About Us

rasiel suarez author of ERIC II

Rasiel Suarez

Rasiel Suarez accidentally stumbled upon uncleaned ancient coins for sale on eBay after saying good-bye to a career in I.T. following 9/11/2001. Already a long-time collector and history geek, he quickly bought a few of those coins and started restoring them. Immediately bitten by the hobby, however he found to his dismay few resources available on the web to assist him in their attribution. Figuring he could spear-head an effort of his own then, Dirty Old Coins was founded in 2002 with business partner Angie Mason and the two quickly put together a company that became profitable almost from the start with the growth allowing for an expansion in the product line.

Over the course of the next several months his next big venture, the Tantalus coin registry, began to take shape as a public numismatic database which could simultaneously accommodate coins ancient and modern alike with a slick suite of software tools to aid collectors in managing their collections online. At the same time work began on the ambitious ERIC (the Encyclopedia of Roman Imperial) project whose primary aim was to bring a modern reference book to aid collectors of Roman coins.

For her part, Angie focused on developing a client base that could take DOC’s products to a national audience and even a select few international markets. To this end various versions of our “Dirty Old Coins” kits and our line of emperor posters found their way into several mail order catalogs including Norm Thompson, Vision Forum, National Geographic and others as well as many museum and gift shops.

Angie Mason founder of Dirty Old Coins

Angie Mason

By 2005, had sold its millionth uncleaned coin – a landmark feat for a three-year old company. The same year ERIC had finally come to press and to critical public acclaim and upon selling out was noted as the 10th most sought-after out of print book in the country; the first time such an honor was accorded to any type of reference book. Shortly after, ERIC II saw the light of day after a grueling three-year period of research… and again to the rave reviews of its readers. The book received an honorable mention in the prestigious ForeWord “Book of the Year” awards for 2011.

For 2012 Dirty Old Coins brings a new abridged version of ERIC II called Aorta as well as the fourth reprint of the Roman Imperials poster as well as a long-overdue website face lift.

Here’s what Angie has to say about the DOC (dirty old coins) story:

“I have a lot of respect for Rasiel and his ability to dive so deeply into a very intellectual topic and become a world expert on it and I also admire his uncanny ability to focus and the determination he has that allowed him to take on a project as daunting as ERIC II… I am happy to be back working on Dirty Old Coins and looking forward to creating a website geared toward this fascinating hobby and educating people about history through coins.”

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