I'm happy to help. My greatest reward would be if you would be purchasing all these coins from me, I already went through all the trouble of researching them. I know where you are coming from as that's how I started out, by buying an uncleaned lot and tried cleaning it myself. It is much more cost effective to purchase lower quality, low priced coins from me as they would have even a reference to books you can buy.

Go to www.DavidRSear.com as he is the best authority in ancient numismatics, with books on Roman and Greek coins. I recommend getting the greek volumes 1 and 2 and further books depending on how much research you will do. I also recommend you get the Guide to Biblical coins by David Hendin. I will be posting up links to all of these references in the future with even a link to the books on Amazon, as might be even able to receive commision for sending them customers.

In essence, you may not need any of these books, as soon as you are able to identify these coins by portraits and reading the inscription. I am able to identify the lower grade stuff real easy as I've seen these coins in higher grade.

I have an ioffer store link on my website www.TrustedCoins.com and feel free to make offers.

I've been researching ancient coins, since 2001 and have been helping someone else with coins before that.

You know you may actually enjoy the Coin Collecting series by Wayne G. Sayles. This guy has really simple books that will immerse you in ancient coins. They range from ancient Greek coins to even Byzantine coins. These were a good read to understand.

Feel free to call me at 917 776 7363.


What is also cool about my coins is that my photos are permanently on my server, so in the future, you would be able to download the high quality photos or your own auctions, through a link such as http://www.trustedcoins.com/images/ixxxxob.jpg ixxxxo.jpg ixxxxr.jpg and ixxxxrb.jpg where you would replace the coin number found on the coin flip, and replacing xxxx with that number, you can also see these coins online.
 

Buying and Cleaning Ancient Coins

I don not do much cleaning to my coins. Some people would get a huge lot of uncleaned coins and use a tumbler. Basically a metal basin which shakes the dirt off a lot of coins, revealing the details. As for the coins with the knicks in them, they obviously lose a lot of value for that. Essentially the nicer the coin looks, the higher it will go for on ebay.

I don't usually recommend most of the lots of the late Roman empire. When acquiring Roman coins, you want to reach as far back as the time of Augustus, Tiberius, Claudius, Nero, or in other words the time of the 12 caesars. Those uncleaned coins, are worth a lot more and are easier at times to identify than Constantine I era coins and on.

Believe me, I started out in the ancient coin business and cleaning off a bunch of coins just to find one with legible details of empress Faustina II. Then I found it was much more worth it buying higher quality coins, which other people would want to own too.

When buying ancient coins in bulk, you should try to look for the highest quality at the lowest price. The higher quality pieces are sought after by collectors and non-collectors.

eBay is a great place for deals on ancient coins, and many dealers start at extremely low prices. So the trick is to buy up all the nice ones, and leave the dealers holding the crappy ones.

Good luck in your endeavors!

I also recommend you put up your stamp collection on ioffer.com, with no listing fees, even a few stamps selling at catalog prices will yield enormous profits!

Ancient Coin Reference Books

You may want to join the ANA, although I admit I never used the privilage, they allow you to take out books by calling them up, and they mail it to you and you get to keep them for a month. This maybe a good chance for you to borrow the books until you are comfortable with what references you buy.

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