Why are Roman coins so cheap on ebay?

Why are Roman coins so cheap on ebay?

They sell for next to nothing. You can get a legit Roman coin for a few British pounds.

Are they really that easy to find?

How can you be sure that those are real Roman coin?

On ebay you should assume that everything is fake unless proven otherwise.

>Are they really that easy to find?

Yes. A few hours with a metal detector in some places in Britain will get you a dozen or so.

Most won't be very good quality though.

Most are Chinese fakes

The channels sell lots of them and seem to all have great feedback. Professional metal detecting peoples.

I would love to go out metal detecting, but I'm too ashamed of how much of a sad dick I would look.

Get a book with a record of known coins. They'll include things like dimensions, weighting, die angle (is the stamping level), metal content. Using one of these will help immensely in knowing if you have real or fake coins.

The problem with metal detectorists is that some coins can be victorian fakes which have been lost or buried. It was common in the 18th/19th c to get fake coins as it is now. Also Chinese fakes have a method of chemical weathering

Lots of fakes yes, but billions of coins were minted throughout the life of the Roman Empire. The cheapest are usually Constantine era bronze Follis coins but you can get a really nice silver double denarius from the crisis peroid for about £40.

They're fakes, usually in brass.

this
Byzantine Coins are fucking dirt cheap, for a while in Israel if you looked hard enough you could find them on the ground in certain places

lets turn this into a numismatic thread

Does Veeky Forums collect? What eras do you collect from?
I've got everything from 2 silver denarii to a couple morgan dollars
One of the dollars is in mint condition, MS-63 from 1879
I know it isnt that special but seeing a coin that old shine like it was minted yesterday just gets to me

What's the rarest?

As far as I know, this one
Bought it several years ago on a trip to Israel, the whole country is filled with fakes

> you will never be retardedly wealthy and decorate your house with incredibly expensive historical artifacts
Just throwing this feel out there

picture isnt mine, but I dont have a camera on hand
its more or less the same condition
I know this feel all too well
I'd love to have suits of armor, ancient weapons and busts everywhere

Is the reason there are so many preserved coins because of the desert climate, or Jews?

I would assume because of the desert climate
Though this was back in the '70s, I guess it'd be different today
Though a big tourist scam is someone taking you to some ruins and you finding coins fucking everyhwere, so unless you find it yourself somewhere really fucking rural its probably fake

Desert, they often have these sand patinas.

>I will never be this Russian billionaire guy who has bought millions of dollars of artifacts related to Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette

why live? he has a pair of Marie Antoinette's shoes for god's sake

sandblasting is a common way to mask and sell fakes

I have a scrap of Roman Papyrus and a gold Solidus of Constantine, it's a start for my bookshelf

how'd you get the solidus?

I got it from my gramps, who got it in the Second World War. He claims he found it during the invasion of Italy, among foxholes made by artillery somewhere near Ravenna. I wouldn't be surprised though if he took it from some private collection in Germany honestly, if it wasn't for his love of antiquity he would likely have smelted it for gold content.

I don't have it at the moment because I'm in a shitty area, so I stuck it in my family's bank box. The Papyrus is less valuable appearing versus a big gold fucker, so I thought to be safe.

>tfw there's that finnish autist that was bullied from ylilauta who decorated his house with real furniture from 18th century france
>tfw you actually talked to him when he visited /int/ and saw his autism whilst it spiked
I wonder if he is here right now

You should assume that he is always here

this very relevant to my interests

You have to think of them as like trading cards. The ones with really cool and powerful emperors are super rare and expensive and the common nobody emperors have coins that are almost worthless.