New Collector Asking For Your Thoughts

Well that's odd the other picture I tried to post didn't actually post. Let's try again.

There was not much you could have done to make them worse. For the future though, don't use lemon juice on bronze coins.

Are they worth trying to salvage? Almost definitely not, from an effort/reward (in coins) perspective. But I would argue that at least the ones that show some detail are worth trying to clean just so you can learn about cleaning coins on some that it wouldn't be the end of the world if you ruined them. Try all the methods you've heard about and want to try out. Try olive oil on a couple, DW on a couple, heck try lemon juice (look up how you can do it before trying) on a couple. Then take the razor blade and needle out and get to work.

It'll be a good learning experience for if you decide to keep cleaning coins, both for the methods and so that you understand the time you're looking at putting in.

Does anyone know why the IMG code for posting pics wouldn't be working for me? In three separate posts now, I've tried to post pics and initially they show up, but when I come back later to look, they no longer work.

Most what needs to be said has been said by 'chuy1530' and 'Ancientnoob'.
but I would like to give a slightly different take from what 'Ancientnoob' said.
Yes, buy from people/shops who are reputable (problem might be to find out)
but being new you might not yet know what specific coin/type you want.
So buy some as cheaply as possible where you can recognise a good deal of detail.
Maybe you find a coin dealer with a 'scratch box' containing roman coins,
that was the way I got into roman coins some time ago.
Once you learnt a bit about roman coins you might add 'Ancientnoob's approach as well as saving up for the odd special one you really want.
Btw, imo some of the most interesting roman coins are the denari of the republican time many of which are not very expensive in a decent quality (VG or better) and the majority can be linked to a specific year due to good records from that time.
One thing I would strongly recommend: get yourself a book on roman coinage, a second hand copy of Sear's Roman Coins 3rd or 4th edition would do just fine ( Amazon has them for less that US$10) - not to be confused with the millenium edition, which is way more expensive and not complete yet.

Now it seems my off-site links to my pics were deleted, supposedly bec of "nasty ads", despite there being NO ads on the pages my links were connected to.

Whatever.

Well I guess since I can't post pics in the thread and I'm evidently not allowed to post links to my pics off-site, I'll go find another forum that actually works.