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NoJobRob

Are these denarii real?

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I followed a link from this site to see these coins on ebay. Sorry if this is a dumb question, but are these real or replicas? Anyone know of any reputable companies/museums/websites that sell genuine Roman coins? I would love to buy some. Talk about having a real piece of history...

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=330607737611

Edited by NoJobRob

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I followed a link from this site to see these coins on ebay. Sorry if this is a dumb question, but are these real or replicas? Anyone know of any reputable companies/museums/websites that sell genuine Roman coins? I would love to buy some. Talk about having a real piece of history...

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=330607737611

 

I'm sorry that I don't know the coin dealer. He does have a presence on Vcoins, a very reputable site for buying coins, however.

 

A good site to discuss basics of coin buying is

cointalk.com

 

I really don't buy coins, but I like this site to purchase coins: http://www.forumancientcoins.com/

 

It is a great site with well-attributed and authenticated coins. It has many great coins ranging from $10 to $10,000. I recommend that site highly.

 

As I mentioned above, a site with many dealers who are held to ethical standards is: http://www.vcoins.com/

 

I hope I was of some help.

 

 

guy also known as gaius

 

 

Warning: Collecting Ancient coins can be an enjoyable, but also an expensive and addicting pastime. :P

Edited by guy

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I'd also like to point to a few sites to go through before the buying of any antiquities :

 

- http://lootingmatters.blogspot.com/

- http://paul-barford.blogspot.com/

 

The second site especially has in depth studies of issues in the trade of ancient coins, many being illegaly dug up in eastern Europe by looters destroying the context and selling the coins separated, preventing almost any kind of historicaly meaningfull study.

 

Buying coins often makes you breach the law of other countries (or make you an accomplice of the crime), especially coins sold in the US where a lot of illegaly dug up coins are on sale.

 

So please think twice and ask for a detailed history of any item you might want to buy.

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Thank you for your responses. I will definitely check out the links. I never would have thought that coins could possibly be illegally sold, but now that I think about it, it makes sense. Thank you also for bringing that to our attention.

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Usefull numismatic can be done, sometimes out of a single coin which can reveal a lot as Guy often shows on this very forum, but more often than not the coins on the market are indeed part of criminal activities, and even those which are not often come from digs that were not done by professional archeologists but by UK "metal detectorists", peoples going in the fields with metal detecting machines who will unearth everything and, for most of them, won't tell the local "Portable Antiquity Scheme" official or archeologist of what they found, especially if it is not silver or gold material (which fall under the UK treasure act). Barford's view are sometime quite (too) strongly expressed but I must admit that I'm fully in agreement with his views on the topic.

 

I must add that I've owned for more than a decade a small fifth or fourth century BC undecorated attic or etruscan ceramic and a 2nd century AD roman silver coin , both given to me by friends who had acquired them as gift from third parties who had themselve, from what few details I may know, taken them from an undocumented wreck on the southern coast of France and a roman villa in Luxembourg, so I'm not perfectly honest with my own view, but still I would not attempt to acquire any antiquity for which there is a good, pre-1970 (UNESCO international law), history.

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