The truth is always the best course! Except when my wife asks me—“Does this outfit make me look fat?” or—here's another classic—"Did you spend a lot of money on those old coins?"
My perspective on this common question -- "What is this ancient coin worth" -- continues to be different from Doug's in most (but not all) circumstances. Specifically, for someone who has just discovered an ancient coin for the first time, it's almost reflexive to think two questions: 1. Is this coin really genuine? 2. What's it worth? I fully understand the second question since, if you're new to ancients, your natural belief is that any coin that's 2000 years old must be rare and thus really valuable. You have no way of knowing that there are millions of surviving ancient coins from the billions that were minted. The circumstance under which I react the same as Doug is when it's clear that the poster knows at least a little about ancient coins and is looking for free help so that the coin can be sold on EBay or elsewhere. Even under these circumstances, I understand the nature of the question, but this being a collectors' site, I'm not really inclined to respond to such posts.
