Where Can I Find A

I've never bought uncleaneds myself - I know I don't have the patience to learn the skills required to do it properly. But I've only heard good things about the uncleaneds sold over at FORVM ancient coins.

Some things to watch out for from the uncleaned ancients sellers you might find on ebay or elsewhere:

GOLD Found! False. Nobody gives away ancient gold coins worth thousands of dollars for nothing. Gold basically doesn't corrode; a gold coin still looks like a gold coin, even after thousands of years buried in the ground, and the folks who dig up ancient coins normally know what gold looks like. Beware of ancient brass coins that have been cleaned, buffed and polished until they shine like gold; these can fool the novice into thinking they've hit the jackpot. You might find the occasional seller who will "spice up" their uncleaned lots with a "real gold coin"; these will, however, be tiny mediaeval Indian gold dams or fanams, with only a few dollars worth of gold in it.

Unsearched! Wrong again. The truth is, you are going to be the last person in a long line of people who will inspect those uncleaned coins, from the folks who dug them up, to the middlemen and merchants, to the dealers. Each person will most likely fish out the ones that look most promising to them, and on-sell the culls. Many bulk lots of uncleaned coins you see for sale are the coins everyone else has rejected. If you buy one of those, you might strike it lucky and clean up something all the experts somehow missed, but you're much more likely to wind up with a handful of unidentifiable slugs.

Even uncleaned coins from the better sources (like FORVM) might wind up as slugs anyway and, as I said, you need patience and skill. Personally, I'd rather spend money on buying one nice, professionally cleaned, already identified ancient than on buying a dozen uncleaned coins. But then, I'm not the gambling type.

FORVM, as Sap says, is extremely reputable, but prices tend to be higher, although fair.

I've had excellent luck with the seller "oldcoinman", located in Texas, on ebay. He promises nothing extraordinary and hypes nothing, but what I've received from him in several transactions are a nice mix of coins, including the silver Turkish coin I posted here when I first joined, two silver-washed Romans, and a goodly number of other bronzes that cleaned up nicely. Of course there were the sliders that I've ended up flogging at garage sales for a buck each and one that had had the bronze disease eating at it for 1600-years-plus, but overall I've been very pleased with his coins. There are probably others just as reputable as oldcoinman; look for unhyped listings similar to his.

Sap- yeah I know what you mean, I have been burned many times with these so called "unsearched" coins only to find out the coins are close to being worthless. But I'm learning....

pls - thanks for the help!. ill check out oldcoinmans...


blcoinnut - that coins looks real nice. how long did it take you to clean that?.

Are any import permits required to purchase these coins and ship them into Canada? Based on my understanding (note that I have never purchased ancient coins), these coins might be considered cultural property under UNESCO. What is the experience of Canadian collectors with respect to these uncleaned coins?