Have been collecting coins since i was eleven, im now 33, however havnt had my collection out of the loft until today since i was 20. due to serious back problems ive had to give up my favourite hobby of fishing and am now going to concentrate on coin collecting. I have around 200 coins and about 30 banknotes, at least its a start. some of them old some of them new proof sets from the royal mint.

ive just purchased this years spink catalogue and have bought a few coins from ebay including 50 uncleaned roman coins - not impressed with these to say the least.

i could really use some advice on the best ways to add to my collection, any books that would help me to start to grade my own coins as i dont have a clue about this.

Anyway. nice to meet you all.

Carl.

Carl,

A warm welcome to you from Clive, an English hammered fanatic!

It all depends on which coins you wish to collect, North's books are the English hammered bibles whereas Milled coins have Peck, Cope and Rayner etc...

I would never touch most of those "Uncleaned Roman Lots" with a bargepole to be honest, a load of junk that are not worth the effort of cleaning as most have been picked through by dealers.

eBay, numismatic catalogues and websites are the best for me, I recently started a website to sell my spares and it seems to be working and have many more coins that I haven't gotten around to putting on : http://historiccoinage.com/default.aspx

Feel free to email me at: clive@historiccoinage.com if you have any queries.

Meanwhile enjoy this forum and perhaps check out http://www.coinsgbforum.com/index.php? if you like British coins.

Kindest Regards,

Clive.

First off, welcome aboard, nice to have another ancient collector here. Oh and those filthy Romans. Most of those are bad deals, but there are some guys out there that sell pretty decent stuff. So not all filthy Romans are stinky but a lot of modern sellers can be. I know of a couple of guys that sort them out and have choice lots of filthies that are more likely to produce nice decent AE's.

Carl welcome to the forum from a nutty collect anything guy LOL I have to agree with SM not all the lots are bad I have picked up a few decent Roman coins this way and also if I am honest quite a bit of junk LOL

Welcome to the forum. I will agree with the uncleaned coins to the extent that you won't find any trophies, but they are a great way to study up on ancients.