Collecting Philosophy

Sallent, I am always puzzled as to how your come up with your inaccurate guesstimates, especially with abundance of resources - coins designated Star especially in MS state will easily sell at 10x of similar grade without a star..
Ab Ovo...

 

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You can put a plastic case with a star on that coin all you want, still not $36,000 any way you look at it.

Heck, Vcoins even has an AU* for $32,000 less ($4,000) which I think it's an even better coin than the $36,000 one...



Unlike the $36,000 one, this one has a full crest and the flan is a more regular shape.

Even the most expensive one on Vcoins, which has perfect 5's and is a full MS in the nicest broadest flan I've ever seen, with full crest and everything, is more than $21,000 cheaper, and I'm sure the dealer will give a decent discount on it if asked. And personally speaking, I'd rather have an MS without the star, but with a nice broad flan and all elements fully present (including the whole crest) for tens of thousands less, than one with a * but an irregular flan and some of the elements of the design cut off. Buy the coin, not the slab.

 

The passage referenced by Voldya got me to thinking. Some of what he said is true. I believe that my collection is a function of available resources coupled with what I perceive my collecting goals to be which can be somewhat elastic meeting available coins. Okay perhaps an illustration. Recently I was able to purchase a few coins from a collection formed by a good friend. There was this coin
A Bosporan Av Stater of Rhoemetalkes and Hadrian. MacDonald 437/2 RPC 908 This coin illustrated. This coin is at the fringe of what I collect but I liked the coin ever since I first saw it and even though I probably would not go out to buy one well long story short. It was available and soooo ... bought it. Having done that I saw this coin as well .

Bosporan Av? Stater of Rhescoporus II and Severus Alexander.MacDonald 563/1. I thought the coin was attractive and I like the style so I bought it.(The dreaded impulse buy) So even though I have an overall goal of what I would like to achieve many of the component parts can be sometimes less well defined. Thus my resources coupled with my goals meeting availability.

 

I collect ancient coins that have some intangible captivating quality about them.
Thats it.
What actually fits that description is highly personal, but I'm definitely moving to quality over quantity and will never have a large collection just for the sake of it.

 

Or like both...

Like you @Sallent I can focus on a specific theme, my main goal being to put together a comprehensive set of the Dombes coinage (everything that is already known, and everything I might discover as unpublished ( @dougsmit )

And

Like you @Ken Dorney as a roman coin collector (RR and Emipre) I will only purchase what appeals to me for any reason

Both are nice, although very different, and broaden my mind, I think

Q

 

I would kindly suggest that one first reads the article "coin collecting as an addiction" before developing a "collecting philosophy"

http://www.virtualstampclub.com/marotta.html

 

As with Joe and Phil, I stick rigorously to my criteria, which differ from Phil's even though we both collect high-end Roman Republican because I place value on different things such as the coin's ownership history and the consequent positive "votes" past famous collectors have given to the coins in my collection. I also collect bronzes aes grave and gold which means different types of compromises. No matter what level one is collecting at, it always involves a lot of compromises.

Though my current collection is what most people would think of a "high quality", I put practically no money into coins except that which comes out of my existing collection through resale. I've a modest pension and what money I can spare from that goes into travel for coin research and acquisition, not on the coins themselves. For instance travel costs to visit the ANS in New York or the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge to research provenances. And my monthly subscription to the London Library which has an extensive ancient history and numismatics section. I put a massive amount of time and effort into fundamental research (additional to provenance research) on the coins I own. For example I've discovered and published many new overstrike bronze types in my collection; then when I sell such a coin it helps to buy a fraction of a nice Julius Caesar denarius (which I can buy cheaper because of good research). And I notice and research like crazy any slight variation in a coin design that does not match the standard catalogue descriptions. And then I sell it and it helps to buy a Cassius denarius. When a collector has better condition coins with wonderful provenances, don't think "daddy's trust fund" … really wonderful collections are formed through WORK WORK WORK WORK WORK.

To cite a specific example rather than a model, I recently sold the top two extremely rare coins, with appropriate research and commentary:

And the proceeds fully covered the cost of buying this relatively common coin in one of last months auctions, but that has a Caesar portrait quality that is really exceptional for the type (thus rare as such):

This is why one rarely sees me on this forum merely chatting. I could chat and add "nice coin" comments or I could spend the same hours scrutinising an overstrike and pulling every possible SNG volume I have access to in order to find a match for the undertype. Over the course of a life career of course I've put some savings from my job as an engineer into coins, but it was the hopefully wise selections of what to buy ten or twenty or thirty years ago, combined with deep research, that has allowed me to convert a very large study-collection of averagely worn coins into a smaller quality collection of superb coins at almost no cost. WORK adds the pixie-dust of quality to your collection. At the outset that means thousands of hours of research to make sure one buys the right coins at the right price to start with. I almost never buy a coin "with" a good provenance because that means I'd be paying for already-known information. I buy coins "likely to have" a good provenance, which I can tell from the nature of the coin itself. And that requires endless research so one can recognise that "Quadras y Ramon" look. And here's a picture of Alexey Stakhanov drilling coal, to further drill home my message. Be like him.

So there are a range of different collecting philosophies, but they are not all equivalent in my eyes. Collectors who collect widely but not deeply will enjoy their collections immensely but collectors who put in the hard work and research and that have a good eye (due to ten thousand hours of more of research) are very likely to form much better collections at much lower cost. There is real merit in building deep expertise, in sweating your collection. Skip the Netflix, log-off Coin Talk and get the books out.

 

Every collecting strategy described in this thread is perfectly valid and seems to reflect an individual's personality more than anything. We could probably match names to Myers-Briggs personality types or to DSM-5 diagnoses based on any given CoinTalker's collection . What does your collection say about you? (For some people, perhaps that question is best left unexplored )

I'm in it for the amazing art , fascinating stories, and history... but mostly for the fun. If it stops being fun I'll stop collecting.

Excellent point.

Exactly . Although, sometimes I have to invent the story .

 

Of all coins, the owls are more pieced out than any. Different people value different pieces. I agree with Sallent in preferring the vcoins $4k coin BUT several of us would not touch it due to the weak hair over the eye. The $36k coin is stronger there but is downright defective and uncollectable if you are a member of the full crest fetish group or one who insists on a full incuse square reverse. Otherwise excellent coins get decimated in the market for a bit of weakness in the owl's feathers or, my personal obsession, a nose touching the edge of the flan.

I recently visited a friend who had just bought a group of the new hoard owls (it seems they are cheaper if you get a couple dozen). He had selected four with different imperfections as the best of his lot. All were lovely coins. One had the best crest with margins beyond it; one lost some crest (20%?) but was complete at the bottom. One had a truely great owl. My favorite was balanced and only slightly imperfect in each of the twenty or so points of consideration that make the difference between the high priced super coins and those that sell at a discount.

This new group of owls is, most fortunately, from a style period that is popular and well executed. I do not know how many coins there are in total but hope the owners realize that they will have a lot easier time finding buyers for these than if they had 30,000 coins from the later 4th century (folded flans and funny shapes). What would be the market prospect for 30,000 test cut coins? Some of us there would love to have just any owl; some would even prefer a group that included several different styles so we could assemble a group (one from each decade???). It will take a while before we really know if there are loving homes for all those feral owls. When they were made, the owls were storehouses of bulk wealth like the ingots now in vaults. For a while they may return to that original status or even be the 'Lincoln Logs' of the Hunt Brothers grandchildren.


One thing is certain: If you want a nice owl, you can get one today and you can be as picky as you want to be as long as you are willing to pay the price. In my time in the hobby there has always been a supply of owls available but now you can find offerings for bulk lots of really nice ones that previously would have been stars of our collections. What is not certain is whether the $1000 owl bought today will be $2000 or $200 next year. If you want an owl because you want an owl, that is of no matter.

 

When you are ready for the "purge" do a Bing-type auction or post on eBay and let everyone here know. New collectors like myself are always on the lookout for "well loved" coins.

 

Better to do the auction directly through this forum, using PMs, than eBay where you're going to be charged fees. Don't give any money to those crooks running eBay

 

If you check out Carausius's posts I think you'll find the coins he'll purge will be out of our league.

 

Thanks for the intent of that comment, which I know was complimentary. I prefer not to think of coins and collectors in "leagues." We all share a common love of ancient coins. We may collect differently, but we are all in the same "league" as far as I'm concerned.

 

Absolutely! A poor choice of words. I think the CoinTalk ancients forum does an excellent job of proving your point!

If you do plan on selling anything through a non-top-tier venue, please let me know. I may have a suggestion.

 

I've just stumbled upon an interesting update to this saga: it would seem that this coin didn't actually sell or was never paid for, which certainly adds another layer of intrigue to the discussion (@Sallent , thanks for bringing it back up).

Heritage posts their upcoming lots and this exact coin is being sold in their August auction:

https://coins.ha.com/itm/greek/anci...3075-45002.s?ic4=GalleryView-Thumbnail-071515

We shall see what happens this time around but my guess is it won't be anywhere near the last sale price.

 

Maybe the buyer came to Cointalk to brag about his new purchase and saw everyone poking fun at him in a thread, and he decided then not to pay for his coin. Good for him. That coin was not worth $36k

 

But the coin will still appear in the online listings at that number making it appear that the market is stronger than it is. I have a few coins that appear online for considerably more than I paid but I have no way of knowing if a previous owner took a bath or if the auctioneer reported his dreams rather than paid sales. No one likes to advertise non paying sales.

 

That the coin is back is very interesting. I was told that when the subsequent hoard of Athenian coins showed up people were buying them and then slabbing them perhaps hoping for a similar result. The big question is...... There had to be two people driving the coin up to that ridiculous price. There has to be more to this.

 

To each his own. I collect ancient coins as a relaxing pastime that is so enjoyable that I find it actually relieves the stress from my day job. It's my gift to me. The last thing it is to me is work. It directs my reading habits in a great way - opening doors that in many cases I did not even know were there.
I also LOVE my Netflix. We all measure success differently.