My First Ancient Coin: What Should I Get?

@floyd, first welcome to CCF. Second, with that level of budget you are definitely coming in hot. Any chance you would want to dip your toe in to test the waters a bit first? You didn't mention specifically, but do you already have a coin collection with a different focus? I'd hate have you drop a couple grand on a whim. Also, with high-priced items like these, it is definitely caveat emptor--do you already have a reliable source of coins?

Your list up above contains some iconic images to be sure, but depending on your specific area of interest (e.g. 12 Caesars, early images of Christianity, buildings motif, musical instrument motif, gods, etc.), you might want to branch out. Another random thought I'm having is that you could purchase a decent-sized lot of "uncleaned" Roman coins and have a father/son exploration into cleaning and identifying as many as you could.

Welcome to CCF! The coins you listed are certainly popular ancient coins. Many ancient coin collectors want an Athens silver tetradrachm, an Alexander the Great silver tetradrachm, a Roman silver denarius of Julius Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius etc, a coin of Cleopatra VII or Biblical coins like Herod the Great, the small prutah called the widows mite, etc.

Ancient coins can be inexpensive to very expensive. As with modern coins ancient coins prices depend on condition, demand and rarity. Late Roman bronze coins can be an enjoyable place to start, they are plenitful and many don't cost much, for example a bronze coin of Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor.

There are good places to buy ancient coins, from long time honest dealers, like on Vcoins or auction houses like CNG coins, Harlan J Berk or online sites like sixbid, coinfoxa. There are some honest good ancient coin sellers on ebay but be very careful, there are fake coins too. All the coins in your want list have been faked. There's a few web sites with databases of fake ancient coins. Some modern fakes are easy to spot with casting bubbles but other fakes are done well, an experienced dealer's eye is important to spot style differences and forger errors.

There are databases to look up ancient coins like acsearch.info. There are ancient coins reference books you can buy. Sounds like you've been doing some research, that's wise.

For about twenty years my quest was to collect one coin from every mint city and personality that had coins struck in their name in the Bible. Coins from some cities are common like Rome, Athens, Corinth, Alexandria etc. Other Bible cities only struck coins for a few years and are rare.

There are ancient coin collectors and some dealers in the major cities, not so much in small towns. Ancient coin collectors are a minority in the numismatic world, there's a lot more modern coin collectors. But ancient history is really fun to learn about and having a 2,000 year old coin in your hand is very cool.

I collected coins when I was a kid. Probably like many kids my age, I was given one of those blue folding books for Lincoln pennies with all the dates/mints. It was a fun thing to do with my mom, but then I got a stereo. Goodbye coins. The only thing I really collected with any commitment was conetop beer cans!

So, nope, the only coins I currently have are in one of those large glass containers with the a top just big enough for a quarter.

Oh, wait, I take that back. My dad bought my son an American-coin proof set with a gold coin as part of the collection of coins. But that's my son's.

Yeah be careful buying on ebay. But as I said some ebay stores are legit. A CCF member sells ancient coins there, totally honest and safe.

There's several sites talking about cleaning ancient coins including here on CCF. It's important not to overclean, don't scratch them, try not to take off the original patina. You can experiement with inexpensive late Roman bronze coins.

I really like the classic Athens tetradrachms with the reverse incuse. When the obverses have the full crest on the helmet they are scarce and cost more. Often the dies were a little bigger than the silver so it's common for some of the crest to be missing or part of Athena's nose missing. In my opinion it's better to buy one with full nose, good metal not porous.

Here's two of my better Athens owls, one with full crest, the other with full incuse.

All those on your list definitely have the WOW factor and should hold their value should you ever need to resell. I can't emphasize enough the importance of a reliable dealer. Consider going to a large coin show where you may have a few dealers of ancients. Look at the coins, handle them (carefully) and talk to the dealers.

Uncleaned coins are an interesting idea but for the inexperienced they can be a major source of frustration. Many large bags of uncleaned coins have many which are little more than ancient slugs of copper and will never be identifiable. Reading the inscriptions takes work and experience. If you do buy some, take a look at them first to see how many have an image and or an inscription. The fewer of those, the less the value per coin.

Are auctions the way to go to get the best deal, considering there's the buyer premium to pay, PayPal/credit card fees, and higher shipping/insurance fees (seems like most auctions are in Europe)? Or can buying from a reseller like Vcoins be just as competitively priced?

100% agree--better is to look at vcoins and ma-shops, although this isn't foolproof either. We all have our bruises.

Fakes -- good fakes -- abound in ancient coins. If you are inexperienced, stick with a coin encapsulated in an NGC or PCGS holder. You can break it out ("crack") if you don't like it being in plastic.

You're better off with some books & education before jumping into the most heavily counterfeited area of coins. (I also advocate buying fakes to better understand the difference.)

Roman bronzes can be had cheap, and are a good intro to ancients. Going to coin shows can give you some good exposure & handling experience, too.