[Jewelry making - Article 00650] - Re: [Orchid] Roman Coins

[Frank Blair]

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    Well, you can get them on eBay, but you'll typically pay more than
    I'm interested in paying and the quality is far from assured. Your
    best bet is to establish a relationship with a dealer. I've been
    working with a couple for several years, first as a collector and
    then later getting larger lots for jewelry/resale. 

    Coins are a collectible, so the prices are almost always set by
    auction results (which means that prices are basically an expression
    of what a motivated buyer will pay on good day at the auction.) 
    Know what you want and whay they're worth -- peruse a copy of Sears
    "Roman Coins" or "Roman Imperial Coinage" to get an idea of what you
    want first.  Both of those publications will have a "ballpark" value
    estimation for various conditions. You'd be well served to look
    around on the internet and find more current sale prices as well.
    Then find it and negotiate it. 

    If you're just interested in bulk lots, go to the webpage for "The
    Celator" and go to the list of links for dealers/etc
    (http://www.celator.com/cws/dealers.html).  There are several
    dealers on there that sell uncleaned lots and even if they don't,
    they very often buy them and will sell them in lots as speculative.
    Very often Wayne Sayles, Edgar Owen, and/or Classical Numismatic
    Group have lots of uncleaned and sometimes VF-XF cleaned, attributed
    coins for sale in large lots at prices that might surprise you. The
    Romans were around for a long time, with a huge bureaucracy that
    minted *MILLIONS* of coins, so most of them aren't all that rare.
    Just old. 

    I buy uncleaned coins in lots of 1000-2500 and usually get somewhere
    around $.65-75 per coin, sometimes a little less and sometimes a
    little more. Depends on the quality and what they paid for the lot
    from their sources in Europe (most of dug coins coming on the market
    now come from the Balkans). 50-60% are worthless (i.e.
    unidentifiable) slugs, the rest are worth more than what I paid for
    the lot and every now and then (2-3 times a year, maybe) I find
    something really spectacular. I attribute the ones that clean up and
    mount them or sell them with attribution.  Very occasionally I'll
    add one to my collection to fill a hole. 

Good luck.  It's a lot of fun.
- Frank

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