Hoth2

You did a great job! A lot of details under the crud.

@JeandAcre I collected US (mostly from my pockets but some from the local coin shop which treated ten-year-old me very well) as a kid and then drifted on to other things, until I noticed the Ancients category on ebay twenty-five years later and haven't looked back. My first buy was an uncleaned lot of four that wound up being three almost-slugs and one surprisingly decent URBS ROMA. The feeling of removing the dirt and knowing I was the first person to look at that coin in nearly 2k years was pretty great.

@JeandAcre The arcaneness is half the fun of ancient coins! In the age of the internet it seems like you can know anything about anything with just a google search and five minutes of your time, but, slabs notwithstanding, ancient coins still have some mystery around them. I've been poking around for close to a decade now and there's still so much I don't know.

Thanks for all the resources and pictures guys! I love sorting through things to find treasure--thrifting is another hobby of mine--so squinting at inscriptions and sorting through lots is right up my alley.

Thanks for being nice about my topic repeat! But then, coin folk tend to be nice folk. Thank you--this seems a great starting point! By the way, it's been some years, but I've purchased from your ebay store once or twice and I miss browsing your auctions :).

I've been looking at these a little lately and 1. These seem to be pretty hard to come by. 2. There doesn't seem to be much to distinguish them from late-late LRBs, generic barbarous coins, and Anastasius-type coins. Is there anywhere I could look for tips? Thanks!

Thank you! And thanks for the reply! Cleaning scratches I can deal with, especially given my budget. I just did a quick look and unfortunately it has disappeared into the sands of my browsing history.. I did see this post--I specifically remember the circular punch/scratch on the back of Domi's head. A coin like this would be very welcome in my low-end collection. Holy smokes thanks for the comprehensive answer and the history lesson in particular. If it's not something to worry about at the lower end of the collecting spectrum, then I'm safe. I don't have the budget for EF sestertii and collect mostly because I love holding something that someone made 2kish years ago. If something nice finds its way into my budget I don't kick it out, but more often than not I'm hanging out with coins like that last one.

Hi All, I just came here from the Cointalk forum. I used to be a VERY active lurker and occasional poster. Life got in the way of coins and it had been a while since I'd checked in. I went back the other day and so many people I remembered were gone. I did some detective work.. and I found you guys! Anyway--one of the posts I saw on here was someone saying that just about every bronze you see out there is tooled so we have to live with it. Now I feel like I see tooling on like every bronze I see, only I have no idea what's in my imagination and what's actual tooling. I saw a sestertius yesterday that looked great, but then the lines in the wreath looked a little thick and not rounded and I thought that's a high spot.. likely to be tooled.. good coin ruined. But last week I would have just thought it was a great coin. Is this really true--bronzes are tooled so deal with it? Are we OK with this? How can I tell what's tooling and what's not, beyond the really obvious ones?