I’m selective with a small collection - maybe ten or 15 coins. Currently visiting Italy and I was able to score a clean Flavian Colosseum coin at what I think is a bargain. TRULY love this coin and will NEVER let it go. Let me know what ya think!
I wouldn’t be so satisfied with it if it weren’t so chunky - easily over 20 grams - adds to the feel. See how badly it ages though. Either way, definitely a better choice than a plastic gladiator hat…
Not a fan of dispensing these for 2 Euro. 20 years from now their heirs will find them, look up heritage sale prices, and think they struck it rich. Then they post it on cointalk and get mad at US for trying to cheat them when we tell them it's a fake. Sorry, been there, done that too much. Everyone with a bad readers digest gela fake think we are trying to cheat them...
It would be hard to mistake this as real, sort of like when you buy confederate coins at a gift shop for a few bucks. It’s obviously a replica, and nobody should be fooled.
Reader's Digest tokes they sent out in the 1960s is way more obviously a fake, yet continue to bring people to Cointalk when heirs run across them. Take the absolutely worst fake you can think of, cast mushy image with obvious casting seam, and at least 80% of the world would be convinced they just found a very valuable object when going through an estate. You care judging "nobody should be fooled" based upon being a coin collector. I had a lady here arguing about a cast Continental Currency dollar that had HONG KONG printed on it! She to this day believes we cheated her somehow.
I looked through the pictures in sequence, my reactions can be summed up as: 1- Wow! 2- Holy Moly! 3- What? 4- Ohhhhh That's why I buy slabbed coins........ I'm easily fooled!
Ya, I saw the Chersonesos thread, pretty scary. I'd always assumed that some fakes were probably slabbed, as nobody is perfect. Also, methods for conclusively telling the difference between a hunk of metal smacked into shape 2000 vs 1 years ago are unreliable at best (pretty much all determining factors can be faked by somebody with the right knowledge and resources). But, while NGC surely makes a mistake every once in a while, the truth of the matter is that their determinations are many many times more reliable than mine!
So is CNG tag, or HJB, Leu, Roma, and many other firms. You can still get a coin a professional judges as authentic AND still hold it in your hand.
Honestly, I prefer the coins in slabs and have no real desire to physically touch them. Even if 3rd party grading were not a thing, I'd still have them mounted in some kind of protective container if it were possible. I do, however, have raw examples of the different denominations available for friends and family that might get a kick out of holding them. It's kind of cool to feel the weight of the sestertius every once in a while, but other than that, I never get the urge to handle them myself.
@medoraman @Cherd Every person is different and their personal preferences are just that, personal. To me, physically holding something, in its raw state that people also did the same with 2000 years ago, brings the history closer. That coins were lost, buried etc for centuries before seeing the light of day again makes them even more special to hold in your hand.