Denarius On Ebay For 60 Dollars?

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Thanks for your reply.

I wouldn't be buying this as a collector piece and looking to get the best or brightest, If I were to buy something like this it would be purely to own a piece of history. I'm just curious as to whether sixty dollars for a silver denarius is reasonable for a genuine coin.

Well thanks guys, I am still sort of flabbergasted that I can buy a silver Roman coin for the same price as dinner for two at McDonalds.

I'm pretty sure that listing is against ebay policy - you're supposed to list one coin at a time, and have photos of the specific coin you're listing. The photos in that listing are pictures of random Roman coins. Listings like this are effectively a lottery. $60 is a pretty steep price for a lottery ticket, even if you're guaranteed to win "something". Assuming your coin is genuine, of course; I wouldn't necessarily trust a random ebay seller to be able to authenticate an ancient coin, assuming they're actually honest and not deliberately trying to sell fakes. We always recommend staying away from ebay for ancient coins at the beginning - there's just too many sharks out there, not to mention the clueless people selling their cruise ship souvenirs who honestly believe that street hawkers in the eastern Mediterranean will risk selling ancient coins cheaply to tourists.

As for the more general question - can you get a Roman denarius for just US$60 - a few years ago my answer would have been "certainly". COVID saw a price spike in ancient coins, so I think a coin would have to be very rough, to the point of being unidentifiable, before prices reached that low. But it's still technically possible.

DIrtyOldCoins is a legit seller of "uncleaned" coins; they're selling uncleaned "Roman silver coins" for $30 each. Now, that would likely include base-silver later coins and not just early Empire denarii, and they're "sold out" right now, but it gives some indication of the absolute baseline price level. One of these coins, cleaned up a bit, is probably what you'd receive from the eBayer. On the DOC site, their base price for a cleaned, identifiable Roman denarius is $75 (but, also, "sold out").

Meanwhile, over on FORVM (another reputable seller of quality 100% guaranteed genuine ancients), there's over 30 denarii for sale right now; the cheapest is $12 but it's a late, debased-silver coin barely worth the "denarius" label; the next cheapest denarius is priced at $72. The cheapest from an emperor you might have actually heard of is a denarius of Commodus (the bad guy in the "Gladiator" movie) at $135. For a Hadrian like the one pictured by the ebay seller, the cheapest is $153. Their most expensive denarius they have in stock is $243, though of course they can be much more expensive. A denarius of Tiberius - the so-called "tribute penny" as it's the coin in use when Jesus was walking the earth - will cost you around $500 to $1000. And an EID MAR denarius commemorating the assassination of Julius Caesar will cost hundreds of thousands.

Gordian used to be the cheapest denarius you could get that was in decent shape. It was well under $60 although I don't know what the current price is. Recent offerings from some ancient coins dealers in Montreal include many decent condition denarii (or antoniniani) from emperors in the 200s AD (such as gallienus), although in this era they would be debased silver. Still a very presentable ancient piece.

The reason they seem so cheap is that they were made in the millions and they are still digging them out of the ground.

You want a coin with at least a clear portrait and mostly readable legends.

Well, I am glad I consulted the people who know more than me before I plunked down my dollars. I have decided to wait and get something nicer than the random and beaten up stuff I've seen on ebay. I think I am going to save up a little and get a legible example from the reign of Marcus Aurelius, because I'm a fan of, and believer in, stoic philosophy.

I know I'm probably going to have to spend more, but after all is said and done, I'm only buying one.

A wise choice. Marcus Aurelius is from the end of the "Golden Age" of the empire, when it was for the most part peaceful and prosperous, but still enough military action to ensure at least some soldiers never came back to dig up their hoard of coins - so coins from his reign are neither expensive nor hard to obtain.

One thing to be aware of: because his reign was revered by following generations of Romans, many subsequent emperors added "M AVREL" to their titles on their coins. So make sure your "Marcus Aurelius" coin is properly identified as actually from Marcus Aurelius (though the "philosopher's beard" on the portrait should be a giveaway).