Buy Ancients in Plastic Holders

I never said you didn't like detail. I was talking about myself. Bing how long have you been collecting ancients ? I wish I had your experience.

 

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Nothing taken personal and nothing meant to be personal. However, we all like detail. It's just a matter of your budget. I would love to have a lot of the coins Ancient Joe posts, but I know I will never be able to afford them.

Take a look at this site for the Ionia Bee coins for sale: http://www.vcoins.com/en/Search.asp...ype=0&searchMaxRecords=100&SearchOnSale=False

 

look on the grade of this bee off Ebay it almost looks to good to be true (real) ???
http://www.ebay.com/itm/ANCIENT-ION...313?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3f33ca1119

 

I liked that $450.00 1. the detail on the $3,950.00 is so great but way out of my price range.

 

I would probably have to sell/trade half of my misc. section of my coins to get a $1,500 dollar nice bee. this is way in the future but I want to start learning about them now. which books do you recommended I buy/look at first. ?

 

I don't collect these as a general rule, but I do like this particular coin. I see nothing to make me think it is not authentic; however, before I would spend that kind of money, I would want more experienced eyes on the subject.

 

Bing- I gotta ask.....which are your favorite ancients to buy/study ? do you have a website that has your whole ancient coin collection that I could look at ?

 

You are wealthier than some of us. I have many ancients but fewer than 0.5% cost
over $375. It is not necessary to spend big money to study and collect ancients.

Price guides are impossible for ancients at least until there is a consensus of how various factors affect grading. Grading ancients with a couple letters and a couple numbers is a joke. It is quite reasonable that one VF of a coin will sell for $30 while another VF of the same type will bring $300. Understanding those factors is not something that comes easy. I buy coins that I believe are nicer than the seller thought and leave the ones where he liked it better than I did. We will not all agree on which coin is worth more. That is why I recommend starting off with a good relationship with a trusted dealer and leave the questionable sources to those of us willing and able to assume the risk or ask the right questions.

I like that coin. I'll never own one but I like it. I question any seller who offers such a coin without mentioning the denomination, the weight or any details but I expect more before ending $1000 to someone I don't know.
Compare it to these:
http://www.acsearch.info/search.html?search=similar:682619#0
ranging from $300 to $22000.

Mine is a smaller denomination (1/4 of the one you want), damaged and not worth much (if any) more than the $73 I paid when I did't realize the lamination was a problem. It carries #6 in my catalog. That was a while back.

 

thanks for posting those mat.

 

This is not an easy question to answer. I collect Greek, Roman Republic and Roman Imperial coins. I own a few Byzantine, but I do not really actively collect them. At the moment, I am collecting mainly Roman Republican's, but tomorrow I may change and collect more Greek, or LRBs. My collection is mainly coins from the second century AD back, but I have a lot of later Roman coins as well. You see. I told you it's not a cut and dry answer. You can see all my coins at: http://www.forumancientcoins.com/gallery/index.php?cat=30485

As to your question about books, there have been many discussions here on CT about what books new collectors should have in their libraries. I do not know how to find the particular threads but I know others do. I am hoping they will come along and provide you the links so we don't have to rehash the list yet another time. If they do not, I will be glad to provide you a list.

 

I would like that list if they do not provide it. thanks.

 

Yup => ya gotta love dem bee coins, eh?!!

 

Amen. It can't be said any better than that.

 

As far as I can tell, NGC slabs have only made a tiny inroad into the market. A search of eBay, for instance, shows 47,306 sales since Jan 2014, including 747 NGC-certified coins. That's a measly 1.5% share. I didn't look at every single one of those sales, but the overall impression I got was that the slabbed coins did not sell for much of a premium over what they would have sold for raw. Yes, there was the occasional hammer price that indicated a bidding war, but that happens all over eBay, regardless the items sold.

David Vagi is doing what every good businessman does: promote his product to create demand. The question is, are serious collectors of ancient coins going to start demanding slabs? I doubt it. NGC is approaching this market as if it was similar to the US coins market. US collectors have gone slab crazy. If you post a nice raw coin in the US forum, you summon the slab zombies.



That's just a little fun guys, don't take it personally!

I really don't think you can generate the same sort of interest among collectors of ancients. I would advise NGC to study their potential buyers and offer a product that collectors of ancient coins actually find useful. Otherwise, that measly share just isn't going to increase.

 

I don't know where to begin a critique of those videos. Harlan Berk says if you want to start collecting ancient coins, you should go to shows and talk to reputable dealers. That would be good advice if he didn't follow it by saying, "...not the internet" - as though the internet was some monolithic evil entity.

Almost everything I learned at the start of my collecting came from Doug's wonderful pages at FORVM. My advice would be exactly the opposite: go to the right places on the internet. Sure, going to shows and talking to reputable dealers is a good idea, but how long is that going to take? How many shows come up in your neighborhood per year, and how many of them even have any dealers that know anything about ancient coins? I would say talk to the experienced collectors at CT, investigate all of the educational threads at FORVM and articles on Numiswiki, and read everything you can get your hands on for free. The internet is abundant with good, solid information for the beginning collector.

 

Ummm, I actually think that I got a bit more from this video than from any of those others ...



... thanks for introducing me to this wonderful video, chrsmat71

 

Secondly, Mr. Vagi: you are not going to sell us on the idea that ancient coins need the protection of your slabs. Millions of them have survived in excellent condition for thousands of years before NGC came along. Protection is not, nor ever will be, a rebuttal to the criticism that slabs don't allow collectors to hold their ancient coins. You say most collectors like the tactile experience of holding their coins, but we're going to slab them anyway. That's rather shooting yourself in the foot, don't you think?

If you're not going to guarantee the authenticity of the coins, what's the point of a slab? Why not offer a service similar to ACCS (David Sear)? Give us a certificate with a photograph and a detailed write-up, and let us hold the coins. If someone forges that exact coin and replaces the original, well, c'est la vie...you're not on the hook anyway since there is no guarantee.

 

Thirdly, NGC may have no vested interest in the authenticity and grade of a cheap coin, but I understand from AncientJoe that over a particular valuation, they charge 1% of the estimated value of the coin as a slabbing fee.

So in fact, if I submitted a coin worth $100,000, NGC would stand to collect a $1000 fee. Wouldn't that give them a very vested interest in proclaiming the coin authentic, regardless of the truth? This arrangement does not inculcate much trust, frankly.

I noticed that Harlan Berk didn't bother to slab his $65,000 Tetradrachm of Akragas. Probably because he's a good businessman and doesn't want to add $650 overhead to the piece, plus he knows the buyer of the coin will want to hold it.

 

I think involving a third party in the sale of ancients is only really somewhat necessary if you're buying something really expensive, otherwise they just seem like a waste of time. If I was thinking of buying a pricey coin on ebay I'd be coming here for opinions first anyway.

To be honest this matter isn't really that big for me as I've only been collecting ancients for a short time and unfortunately being a student I can hardly afford anything, so I actually like to buy them in uncleaned lots. Nothing is more exciting then patiently cleaning your coins day by day revealing more and more detail. Then again it kinda sucks when you've spent a month cleaning a coin to find a really bad slug under all the crust. Anyway, I've never really been bothered by the price or value of the coins I find, just that they look nice and have so much history behind them.

 

Too, too many points:
1. I do not like to hear any suggestion that David Vagi would in any way tip the scales of a questionable coin just to collect the 1%. I believe he is way too honest to do something like that but I know he is too smart. Exactly one case of something like this would end NGC permanently. The ancient coin fraternity has been based on trust and honor with ungodly sums of money. People who are not trustworthy are known. You can be wrong many times and be forgiven; you can be caught being dishonest exactly once.

2. There are examples of slabbed coins that are either misidentified or fake. They are very rare. In fact, I suspect a genuine NGC slab containing a demonstrated fake would sell at auction for double what it would bring with a real coin inside. Off brand slabs with coins of Elagabalus IDed as Caracalla exist but I was too stupid to buy the one I saw for sale. I would love to own an NGC error which is about as nice a compliment as I can imagine saying about their service. We all make errors. If you sent a lot of really uncertain coins to them I would expect them to refuse to slab many more real coins than they would slab a fake. When we buy coins we all can use this same technique. If I am 2% doubtful of a coin's authenticity, I can decide to just walk away and spend my limited budget on something else. If I were running a slabbing service, I would make regular use of the 'don't know, can't tell' option even if it lost me a customer every time I did it. I own a dozen or so coins I would not sell to anyone who know less about coins than I do simply because they violate that 2% doubt rule.

3. Harlan Berk is a genuine expert in some fields and employs some of the greatest numismatic minds in others. He will make an occasional mistake as will anyone else. I would so, so rather have a coins with his fingerprints on it than one in a slab of any brand. That said, he shocked me by saying 'not the internet'. His firm has a web site and his firm sells some lesser coins on eBay. I know a few coin books that have more errors than any web site. It is not the venue that makes something good or bad; it is the content. Similarly, I would feel better about a coin that Harlan Berk and his staff had seen RAW than one they themselves had only seen slabbed. Slabs make it hard to examine a coin fully. It is not the type of container but the clarity of eye and mind that saw the coin.

4. I know many reasonably good sources of coin information online and on paper. I do not know a single source of what I would consider useful information as to prices for ancient coins. I believe it is impossible to write a guide that does not require the user to know more going into the process than they are likely to gain from the guide. Sure you can record what 'similar' coins sold for in past times and places. Armed with that information all you have to do is apply all the minor variables and you have the answer. As soon as I understand all of those variables, I'll let you know.