Cause of Red Spots on Gold Coins

i now concluded and put all my coins in the Whitman square plastic case and tie them with small cellophane bag. it is the cheapest way to preserve coin from being tone. see my picture on those 1985 bullion coins. they have been kept for 25 years and still in original mint condition.

 

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A difference of perspective and approach I suppose, but 'cheap' does not go hand-in-hand with conservation (preservation) nor does it usually bode well for conservation (preservation) practices. Perhaps only time will tell if your decision was the right one for you and your place/style of storage.

 

I agree. The best way to conserve coins is to have them professionally conserved by NCS, then authenticated, graded, and slabbed by NGC, and THEN place the slabs into some sort of airtight container. I put slabs into plastic bag from Uline. I use the 3X5 bags for slabs, if I remember correctly. It's a perfect fit, and does a great job of keeping air out. But, it's not enough to just keep air out. You have to have your coins professionally conserved to remove any debris or residues from the surface of the coin that may damage it over time. Once it's conserved, then you can worry about air. Here's the bags:

http://www.uline.com/Grp_5/Poly-Bags-Reclosable

Notice that they are very cheap, and very professional looking. If you sell your coins packaged in these bags, the slabs will be free from scratches, and will make a good impression on whoever buys them. They will see that you have taken steps to properly care for your coins.

 

I am sorry but I cannot stop laughing. The idea of protecting the holder from scratches, of cleaning a coin, then encapsulating it, then putting the plastic in a plastic baggy, then into a safe......

Call me crazy, but I pull out my ancients every night, handle them, weigh them, examine edges, all kinds of geeky "coin guy" things. To be wrapping plastic in plastic, where is the "coin collecting" in this process?

I know you are giving a good suggestion, I know I am a jerk for laughing, but don't you think we are getting a little too far removed from "coin collecting"?

 

I think what you are missing is that the collecting has been done, nothing suggests anyone doesn't admire nor appreciate their coins any more/less than you do, and this is merely a matter of conservation and storage preferences and choices to continue enjoying them in others' own way. If plastic over plastic settles other peoples minds that their collection is safe and sound, then let them be at ease in that aspect while admiring and caring for their coins while in their possession. Protecting the slabs from scratches, saves money from needing to reslab a scratched slab, being able to see the coin through the holder longer and presents better to a dealer/collector if/when the slabbed coin is going to be traded at a later date... besides you mentioned 'Ancients', whose storage and preservation varies vastly from moderns, as much as the collectors themselves differ in approach to what they collect and choose to handle, admire and preserve for future resale and generations to come.

 

I know, and I apologize to Qwasty. I really mean it. I just think a lot is lost when you collect plastic holders with little numbers on it, that somewhere embedded is a coin but you cannot weigh it, examine it, check the edges, etc. Then to protect the plastic with another layer of plastic just struck me as funny.

I am never to say how anyone pursues this hobby is wrong, since its your time and money. To me, a good night coin collecting ends up with me having dirty hands from handling lincolns, old romans, half dollars, or byzantine bronze. I know that is just me.

I am sure future generations will appreciate all of the steps taken to conserve current coins for posterity. I just know they won't be thanking me in that way.

 

Not at all. You ancients guys are "old school" to the extreme. The ancient coins are probably the most fascinating coins to collect of them all, but the ancient coin market has languished far behind modern coins solely for the reasons that the current surviving generation of ancient collectors has vehemently blocked modernization with a zeal that can't be described in kind terms.

For example, I made a post on the largest ancient coin forum about why I thought acceptance of third party authentication and grading would be good for the ancient coin market - collectors, dealers, investors, etc. My one post received a slew of very rude remarks, and without further ado, my post and my account were deleted.

With that kind of arrogance, it's literally repulsive to newcomers, and destined to be defeated by a younger crop of collectors that see the value in not only collecting coins, but preserving them for future generations to come. The old-fashioned ancient coin collectors have succeeded in destroying anything that wasn't buried under earth or water. The best way to preserve great coins is by using third party authentication, grading, and conservation to ensure that the current batch of ancient coins in greasy collector hands will remain with us without being gradually destroyed like all the other lost treasures of antiquity.

I don't know why it is, but ancient coin collectors seem proud to describe themselves as jerks. They proudly destroy the coins through abrasive handling, and they proudly flaunt their abrasive personalities. I don't see any good in that. Hopefully it will change, and I'm counting on third party grading to be the spearhead force to achieve that, primarily by attaching an attribution to the coin. The source of ancient coin collectors' arrogance is their sense of elitism due to the inaccessibility of information that they have accumulated over decades. Once that information is no longer hoarded in musty old, expensive, and often rare books, then there won't be anything so trivial as knowledge for the unremarkable old timers to make them feel like they're better than everyone else.

Once a coin has been documented by the third party companies, that information becomes available to everyone. Coins will gain and lose value based on the census information they publish, and generally, the market will become more efficient and accurate. People will be financially rewarded for NOT damaging their coins through centuries of incessant and (soon to be) unnecessary handling. Before the 3rd party services, the handling was necessary with each change of hands simply to identify the coin, then to authenticate it. Ancients collectors aren't free from that necessity yet, because the third party grading services don't cater to all coins yet. Eventually, they will though.

Granted, most ancients collectors have coins that are expendable in the sense that there's more of them available than there are collectors interested in them. I suspect that companies like NGC will change that though, by decreasing the barriers to entry, and increasing the number of collectors. Every collector has a few basic questions about a coin: "What is it? What is it worth?". Third party companies make great strides in handing the answers to those questions to you on a silver platter. Without them, it could literally take years of research to answer just one of those questions.

And of course, back to the original topic, the slab they put the coins in allows you to show your precious coin to anyone, even small children, without fear that the coin will be damaged. The slab protects the coin not only for archival purposes, but also for presentation purposes. Before the "coin holder era", coins were best viewed behind the glass of a display case. Now, you can hold any coin in your hand, no matter how rare or valuable, with virtually no risk of damaging it, even if it is dropped. So, if your concern is, in essence, how close you can get to your coins, then in the grand scheme of things, slabbing will allow people to come closer to ancient coins than they've ever come before.

When I take as step back and compare a modern coin worth $50000 with hundreds or thousands of known specimens in an obviously pristine state of preservation after only a few decades, versus an ancient coin that is worth $10, is the sole surviving specimen, and possibly the only thing that remains of the people from which it came, I see a problem. How can the modern coin be worth so much more than the ancient coin? It's simply a matter of accessibility. Before something can become accessible, it must become known. Above all, the attribution linked to a slabbed ancient coin will do wonders for the ancient coin market.

Those values are not merely shallow commodity dollars changing hands - they are literally "values" in the sense of "how much do we care about this coin?". A coin that nobody cares about is worth perhaps $10. A coin people care about might be worth a thousand times as much, or more. The poor valuation of ancient coins is often the first fact that is most interesting to new collectors. They wonder with amazement how something so rare, and so old, can be worth less than a burger and fries!

I think that many ancient coins should be worth much more than they are, and few ancient coin collectors would feel the need to disagree with that. But, the fundamental questions must be answered instantly before ancient coins will be able to achieve their "true" maximum value. "What is it?" and "What is it worth?" should not be left vague or mysterious. The mysticism and the resulting elitism of the ancient coin market must be eliminated before ancient coins will be respected in dollar terms.

The really sad thing is that many ancient coin collectors are breaking ancient coins out of their slabs, without reporting it. They are inadvertently making it appear that there are more of those coins in existence than there actually are, and driving the perceived rarity, and thus value of the coin down. Arrogance is probably the most destructive mindset a person can have, both to others and themselves. As soon as it ends, the ancient coins market will become a healthy area for education, collecting, and investment.

 

That dirt on your hands is COIN BLOOD! OK, maybe I'm being dramatic, but seriously, it's the surface of the coins worn away, and transferred to your fingers. Hopefully the coins aren't rare. That would be a shame. Once those layers of metal are gone, you can't get them back. In only a few decades of that sort of handling, the coins can become unrecognizable. Just look at any worn modern coin to see an example of how fast it can happen.

 

I like your post Qwasty. I hope there are no hard feelings. I really feel bad if I had anything to do with you quitting CT. This should be a place where all opinions are welcome.

I disagree with how slabbing will help the ancient market. Ancients are accessible. Its just not accessible to collectors who wish to have "grey sheets" published, for wheeler dealers, for, in short, lazy collectors. This is what draws collectors to ancients, the fact that a coin may never be offered for sale for 20 years, the deep numismatic study required, the amount of information needed to become knowledgeable. Slabbing will not give anyone knowledge, it is facilitating laziness. It is embedding the notion that no one except a select few are capable of knowing the history of coins or where they came from. In our field, it is in fact the collectors themselves who have derived most of the information that we currently have. There are no mint reports to go back to. There are many rulers who are only known because of their coins, and even a few civilizations.

What good is a slab when, forgetting the grade, the ruler or even the civilization is in doubt on an issue? How are we to learn any more when all of the ancient coins are permanently banned from study by a block of plastic? I simply do not paw over my coins with "greasy fingers", I clean them, conserve them, and study them to try to further my own comprehension of where they come from. To put them in a slab is "shallow commodity dollars changing hands", and yes I crack every one I ever purchase out of the slab and throw the plastic away since it offers no value and is in fact a hindrance. If you truly believe population reports mean much, you should do some research on your own and see how many crackouts and regrades are performed every year on US coins.

If you wish to collect ancients, please we would love to have you. Collect only slabs if you wish. I have even given away many books to newcomers to the hobby. If you do not educate yourself, read and study, you will still simply be trading shallow commodity dollars and not get what ancient collectors get out of the hobby. Thats fine, its your money, just not what I want to pursue. So call me arrogant, but I have never made fun of anyone or not offered help to anyone who wished it. My only arrogance has been to say you have to study and learn for yourself to maximize your pleasure of this area of numismatics, any area really.

 

Its dirt. I buy many coins still dirty from the ground, and I clean and conserve them with Renwax. Any US coins I handle enough to get my hands dirty are wheatbacks, bulk world coins, halves looking for silver, etc. I do not "wipe my greasy fingers" across 1936 proof sets or bust dollars, though I do have those too.

 

The forum I was referring to was the Forvm Ancient Coins Forum. You haven't offended me, but I'm glad you recognized that it could have happened. If I were a newcomer, I would naturally want to get a good impression in my first exposure to the hobby.

All of that is true. However, I see a lot of duplication of effort in the ancient coin collecting hobby, and I see very little in the way of an introductory level for new collectors. Not all ancient coins are obscure, and there's no need to clean, conserve, attribute, authenticate, and grade a coin more than once.

The way things are currently done, the only safe way to buy a coin is direct from a dealer. That means it's hard to start simple, and later sell your coins to be replaced with more sophisticated ones. If it were possible to sell your coins to direct to another collector, with no uncertainty about the coin, then a collector can feel safe having a dynamic collection that changes as the collector changes.

Third party services probably won't work in that situation, just as you say. However, that is not the case with all coins, and it is an area best left to intermediate or advanced collectors. Even so, a coin of uncertain origin can still be authenticate and graded, as well as attributed to a catalog number or even a specific provenance. So, even in those uncertain cases, slabbing can still make sense.

I like modern Chinese coins minted 1979 or later, and even though they're modern, they have many of the same issues you mentioned. New varieties are being discovered all the time, and the grading companies have had to reslab a few coins to keep up with the latest research. The Chinese mint didn't keep good records, so, much of what is known about the earlier coins comes from collectors and information gathered by the grading companies.

I'd very much like to, but it has to make sense to me financially. Many people are attracted to coin collecting as a hobby because it's one of the few hobbies that can actually be beneficial to your finances.

I also have to be able to buy and sell on my own terms, without needing to go through an expert middleman due to authenticity fears. Having a large population of high-class coins available that have been attributed and graded would make it easier on me to determine things such as rarity and value for myself. On top of that, the independent attribution would lead me right where I need to go to find out more about the coins.

Right now, the main thing turning me away from the ancient coin market is the fact that it's difficult to sell the coins directly to a collector for a price that makes good financial sense to me in comparison to the price I paid for it. If the coin is unslabbed, then every fact I present about the coin will be in doubt. If the coin is verified independently, then the collectors complain about the slab.

Since so few coins have been slabbed, there's quite a lot of potential for adjustment in the market once it becomes more common. I suspect that will serve to bring prices down for many coins, and bring prices up for a few coins. I don't know enough yet to make a good guess about which coins are the ones that are undervalued, and which are overvalued. It sure would be handy if there were comprehensive online sources of information.

I've thought about solving these problems myself, but it would require some dedication. I'm not opposed to the idea, it would be quite fun actually, but I'm not sure I have the financial resources to pull that off.

 

Well the BMC collection published volumes is about 50 volumes, give or take. This is just what is published, there are more now, so that gives you an idea of the enormity of the task you are thinking of. That is the underlying problem with ancients, there are literally hundreds of thousands of types, let alone variations. The sheer enormity is the reason there is not even a standard set of books, let alone a book or website that truly is comprehensive.

There are many areas well laid out. Just a month ago Doug Smith announced Rasiel Suarez is publishing ERIC II covering all Roman Imperial and Byzantine coins. This should be a good volume, covering a lot of ancients you would ever see at a local coin show, but it cannot by definition be comprehensive. We are talking about over 1,000 years here, so you can see how hard comprehensiveness could be. In comparison to Romans, though, "greek" coins are much more varied and I have 29 volumes of BMC Greek that maybe covers half to two thirds the known types of "greek" coins, let alone sub types. I am sure everyone would love a comprehensive website of all ancient coins, but I would talk to a few authors about the work involved before seriously considering starting something like that.

The reason so many of us use books is not because we are computer illiterate, its because websites change, and for referencing you need a static reference number. A printed book cannot change numbers, so there is more surety of the reference.

As for being able to sell coins and trade up, I understand your concern, but it is that way for all coin collecting. Its part of the hobby dickering over purchases. Remember, you do not have to go through the dealer again if you still have the tag on it and it can be referenced to them. I do this for CNG purchases just in case I ever need to sell them.

Hope this helped.

 

Well, since this thread was originally about gold coins, can you recommend any books that exclusively focus on ancient "greek" gold coins? I figured I might as well start at the beginning, and despite the spots and other imperfections, gold is still vastly more durable than either silver or copper. So far, I've seen a bit about the earliest Lydian electrum coins, which is one of those types of coins where the attribution is disputed that you mentioned. Some say they're coins, some say their ritual objects, others say they aren't even from Lydia, and that there are even earlier examples.

I would be curious about the durability of electrum, though so far it seems to be pretty close to what you can normally expect from pure gold.

As far as comprehensive online references on ancient coins, I think the online medium would be vastly better than the old fashioned books. According to one respected numismatist, there are about 100,000 known types of ancient coins, which really isn't a very large quantity of information in the information age. For books, it's an impossibly large number, but it's pretty trivial for a modern technology. I bet a few hard drives could hold photos and descriptions of everything known about each coin specimen that's ever been unearthed.

 

Well, if you like the Lydian coinage, there is "King Croesus' Gold, excavations at Sardis" but its more a metallurgy book. You can start with Sears Greek 2 volume set. It was last updated in 1978 but a good beginning guide to Greek coins. After that, BMC and SNG Copenhagen are standards. If you only like gold, I believe Friedman books cover them.

Regarding covering every coin ever unearthed, you do know the ancient Chinese made hundreds of millions of coin every year, right? This for hundreds of years. Romans made tens of millions every year as well. I know IT has come a long way, but there are a lot more ancients around than most people realize.

 

Even still, a few million isn't that big of a deal. Heck, a few trillion wouldn't be that big of a deal. By the time it was all entered in, cheap storage would vastly outstrip the number of coins to fill it up with. We'd have to start making 3D interactive videos to figure out how to use up all the space.

Seriously though, most of those super common coins aren't worth the effort to document in some database unless there's something special about them. But, if it took 200 years to document them all, I suppose that would be fine. As long as the coin gets documented, its provenance gets established from that point forward. That really helps with authentication.

As for me, I don't care about those common things. I only care about gold, and even then, only "appealing" gold. It's got to be a good investment, which usually means it's either very pretty or historically significant.

 

I think the last page of posts are leading in 2 different directions, preservation and storage of metallic
objects and ancient coin collecting. The second is not close to the OP. Perhaps one of you
gentlemen would start an appropriate thread in an appropriate subforum for others who wish to
contribute in that area.

Thanks
Jim