How to properly handle ancient and collectible coins

As I explained in an older post, it is not recommendable to clean ancient coins, because it is very easy to unintentionally damage them in the process. Much better is not to let ancient coins get dirty in the first place! Thus it is very important to properly store and handle the coins in a collection to prevent them from suffering damage which, if accumulated over time, could lead to their value decreasing.

One of the most common mistakes when handling a coin is to simply hold it in your hand and touch its faces with your bare fingers. On the contrary, a coin should always be held by its edges, never by the faces. One of the most common ways coins are damaged is when someone touches their surface and leaves dust that can generate scratches on the surface or traces of skin oil that can corrode it.

It is very important to wash your hands thoroughly before handling ancient coins. However, even when fingers are clean, a coin should always be carefully hold by the edges trying to avoid touching its faces. If coins are regularly hold without proper caution their surface will over time show signs of wear.

 

Inadequate way to hold an ancient coin 

The ideal way of handling an ancient coin is with special cotton gloves. Of course this is not essential if the precautions mentioned in the previous paragraph are taken.

Never use latex or plastic gloves! They are not suitable for handling ancient coins because they often have dust or lubricants that can pollute or damage the surface!

It should be noted that, when wearing gloves, there is a greater risk of accidentally dropping a coin, so special care must be taken to avoid this to happen. The best is to place a thick, soft cloth under the coin while holding it, so that if it slips or falls, it will not be damaged by the impact on a hard surface. A soft cloth will also prevent it from rolling.

Ancient coins are precious relics of the past and it is our responsibility to take care of them so they can be enjoyed by future generations of collectors.

The Komin Hoard, the largest Roman hoard ever found

The finding

Komin is a small village of 1300 inhabitants in Croatia, at the mouth of the river Neretva in the Adriatic. Its location corresponds to that of a small Roman settlement known as Pyrri, in the ancient province of Pannonia, as evidenced by the discovery of ancient tombs and other inscripted monuments in the region.

It was in this small village that a century ago, in 1918, the greatest hoard of Roman coins ever discovered was found by chance. It was found about half a mile from the local church. It contained more than 300,000 Roman coins! The earliest coins dated from the reign of Marcus Aurelius and the latest from the reigns of Aurelian and Tacitus at the end of the III century; however, the vast majority dated from this later period. Information is very scarce as the composition of the treasure does not seem to have been accurately recorded by the finders. The hoard was most likely buried under the short reign of Tacitus (275-6).

The fate of the Komin coins

Most of the hoard was dispersed and sold to coins and antiquities dealers, but a significant part of it was deposited in the museum of Zagreb, where it would be studied in the following decades by a small group of numismatists, among which the great Andreas Alföldy stood out. Finally, in 1937, a brief study was published with a list of just under 20,000 coins from the hoard, all Antoninians minted between 253 and 275 A.D., that is, between the reigns of Valerian and Aurelian, the vast majority of the pieces apparently coming from the reign of Gallienus. The list is accompanied by drawings of some selected coins. The list included only the small part at the disposal of the museum and this is not a representative selection of the whole, so it is not possible to reach definite conclusions.

The photograph accompanying this entry are illustrative only, since it seems than no photographs were taken at the moment of discovery. The photographs are from a similar but smaller hoard, that of Dorchester in England.