Selling Roman Coins

[gobenn]

Is it legal to make jewellery from locally discovered Roman Coins? It seems to me that should be in a museum for all to see.

[Captain2]

I think it is something along the lines of, if you find 10(?) or more in one place it is declared a hoard and has to be declared. Under that I think it is Finders Keepers.

[Captain2]

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1996/24/section/1

[Peter Pedant]

yeah you can trade coins without a licence or anything
which means you can shape them into jewellery
youknow kinda like sovereigns

they lose all their value which may not be much if you sort of drill them
I dont think you realise how affluent the romans were
a real throw away society
roman coins are by no means rare

( clearly rare roman coins are etc....)

[Peter Pedant]

sorry a bit loose language
clearly you cant trade all coins and at all values
and clearly you cant trade coins wh erm arent yours ....
sort of like Brinks mat quantities

[Buenchico]

Roman coins are actually far more common than many people think. For example, there are plenty offered on eBay for 99p, or even 5 for £1.99:
http://tinyurl.com/zevw9qp
Most museums simply wouldn't be interested in them.

[EDDIE51]

It must be declared as 'treasure', If verified you will be paid the value as finder. It is illegal to just keep it unless it is just a single coin. The main point is that it may be part of a larger find of historical importance and it should be properly investigated. Making it into jewelry could damage it beyond repair making it useless as an archaeological item ( and destroy it's true value)

[EDDIE51]

Chris ,Yes correct, as long as it is they are not made of at least 10% Precious metal. That makes it treasure .

[gobenn]

Thanks all. Seems it's not illegal.

[Peter Pedant]

when I was excavating in Egypt - well why not ?
The Roman stratum was around a metre thick
and the rest to the present day was about another metre

It was incredibly affluent - unbelievably so
[ so why did it fall ?]
roman work a day stuff is not that expensive = there is so much of it
The next time so much was thrown away whcih was usable or not very broken was ... two thousand years later in late victorian times into the twentieth century

In oxyrhynchus where er I wasnt
they dug up the village archives which had not been abandoned but had been buried around 450AD. There is the village taxation stuff but there is also literature.One papyrus had just one character speaking - it turned out to be one characters part in a well known play. Someone in Oxyrhynxhua had enough money to employ a slave to copy out just one part of a greek play so he could presumably memorise that part and perform it ......

the conquest of egypt at actium was a huge money generator for the emperor ( not the republic )
.

[DTCwordfan]

Selling Roman coins....Oh yea, tut. Remember the great 'Up Pompeii' and Frankie Howerd as Lurcio.......?

Cassandra:AB's citizens who sell Roman coins will befall the fate of the sinful men of Gomorrah!
Lurcio: Will they, indeed?
Cassandra: And Sodom
pronounced Sod em
Lurcio: Ooh, I agree, the lot of them!

[DTCwordfan]

in short there's a lot of them - however, there are valuable ones and you need a coin specialist for that.....start with your local museum and they can advise....there's also specific law as to compensation of you and the landowner to finds of national or local treasure....so you shouldn't be gipped out of 'value.'

[Peter Pedant]

thanks DTC a well worded erm literary contribution .....

we did this
https://www.jstor.org/stable/299064?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

[DTCwordfan]

(mine was for the Cornish Historical Society - but not Roman)

[Peter Pedant]

The others have pointed out the law on these things

My brother dug up the a bronze axe head in his garden
( which I thought was bronze from the iron age ( 500-50BC) but is apparently bronze from the Bronze Age 2000 - 500 BC or thereabouts
only 2% of sites in Darzet are Bronze aaaarh!
and to my amazement the authorities did not give a toss ...

[ very likely since it was a victorian house with a raised flower bed - fashionable then - that the ax head had come in the earth that had been taken from somewhere else and tipped into the garden around sort of 1880]

well that was what was said
I listened with my mouth open