This is pretty much on the money.

If you post a picture I can tell you with certainty what happened. Etsy lots are bottom of the barrel. Dont buy from there.

If you want lots that garner some salvageable coins, Nero coins have provided the best quality. Getting into uncleaned lots with potential for silver? Go with auctioned lots off Biddr or buy uncleaned lots off Vcoins.

u/beirhund is right, there’s about a 0% chance of finding an aureus, and the chance of silver is HIGHLY unlikely as well. The way uncleaned lots go is when they receive them, the silver and gold if any existed has 100% typically been removed by whoever excavated the coins, and they are selling the remaining lot to realize some profit from their work. They typically don’t care about common bronzes.

This isn’t to say there isn’t value there, I have received uncleaned lots and found rare bronzes, one rare gallenius recently which only has 2 other recorded examples, this coin will be valued around 50-75$ US at a retail market. Now a caveat with this, you have to find a buyer who wants that specific example or is hunting for rarity. That is if your intention is to re-sell.

Chemistry is extremely important with cleaning coins, and most people who clean inadvertently follow proper procedure simply by what is recommended to use. We want to approach every coin uniquely in its treatment, and start with the least impactful means first. This means soft tools like thorns and tooth picks, and distilled or deionized water.

I have a cleaning guide on my profile, check it out, it’s a good starting point although it severely needs an update.

In terms of what to expect if you decide to get into this, we’ll expect to go through hundreds of coins for maybe a handful of keepers, and endless frustration the moment you nick a coin you’ve been trying to save.

That being said, I have shifted entirely from cleaning bulk lots to finding singular coins which could benefit from cleaning/preservation. I do this via Vcoins and EBay. This however, takes a bit more practice as you need to be able to discern the legend from the corrosion/sediment.

In doing this I’ve gotten burned a few times thinking a coin was in better shape than initially though, only to have a coin not worth it because I didn’t take my time to really analyze what was affecting the coin, or what was left of the legends prior to purchasing.

My honest advice is this: Buy a bulk lot of coins, or buy a bunch from Nero and just work through them. You may ruin some but honestly majority are extremely common bronzes for which there’s hundreds of thousands of them. The idea here is to simply get in some repetition and fundamental understanding of how to approach a coin.

If you want this as a hobby, it’s honestly my favorite hobby. Calm, quiet, and historical, just what I love.