Ancient Coins - An Invited Guest Article

by Scott Uhrick, Danbury, CT

Your editor asked me to offer a few thoughts on ancient coin collecting. Since I've only been in the hobby for about a year I don't have a lot of expertise to offer, just opinions. But, this being an election year, non-expert opinion offered as fact should be appropriate. Like many others, I first found ancient coins on eBay. I bought a handful of uncleaned ancients, soaked them in olive oil per instructions and damn if several of them didn't turn out pretty nice. I was hooked, and the addiction has progressed. I now need a fix of about $50 a week to feel satisfied, and the end isn't in sight. But honest - I could quit any time I want.

I'm beginning to do a little light dealing to support my habits. Buying coins I feel are cheap, setting up my own eBay auctions and trying to tweak a little profit. After buying, cataloging, auctioning, packing and mailing the coins, I figure I'm making about $2.00 an hour so far. Guys in paper hats laugh at me, but I'm getting to handle more coins. Naturally, a few more coins come in than go out. This helps me sneak coins in under my wife's radar. "Honest Honey, it's for inventory!"

I have narrowed my collecting down from "I want a portrait of every Roman Emperor" to the nice simple theme, "Rome and her Enemies". More focused, eh? Just covers all of the West most of the East from 300 B.C. to 470 A.D. I've been assembling combinations of coins which catch my interest. The example included covers the 2nd Punic War.

Anyway, if anyone is interested in adding cleaning ancient coins to their present addiction, I operate a website rating the coins from about fifty on-line vendors. Nothing for sale, just sort of a Consumer's Reports" of dirty little pieces of bronze. The URL is; http://hometown.aol.com/joviel/coinintro.html

ã Copyright Raleigh Coin Club   -  2000, 2001, 2002

The RCC grants permission to reprint any articles not copyrighted by the author for non-profit educational purposes only, provided the Raleigh Coin Club and the author are cited as the original source.