A fun desert patina hoard that I bought

These just arrived today. There is a prevalence of posthumous Constantine I issues and Constantius I types, but there are several interesting issues and scarce emperors which require additional research. I found it interesting that there was a Greek AE in the lot as well.

These will be fun to attribute and clean where needed. What recommendations do you all have for cleaning the more-encrusted coins?

 

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Last time I went to a coin show, one of the sellers had a sandwich bag full of desert patina (mainl)y LRB. Most of them not near as nice as the lot you have there @TypeCoin971793 I picked out some of the nicer ones. Here are the 4 I kept.

 

This is my MARTIAN-Soil Patina...


RI Diocletian Ӕ Quinarius 1.46g 16mm Rome AD 284-305 IOVI CONSERVAT AVGG, Jupiter stndng thunderbolt sceptre RARE RIC 193

 

I like desert patinas but am always worried that they are not legit. Is there a way to tell? I'd love to own one eventually.

 

Nice, they look like good quality, can't wait to see them cleaned up a bit more.

 

I bought them from a very reputable dealer who Aaron Berk fully trusts. Otherwise, I don’t see anything that would hint at nefariousness. There are highly-varying levels of crusty, from light dusting to “I can barely tell which side is which.”

Most of them required basically no cleaning to get them into sellable shape.



There are still 20 which need some TLC to bring out details. Any suggestions as to how to clean them up without destroying the patina?

 

Considering the contrast that the desert patina provides I'd be reluctant to do much on anything except to lightly brush off the coins with a mascara brush They are ancient and they look it and that is what they ought to look like after 16-1700 years in the ground.

 

Some great coins, TC.

 

Don't.

 

Those are some very attractive coins - I do like a nice desert patina. And yeah, I wouldn't clean them (but to each his own).

I recently got a lot of ancients with a bunch of early Islamic stuff - I've only started attributing, because I know nothing about these, but I like how they look - deserty:

 

I wouldn't clean them, except for perhaps the most encrusted ones where the devices on the coins cannot be readily deciphered. Maybe a soft toothbrush and some distilled water. I would not recommend an olive oil soak which is sometimes suggested. My experience with that is that it turns the coins a dark brown which is not eye appealing.

 

I would love to collect ancient coins and don't really know where to start or how to determine a copy from a replica, i'm sure books and other resources are available. Thank you for sharing. I do have a few from my grandparents collection and a "widows mite" that's probably a common coin?

 

For cleaning, I would recommend you start with a set of tools you can acquire on ebay for about $20. They are called: "Le Crayon a Andre". These are great for carefully cleaning low value coins of crud and mineral deposits. Definitely worth the $20 for this purpose, but patinated coins can be more difficult and require time and skill to do well - skill that is developed practicing on low value coins. A few coins in your images are probably candidates for this practice.

 

Wow all at once. I could only dream of a hoard like that. It would take me years to look at all of them. I cant buy them yet because I don't know what I am doing.

 

If you do decide to clean them, may I make a suggestion? Since you have so many, try several methods on groups of, say three each, with some untouched as a control. Instead of arguing about how many teeth a horse has we could open his mouth and count them, so to speak, and see which methods improve their appearance, or not.

 

The scientific method! Excellent idea!

Take before and after photographs. You can't rely on memory to tell you what they looked like before treatment.

 

Welcome to the Ancients Forum, Chuck! I think many of us became interested in collecting ancients through the purchase of “Widow’s Mites.”






I give a lot of them away.

 

That's a beautiful assortment, @TypeCoin971793 !

 

Remember the Hippocratic Oath "first do no harm". With that in mind, a water soak and a toothbrush brushing will not take off real patina while it will take off "dirt". I would use hot tap water for a day or two and finish up with a distilled water rinse.

 

That is a bit ridiculous.... no?
Maybe a coin of Asclepius?? Just as silly but a bit more focused.