada and other well known dealers IMO. Way to many fakes on eBay, even experienced dealers get stung there sometimes. If you do go eBay post a link to the coins and folks can at least take a look and give you an opinion on it. `
VCoins has a search function that can be pretty educational and fun. http://search2.vcoins.com/search.aspx Check only the ancient box. At the bottom, enter a price range. 0 and 50 will work giving coins under $50. It will require you to put in something to search for and I suggest you try some common words that will narrow it down a bit (Roman, AR, AE). I searched on the letter 'a' and got 10,000 coins so you might want to try to narrow it a bit more. 'Roman' cut it down to 3000. When you go back to try a new search, be careful that your prices and checks have not reverted to the default (it tends to do that). When you see a coin that is sort of appealing, try a search that uses some words you found in that listing and see similar items but this time check the box requiring the results show all the words you selected. For example 'Probus horse' will give a dozen similar coins of that emperor with a horse on the reverse. You will always get a few bad returns (like a coin over $50) but it works reasonably well. You will notice quickly that VCoins dealers vary a lot when it comes to price. Some $50 coins will be nasty compared to some $25 coins offered by another dealer. This is normal. Sometimes the expensive one is a rare type but more often it is just a matter of some dealers paid more for the coins and need to sell for more. Some expect to triple their money; others want to get rid of excess merchandise they bought five years ago and couldn't sell. Pick what you like at the price you want to pay. I often buy coins for $50 that I'd have paid $100 to get and see others offered for $100 that I wouldn't take for $10. That is just the way the ancient coin market works. If your plan is to buy something you can resell immediately for a profit, look into another hobby. If you are looking for a coin that speaks to your sense of history, you are in the right place. Even if you buy nothing, playing with the search feature is a good way to see coins and get a feel for what is available. Each day their list of dealers rotates so the same ones don't come up first all the time (today they are in the R's). The fact that certain dealers come up first means nothing about their value.
Like others I will say stick to reputable dealers with a lifetime guarantee. I've had the story with a 1000 $ coin I bought in 2000 at a mail bid sale from such a dealer. The coin turned to be a fake, but only in 2008 (so well made, nobody noticed before). I sent back the coin to them with evidences of it being fake, and guess what, less than a week after I had a complete refund with a nice apologetic card. Frustrating, yes, but far less than being ripped off of a grant.... Q
many of these dealers are also on vcoins and also sell on ebay so one can go to ebay and find coins from these dealers...there are a few other ebay dealers that can be trusted. In the end, regardless of what people post in terms of return policy, you can always return a coin found to be fake if you discover it early enough...which is another good reason to post the coin here or forum and get opinions...although forum will frown on you using them to verify coins you are thinking of buying elsewhere...as joe has said many times...its his coin shop and you wouldnt go into a coin dealers shop to ask about a coin you will be buying from another dealer.
