My new ancient coins

[Adrift]

I used to collect ancients; I mostly went the uncleaned route, because I loved the detective work of restoring the coin and then figuring out what it was. I eventually had about 60 different emperors (and some not so ancients, like one from the great grandfather of Vlad the Impaler). But the price of uncleaned started to soar at the same time that quality went way down; the guys with the metal detectors were learning to pick out every single coin of any value before selling the junk as "unsorted, uncleaned." Then they send it to middle men who pick out more of the good specimens, then they sell the rest to you. That, and the fact that after a while seeing almost half of all your uncleaneds turn out to be one of Constantine's three sons, Constantine Jr., Constans, and Constantinius (by far the most common), it loses its thrill. There are also a tremendous number of fakes out there; I wouldn't trust anything on Ebay. But Forum ancient coins was definitely trustworthy and a great resource.

Thanks for the information.

Well that sucks about uncleaned coins. Looking over Forum Ancient Coins previous uncleaned lots it looks like they've sometimes offered lots they were pretty sure were Greek, Ptolemaic, Provincial, or Imperial, etc. Currently they're selling stuff you pointed out like late Romans, with some Byzantines and Greek stuff thrown in. Maybe I'll just have to wait till they offer one of those other type of lots again.

Any idea why Constantine's sons coins are so common?

[BookerG]

Actually, I wouldn't want to turn you off of uncleaned's completely. Get a batch from Forum. As I said, for a beginner, the detective work can be fascinating. I just wouldn't plan on either building up a large collection that way (as I did) or get my hopes up that your first batch is going to have rare and beautiful coins like the ones you bought. You can still get "premium" uncleaneds, but more expensive and, again, if you build up a collection that way, it will cost you as much as buying the coins directly cleaned and identified.
Toward the end of my collecting days, it seemed like 30 to 40 percent of all uncleaneds were Constantius because, 1) he reigned a long time, 2) Rome was collapsing, and their monetary system was being inflated out of existence, 3) coins were becoming smaller (they get to be absolutely tiny by the end of that century), so it took a lot of coins to buy a loaf of bread. 4) the political instabilities and raids of outlying nations meant more people were burying money for safe keeping, 5) a lot of uncleaneds come out of the Balkans these days, where their full integration into Roman currencies coincided with all those other factors.

Oh, and 6) The earlier coins are either the great big dupondii and sestertii that are very easy for the middle men to cherry pick, or else they were silver denarii or silver plated radiates; and if even a glint of silver might be visible under the dirt, that gets picked out too.