Why is this £1000?

I bet it's a typo. It was probably supposed to be £100, even though that's still an eye-rolling price for this coin.

I sent an inquiry to the dealer.

 

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I was curious who the dealer was, so I search VCoins. (I guessed wrong.) I was surprised to see how many coins of Fausta were listed in the $100-500 range. My guess is a lot of dealers who specialize in other areas, like Greek silver or whatever, know next to nothing about LRBs and assume coins of Fausta in VF-EF condition are much scarcer than they really are.

I also noticed the same dealer is selling coins like these for around $60:




These prices seem reasonable. But he's asking around $360 for this coin, which is probably 4-5 times what it's worth:

So I think the dealer, or perhaps the dealer's customers, are a little confused about LRBs.

 

I can’t imagine dropping 1000 pounds without doing a little market research first. Like just simply searching for other Fausta coins at VCoins. That gesture would instantly tell you this coin is worth less than 10% of its asking price.

But hey, a fool and his money.

 

I sure hope not. The standardized ISBNs make that process easy for books. Reference numbers like RIC may do something similar for coins, yuck.

 

Or even searching by image, or finding out which dealers don't list on VCoins and cross-listing. Lots of ways they COULD do it, although most easily discovered and I'd hope would be stopped quickly.

 

Oh my

 

If the model you described came to pass, wouldn't it be almost as easy for a buyer to do some basic research to find the third-party-advertised/inflated price coin in its original listing? Buyer beware; buyer research

 

Yes, and that's true of books too. But the problem is that the cost of listing is generally very low, and the returns are high even if you only make a couple of sales. Most people see through it. But the problem is that you still get multiple listings at absurd prices. Abebooks is notorious for this. And with books, there aren't generally any auction records unless it's a valuable antiquarian book. So sometimes the 'fake' price ends up as a benchmark, and as more get listed they never sell. But it's impossible to buy at a sensible price.

 

Hmm. I see now. Thanks for that explanation!

 

That’s right the good prices all disappear. It’s very frustrating. A few years ago you could buy a mass market used paperback for $4 from Abebooks now the algorithms automatically make it $127 because it’s the only one currently listed.

 

Try bookfinder.com . I get a lot of books through them at reasonable prices.

 

$1500 for that coin? Hmmm. Admittedly I've seen some wacky pricing out there but this one takes the cake. Poor newbies who fall for this sort of thing.

Wow! A coin almost 2,000 years old - must be worth a fortune! You could pick up 3 solidi for that price.

 

A day and a half later, the seller has not yet responded to my inquiry and the price is still listed at £1000. Hmm.

 

I contacted the seller as well to see if the coin was priced accurately. Have not heard back. Maybe it's not a mistake after all.