Matthew Helm's Page

Hi Matt!

You have got some AWESOME Roman coins there! I own about a dozen or so Roman coins with my favorite being Emperor Marcus Aurelius. I keep track of which emperors I need using a checklist published some time ago by Pegasi Numismatics. A handy little pocket-sized guide to have with you at coin shows. I am going to look for a few more coins at an upcoming show this Sunday. Where do you live Matt? Keep posting those awesome pics! I will be watching!

Kind regards,
John

Hi Matt!
Have you ever read Marcus Aurelius' book "Meditations"? It's pretty good. Some interesting insight that guy had for an Emperor. I am going to a large show tomorrow and I'm gonna try and pick me up some Roman coins to add to my collection. Will try to post some pics of my finds next week sometime. Have a great weekend Matt!
Regards,
John

Hi Matthew, you have a very nice selection of coins covering a variety of emperors.

I have a few examples myself, and there's some interesting information on www.wildwinds.com for coin identification, for those who don't know.

Regards

Dave

Dear Matthew Ji (respected),

Thank you for joining the Sikh Coins Group, I do hope you will learn more about the coins of the Sikh Empire. I will certainly look forward to your interaction in this group in the near future.

You can also join the Sikh Coins Group on Yahoo just copy and paste the link on the address bar of your internet page, the link for this one is :-
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SikhCoins/
To have better use of this group it is advisable to join using a Yahoo ID.

Regards
Parminder Singh

please send me ur mailing address and mail id, i will send a beautiful coin or unc banknote from india (coin mailing no:1), i am planning to send more such coin mailings. After u receive it if u are happy with it , u can send me any coin from ur country. please join the club, i will initiate the exchange, please respond, no risk on your side, if u think that sending a single coin or note is not worthwhile then we could decide on increasing the number of coins and unc banknotes, so that our friendship will blossom. This is the initiative of the group called coins for friends join it, make me your friend. i like to have atleast 100 coin mailings to 100 different friends throughout the world by the end of this year.

Hello Matthew, nice to hear from you.

Yes you are right, I have provincial, republican and imperial coinage, but I tend to buy what takes my interest at the time. I have a Marcus Aurelius, and a Commodus which are two of my favourite coins, and I have a few Barbarous radiates.

The Barbarous radiates are part of my main focus at the moment, apart from British Indian coinage. I love the abstract design of the coins, so childlike, but its the history that lies behind that tends to draw me to the Emperor or ruler.

I use to have quite a large collection of silver Denarius a few years ago, but I lost interest in them so they made way for other coins.

Some interesting coins have passed through my hands in 7 years of cleaning ancient coins, Roman and Greek which have come straight from digs, when they were truly uncleaned and you didn't know what lay beneath.

I have also seen their prices escalate, and so called coin collector cleaners destroy many coins and attempt to sell them for astronomical prices.

I will place a few more of my coins on later.

Nice to hear from you Matthew, once again.

Kindest regards

Dave

Hi Matthew, I have cleaned numerous coins straight from the digs, but sadly many are partly cleaned before you get your hands on them now and you do need to be careful. There is a lot more to it, and in time you can tell how fragile a coin can be.

I have had a Philip I Æ Sestertius (18.42 gm). Laureate, draped, and cuirassed bust right / Laetitia standing left, holding wreath and rudder. I purchased about 20 coins from Germany about 6 years ago, and the gentleman who sold them told me said he would throw a big coin in as an extra. Well i was dumb struck when i found this big coin with a deep dark patina and the condition was excellent, well worth what i had paid alone.

The second one that sticks in my mind was a Greek Egyptian coin and I had cleaned this coin for about 4 weeks, It was like a stone when I received, it no detail, and you would never guess it was a bronze coin. I was about to throw in the towel, when I started to see slight detail so I persevered, under the filth was the head of Zeus on the obverse, and on the reverse was an eagle, a beautiful example of a Ptolemy II AE23, I have never come across an example like that again, there was only a small amount of pitting on the reverse.

I have also received a small mix batch of Roman and ancient Greek coins from Israel and in my opinion these were the best I every had. The Roman were of Constantine and the Greek were from the Greek classical period and far far excelled the Roman coins, they were a work of art, beautiful.

Not so long back you would have been able to experience this for your self but the dealers have become very greedy, not all but many. They take the gold and now all of the Silver, I have been lucky in the past and I have been able to come across one or two, but lately a few silver washed coins with very little silver left on them, and you pay over the top for these.


Dave

Hi Matt!

Thanks for the nice comments about my collections! These are just the "tip of the iceberg" as they say. I have been collecting coins since I was 10 years old (I will be 49 in November!), so you can just imagine what sort of a collection I have. I got laid off from the best job I'd ever had back in Jan 2007, and was jobless for 8 months, just picking up work wherever I could find some. I got hired by a company in Sept 2007, and it's not as great as my previous job, but it pays the bills! I had to sell the majority of my U.S. coins that I had collected over the years just to keep my head above water! That's one reason why I got more into collecting foreign coins and paper, mainly because there's a lot more stuff out there, and most of it is cheaper than U.S. stuff! I will try to post more of my collection a bit at a time so you can see more of my stuff. I just have to make some time to do it! Kep posting those ancients, I like them alot!

Regards,

John

Thank you Matthew ..

Hello Matthew

You would have been lucky to have had a gold coin then but it did happen once in a while, but silver coins were common finds.

I sell a few coins that i have cleaned on ebay, but most of what i but come from detecor finds and from good sellers, suppliers, but you have to watch many do sell blanks. I sell blanks for projects they come under grots and i give excellent pictures so people know what they are buying. They still sell but for kids projects and the like.

Many of what i have are the outcome of cleaning, and i have also purchased some.

I have two examples on ebay a Constans Fel Temp and a Constantine, they are sold under cleaned Roman coins, under my seller id dai-marl, take a look and tell me what you think.

Dave