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Roman Coins For Sale

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We at Unrv.com have a service for Roman Coin enthusiasts that lets you browse roman coins on auction at Ebay. It will save you time surfing the ebay site as it shows you the most important auctions on one page...

 

http://www.unrv.com/economy/roman-coins-auction.php

 

regards

viggen

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Very cool. Collecting Roman coins is actually something I want to get into later in life, hopefully I can make good use of this. Need to save my money at the moment for a few things though.

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Very cool. Collecting Roman coins is actually something I want to get into later in life, hopefully I can make good use of this. Need to save my money at the moment for a few things though.

 

Collecting Roman coins is an expensive hobby, particularly for those rarer coins. A silver denarius, on the other hand, can be owned for as little as a $ 100 or more, depending on its condition.

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Might be useful to get yourself some books on Roman coins and do plenty of reading on them. You'll need a reference work to attribute them anyhow. Plus you've got to learn how to grade.

 

My advice is stay away from ebay, alot of rubbish on there. Overpriced, overgraded and often misattributed.

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There are plenty of reputable dealers selling on Ebay. I personally only buy from those who have listed stores at www.vcoins.com or from ancientauctionhouse.

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I should clarify, i meant to state that you should stay away from ebay generally until you have some experience. One you know what you are looking at then by all means use ebay, because you'll know what's good and what's not.

 

I can heartily agree with Primus on vcoins. I can recommend several other coin dealers that are useful if anyone is interested.

 

And the Sear catalogues on Roman coinage are expensive (

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Whilst is is good for enthusiasts of our period to be able to own their own little part of the history of Rome, I urge people to be cautious in the extreme when purchasing such items as coins and other Roman artifacts. Here in Northern England, there is a wealth of Roman military sites dating from the Flavian period up to the reign of Valentinian I. To a greater or lesser degree, a lot of these sites have suffered from the predations of metal detector enthusiasts, few of whom have a particular love of our subject, but who are very adept at plundering archaeological sites and liquidising their assets on ebay, or opening websites advertising their booty.

 

Hardly a week goes by in which some treasure hunter doesn't make a spectacular find - a hoard of coins, say, or an ornate metal object - only for this to be sold on at a profit, with no knowledge of the particular site it was found on, the dating of the levels concerned, or what might have been wrecked to obtain a relatively trivial find. I have personal experience of working on archaeological sites in my area, and keeping watch overnight with two or three other colleagues in order to guard against the coin diggers. In some instances we suffered abuse and assaults in order to protect what should belong to everyone, from these vultures.

 

I recall an anecdote in which a Roman 4th century mosaic pavement in Dorset (England) was ruthlessly dug out, in order to retrieve what in the end constituted a haul of three rather poor bronze coins of Domitian and a few rotted iron nails. This is just one of a plethora of sad stories in which coin diggers have destroyed part of the history and archaeological record of our period, simply to line their pockets.

 

In another instance, and nearer to home, a metal detector enthusiast in Lancaster back in the '70's went onto a site after the archaeologists had finished digging for the day, and managed to steal what was described as a signum head from a military standard. To this day, no - one knows which military unit was stationed at the fort there in the third century, or the fort's name. The information may well be on Ebay, or in some collector's cabinet, although sadly now it is untraceable to its original context.

 

I do not wish for any enthusiast of Roman History to be put off owning their own little bit of it. Nor do I wish to cast a shadow on legitimate traders in such objects who ply their trade honestly. but please, please... consider how it got onto ebay, or whatever, in the first place before you buy. And wether or not you really need to fuel this trade.

 

At the end of the day, I find it hard to believe that coins on such sites as have been featured - particularly the 'uncleaned' coins sites - can have been obtained other than by treasure hunters with little or no archaeological credentials.

 

Put another way: If you loved Elephants, would you buy Ivory?

Edited by Northern Neil

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