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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;ancient coin hunter, post: 2767354, member: 87200&quot;]I started buying uncleaned hoards 2.5 years ago. I bought four bags with over 900 coins. Of these, 35% or so were complete duds, another 35% were attributable but had major flaws (flan cracks, heavy corrosion, uncleanable due to impregnable crust), 20% were OK but nothing to write home about, and about 10% were collectible and basically dealer-quality. </p><p><br /></p><p>The source I was buying from was not ebay but in fact an outfit that sold mostly uncleaned coins. I did buy one bag &quot;cleaned&quot; and those were better than the other bags. The marketing pitch from the supplier was that they were the best source for such coins because of extensive relationships with the primary sources of supply and traded widely throughout the Meditteranean (not just the Balkans) and further they claimed that the hoards were completely unpicked with nothing taken out. </p><p><br /></p><p>I enjoyed it at first because I had been out of the hobby for many years and it was great to attribute so many coins of a variety of emperors. However, the duplicates began to get to me. I have I would guess almost 100 FEL TEMP REPARATIO coins of Constantius II. I did get a number of nice coins - a few high quality Judaean and Nabatean coins including provincial bronzes, a denarius of Septimius Severus, a rare Constantine type, some Byzantines and several others some of which I have shared on the Forum, but by and large that&#039;s a rare experience. </p><p><br /></p><p>So I would say it can be fun to buy uncleaned as a way to kind of jump start your collection, but the cleaning process quickly becomes tiresome. I found using the olive oil treatment left the coins too dark, the descaler treatment destroyed patinas and once completely removed the reverse of a coin of Arcadius, and the distilled water treatment didn&#039;t make much of a difference. I felt almost like throwing the coins into a rock polisher and seeing if that worked. </p><p><br /></p><p>I would estimate that the value of the coins gleaned from uncleaned hoards exceeds the price paid for them, but not by a large margin. And as somebody above posted, you kind of get what you pay for. CAVEAT EMPTOR.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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