Aethelred Asks: Real or Fake?

Over many years of cleaning uncleaned coins I had developed a large backlog of coins that I could ID to emperor and often type and mint, etc., but were in too rough a shape to bother selling on eBay. (And keep in mind that if I paid $1.00 for an uncleaned coin and it ended up bringing $3 at auction, I considered that a success.) So one Halloween I offered trick-or-treaters the choice of candy or an ancient Greek or Roman coin (mostly LRBs). Most of the people were mildly interested and thought it was pretty cool when I assured them that they were genuine, but a couple of kids were totally blown away. One boy of around 10 or so was totally awestruck and explained that he was fascinated with ancient Rome, so I rooted around the box a little bit, found a coin of Marcus Aurelius, and gave him that one, too, telling him that he should do a little research about M.A. and see what he could find out about him. I'm sure I started at least one person collecting.

 

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It looks OK to me, over buffed perhaps. But looking carefully at the thunderbolt one can see that it is probably genuine.

 

Aren't they supposed to have dir

Aren't they suppose to have dirt on them

 

Thank You Doug for the info. I figured it could just be that a lot of these are around and not much demand. A gift to a teenager is great idea.

 

I ain't buying in on this one. If it looks like fish and etc...