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Does anyone else collect coins or stamps?
I never had much respect for the goldbugs until I inherited my dad's coin collection. It's remarkable holding a series of coins from 10 consecutive years and the first 5 are worth 60$ a pop because of the silver content while the next 5 are worthless nickel alloys worth their face value despite being a 70 year old coin. I was also blown away by some cool historical pieces I never imagined my dad had (and I'm not sure he was even aware of their value) - British currency from the early 19th century, a dollar bill from the first year the US printed dollar bills, some other antique American and Mexican coins worth a couple hundred dollars with fascinating stories. Not to mention just how based some of the older currency was; the detail on some of these coins is amazing, the pre-euro French and German currencies are beautiful pieces. And the old silver and gold coins have such a nice feeling of heft. There's some primal human magpielike desire to accumulate precious metals and I wasn't even aware of what we'd lost by transitioning entirely to bits.
Not to mention I found out that some ancient Roman and Greek coins are so common that you can own a 2000 year old coin with nice detail for tens of dollars, or 60-90$ for the silvers. It's mind-boggling to me that there isn't more interest and that these pieces are just available for anyone to own rather than being on display in museums.
I've gotten really into ancient (mostly Roman) coins recently. I was shocked at how affordable the more modest pieces are, especially if your tastes tend not to perfectly coincide with general collector trends. The pride of my collection is what I call my "end of the world" set: one coin issued by Heraclius the year before his mega-campaign to win back the eastern provinces, one coin issued by Khusrow II immediately after he conquered said eastern provinces, and a coin issued by Abd Al-Malik shortly after the Arab conquests and before the Islamic taboo on graven images was established (the earliest Arab coin I could find).
I've also gotten really into cleaning and identifying crusty coins straight out of the ground. You're mostly going to be finding low-grade bronze coins from the late empire that aren't really worth anything (especially once you take into account the dozens of hours of labor you put in), but it's so fun trying to figure out what you've got, then realizing you're the first person in 1800 years to see the design you've revealed.
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I have a couple Roman coins. Should get more, they'd be a nice way to label my collection of pebbles from historic sites.
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I am not, currently, but you've put down to paper my overall attitude about it. Frankly I know that once I started I'd turn it into a medium intensity hobby, like watches, and I just can't take another one.
That said.... Where would one purchase some roman coins?
Pre-cleaned, your best option is vcoins.com. They have a 100% money back authenticity guarantee for everything sold on their site. Probably best to avoid auctions until you know what you're doing and have a sense of how much coins should cost, but that's where the real deals are. I also buy uncleaned coins, sometimes in bulk, from nerocoins.com.
Avoid ebay like the plague.
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I haven't tried it yet myself so no idea which are best/reputable, but these were recommended by reddit:
https://www.apmex.com/category/58170/roman-empire-coins?f_metalname=silver&_=1772898324974&sortby=priceasc
https://www.vcoins.com/en/coins/ancient/roman-coins-2.aspx?category=roman
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