Loading…
27
Dropped $180 on a fake Roman coin lot at the Canton street fair, is eBay any better or am I just burning cash?
Bought what the guy swore were 12 uncleaned Roman coins from a dealer's table in Canton, Ohio for $180, and after two weeks of soaking them in distilled water I could tell 9 of them were modern casts with fake dirt glued on. My buddy says real uncleaned lots are a gamble no matter what and I should just save for a single slabbed coin from a shop, but another guy I know swears he pulled a real Constantine out of a $40 eBay lot. So which is it, is hunting cheap uncleaned lots worth the risk for the thrill, or should beginners like me just buy one verified coin and skip the heartbreak?
1 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In1 Comment
morganj811mo ago
Uncleaned lots are the whole point of collecting for a beginner, and telling people to skip them and buy one slabbed coin is how you turn a fun hobby into a boring wallet contest. Yeah you got burned at a street fair, but that's a street fair problem, not an uncleaned lot problem. Real dealers on eBay have feedback scores and return policies, and a $40 lot with 20 coins still gives you a shot at a genuine Constantine or Gallienus even if half are junk. The guys who say save up for a slab are the same guys who never learned to spot a fake because they never handled raw coins. Soaking and scrubbing and figuring out what you actually got teaches you more in two months than staring at a graded holder ever will. If you can't handle losing $180 sometimes then sure, buy slabbed, but that is not collecting, that is just shopping.
3