Just received this in the mail today. I've had 2 smaller lots previously and enjoyed the process of cleaning and attributing. I never expect much (we know they've been picked through a bunch) - but I have learned plenty. I figured with the great weather this would be a fun project: sit on the deck, have a beer, relax, clean the odd coin... repeat. Previously I was kicking myself for not taking pictures all the way through the process. This time I plan to. As you can see a few look promising right off the bat. I just put them all in a distilled water bath and will probably get started this weekend!
Sounds like fun and reminiscent to me of getting back into collecting in 2014. I bought a number of uncleaned hoards and had fun attributing them over a beer or two on the back deck. Everything from Nabataean and Biblical to Greek and Roman - mostly late roman bronze though. I think you may have a couple of Falling Horseman types in there, as well. Good luck with the project. Here's my last hoard that I cleaned up.
My plan for now is to take them out over the weekend, give each a good scrub with a toothbrush, rinse - take more photos..... change the water and put them back in. Probably follow that process every few days for a few weeks. At some point I will separate the ones that have good potential and focus on those. For the ones that look more long term I may put them in a container with olive oil leave them for awhile and see how that works. I am certainly no expert... and I reserve the right to change plans as more beer is consumed.
Thanks @arashpour - I bought them from an outlet in England that didn't provide a specific provenance, but said they had numerous contacts around the world that they purchased the coins from ethically. They were sold by weight - you could buy as little as 1/4 kilo and the total hoard size was usually around 4 or 5 kilos, according to their website. I usually purchased 1/2 to 1 kilo per transaction. 1/2 kilo typically was around 250 coins. They stopped selling last year for some unknown reason, but remarked on their website that increased restrictions on importing coins meant that they could no longer do business ethically and so decided to shut down their operation. That's all I know. You can still buy uncleaned lots of coins on places like ebay and a few other sites. For me, I started to get a bit tired of all the work required in cleaning them up so now I focus on higher grade coins.
Neat hoard! I cleaned 100 cash coins. About 35 were unidentifiable, but the rest are all classified. Before. After.
Some of the coins look very promising. Looks like you might have some nice provincials in there, too. Congratulations on a great score. The one-beer-per-coin ratio has me a little concerned, but I guess that's your business.
