I See More Silver :)

Quite rare to find silver uncleaned - especially whole coins, you've got very lucky. The silver can be treated like bronze (you can be a bit rougher with brushing too) but be careful, as silver can crystalise and turn brittle. Silvered coins must be very very carefully cleaned. You should be very light with brushing, and dont use olive oil, it can darken light silvering.

Fourrees, which are copper cores dipped in silver to make a coin which appears to be silver all the way through, have thicker coverings and can be cleaned slightly harder, but the silver can often flake off and the bronze might be BD riddled, so id exercise caution with those too until you've got better at it.

For silver coins - dont use metal on them, it will scratch. Also, this looks like an early empire denarius, so it could be worth a bit, so take care. A picture of the everse would be good.

The coin on the left, I would put into DW for a couple of days. Using a toothpick and starting at the point of the X on the legend, apply pressure just about 1mm into the black stuff. There is a chance that the pressure will fracture the dirt and it will flake off. Then move the toothpick another 1mm and do the same thing.

If the muck does not flake off, put it back into DW for another day and try again. Easy does it, it could be a nice coin under the crud. Any chance of a pic of the reverse?

By the way, This came in a 'junk' lot of uncleaned :)

Pish, what do you recommend, wooden or plastic toothpick?

Mash, I would start with a wooden one, you will do less damage. You will know when you are ready to move on to more lethal implements. I use a scalpel and high magnification.

I agree with Paul, I think it could be Domitian. Now THATS what you call beginners luck.

Mash, I would steer clear of the bronze brush, at least until you are more experienced. It is said that they don't hurt the patina, that is not correct, they can.

Just out of interest, whereabouts are you in the UK?

There is no easy answer to how much any individual emperor is worth. It has a lot to do with the condition of the coin as well. In general ebay coins come cheaper, but they rarely have provenance, you don't know whether they have been smuggled and there are are lot of fakes.

If you are interested in a particular coin check out something like vcoins to see what coins are currently being sold for.

If you are doing your own detecting I assume you know about the Portable Antiquities Scheme.

And if Metdet (Kev) shows up, he might give you some valuable tips.

I think the reverse is Minerva on a pedestal. Something similar to this.

https://www.vcoins.com/en/stores/ma...Default.aspx