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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;gsimonel, post: 2555408, member: 82549&quot;]An introduction, huh? Where to start ?</p><p><br /></p><p>Well, I&#039;ve been collecting ancients around 20 years. I started with uncleaned ancients, buying lots of 10 coins for $10/lot, cleaning and learning to ID them as I went along. I was a grad student with 3 kids at the time, and I didn&#039;t have much disposable income, so I kept coins that I liked--maybe 1 or 2 per lot--and sold the others on eBay. I usually netted enough to buy some more uncleaned. Over time I was able to buy larger and larger lots of uncleaned with the profits: 15 coins, 20 coins, then 25, 100. At one point I had saved up enough money to buy a lot of 1,000. I found some real nice coins in that batch, like the Maximus sestertius that I posted above.</p><p><br /></p><p>Of course, most of the coins I handled were 4th century bronzes. One day I found this coin in an uncleaned lot:</p><p>[ATTACH=full]550017[/ATTACH] </p><p>Rome mint, A.D. 318-319</p><p>RIC 147</p><p>Obv: CONST-ANTINVS AVG</p><p>Rev: ROMAE AE-TERNAE - Roma, seated right, holding shield inscribed X/V</p><p>RS in exergue; P in left field, R in right</p><p>19 x 18 mm, 3.5 g.</p><p><br /></p><p>A somewhat rare bronze of Constantine the Great, probably at that time worth $20-30 in that condition. For a poor grad student, that was an amazing find. I was hooked, and stared collecting bronzes of Constantine. After 20 years of cleaning, trading and selling coins, I&#039;ve assembled two nice collections, one of Constantine bronzes:</p><p><a href="http://feltemp.com/Constantine_1.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://feltemp.com/Constantine_1.html" rel="nofollow">http://feltemp.com/Constantine_1.html</a></p><p>and one of Roman Emperors:</p><p><a href="http://feltemp.com/Emperors/Emperors_Page1.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://feltemp.com/Emperors/Emperors_Page1.html" rel="nofollow">http://feltemp.com/Emperors/Emperors_Page1.html</a></p><p><br /></p><p>Except for the Julius Caesar, which I bought with money from an inheritance, everything else was either found in a batch of uncleaned coins or bought with the profits made from cleaning, IDing and then selling uncleaned coins, in most cases on eBay with $.99 opening bids. (Since I had no idea what most of the coins were worth, I figured I&#039;d let the market decide. I usually got what I felt was a reasonable price.) </p><p><br /></p><p>Of course, the golden age of cleaning uncleaned ancients is long past, so today I tend to buy lots of cleaned coins from auctions. But everything started with that initial $10 investment in a batch of uncleaned coins.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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