hi i had these pictures uploaded at my collection section, but i decided to open a seperate topic because i have 3 roman coins now. I suspect that they are fake, i tried the best i could to post clear pictures, have allook.
heres the last small roman coin.... if they are real coins, does someone have an idea on whats worth.
What makes you think that they are fakes? the pics are unfortunatly too small for me to make out much detail but from what I can see they look ok
well... i think i have this "everything i dont know is fake" disease to small? hmm i had them uploaded from photobucket, are they still smal if you click on them?
Nope just very blurred LOL but even with them been blured I think they are ok, cant make out the inscriptions or mint marks though
hmm.. constantius II. ill look him up, dont know much about roman history. Only basic stuff. thanks fellas
I believe the first is Constans from Thessalonika mint and the other two are Constantius II. If the photo were better the third would be identifiable more completely but the photo shot at an angle put the fuzziest part at the bottom where the mintmark is. I see no reason to doubt the aunthenticity of any of them. They are probably the three most common types of late Roman coins and sell for very little unless in really nice condition. Yours represent the first three of my 12 types listed as most common in a page I did for the Ancient Coins for Education group that supplies coins for use in Latin classes. If you intend to continue in the collecting path you have started you might want to be on the lookout for the other 9 of my 12. Of course there are a million other coins out there to be collected but the 12 do represent some of the most frequently seen ones. http://dougsmith.ancients.info/uncleaned.html Your second one's reverse is not very nice at all but the other two being fully identifiable might be $10 apiece. It is unfortunate but true that sometimes a coin will sell for more uncleaned and unidentified because people buy them like lottery tickets in the hope of getting something rare and valuable. When identified as a common item, the value drops because most collectors already have similar coins.
thanks for the information Dougsmith... i appreciate it. I was planning on extending my roman collection, maybe a good start will be the other 9 you mentioned. I will take a look at your website. See if i can get them somewhere for a good price.
once you've identified the ruler you can go to www.wildwinds.com and try to match up the coin using the legend and/or the reverse scene to the specific RIC number.
Wildwinds is far from complete with these coins, missing even common ones. Use the spreadsheets here: http://www.catbikes.ch/coinstuff/coins-ric.htm Enter the legend, and mintmark. Keep narrowing it down until there's only one left.
thanks for the tips guys, i will try to identify them now. to bad i cant make any better pictures, i dont know if scanning them would make a diference?
Agree. Wildwinds is populated with coin sales online. Dane's spreadsheets (catbikes) try to list what there is rather than what will sell for a profit. When you buy coins like the three shown here you are buying an education that will someday enable you to buy other coins that may someday lead you to buying even better coins. If you sell these for a profit, you will be very, very lucky but you made the profit on them when you bought them and learned what they had to teach you. If you want advice on how to make money in ancient coins, here it is: Buy mint condition copies of limited edition scholarly books (not mass market popularizations) on specialized popular areas of ancient coins that are about to go out of print. Wrap them carefully but never open them for reading. Sell them right before they are made obsolete when someone else discovers that they need to be updated and no longer are worth the going rate on the used market. This guarantees you will get no education and no fun from the hobby but you can always sell out of print standard references to people actually interested in coins that were not in the hobby when the books were available. My library may worth as much as my coins but many of the books have been read to death. Mint copies would be worth more.
hmm... this hobby is not an easy one, and its not cheap right? reading your post, i remembered a terrible thing. I had recieved a small bag of uncleaned coins, i could see faces similair to the ones above and some where different. i sold them not even trying to identify them. i sold the total of 6-7 uncleaned coins for 20 euros. i got them for free from my nephew in turkey. i did something terrible stupid right?
If they were all similar in size to the ones here, they were probably just some common 4th century or perhaps late 3rd century bronzes, so they wouldn't be worth that much even if you managed to clean and identify them. If your goal was to make money, it probably wouldn't be worth the effort to do all that work, really. So it probably wasn't a particularly stupid decision financially.
well. most of them were similair size, but one of them was 2 size bigger then the others. But yes, maybe it was a good desicion. 20 euros is around 25 dollars maybe? good deal
scan pictures hi i have made scans of the coins, hope to see it better then digital camera. take a look at it.
