An owl sold on eBay today for $7K.

Ilya Zlobin is the P.T. Barnum of coin dealers. By posting common coins with lengthy writeups & posing as an international expert he has lured many ignorant buyers to fall for his BS. This pompous pretender has no conscience. His $7,198.65 Owl has a value in the $400-500 range, including the cost of the slab. I agree with robinjojo, an NGC grade of AU, Strike 5/5, Surface 5/5, is just as absurd as the price of $7,198.65 for this coin. The poor style of engraving on the obverse side of this coin indicates a late date


Ilya Zlobin Owl, alleged eBay sale price of $7,198.65 .

I thought that I overpaid for my $705.08 Owl, but maybe not .


Athens, circa 454-404 BC. AR Tetradrachm: 17.22 gm, 25 mm, 3 h.

 

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It seems that Zlobin's practice of immediately discounting everything acts as a hack on the way eBay displays sold prices.

Normally a "best offer accepted" sale will display the original asking price with a strike-through and the words "Best offer accepted". You don't know what the accepted offer was, other than it clearly not being the striked-out asking price.

With Zlobin's "discounted" prices, a "best offer accepted" sale again shows the original (pre-discount) asking price with a strike-through, but also shows the discounted asking price without a strike-through, and "Best offer accepted", perhaps leading the unaware to assume the "discounted" price is what it actually sold for.

This misleading impression is then compounded if you click-thru (from prior sales) to the original listing where it will say "Sold for:<discounted-price>" with no mention at all of "Best offer accepted" !

It seems that eBay is too dumb to strike out both the original price and discounted price in the case where an item was both discounted and then sold for a lesser best offer amount.

 

I have mixed emotions about Ilya.
The cons :
1. His coin prices seem unusually high. But not stupid-Ebay, ethically-questionable high. Not like $150,000-for-a-crappy-looking-worn-common-coin-from-Egypt high. However, I am basing this statement, on his Byzantine coins, which I used to look at frequently, back in 2019. I'm not familiar with his high end Greek stuff.
2. I don't know, why he believes, that he needs to pretend, that his coins are highly discounted. Back when I used to shop on Ebay a lot, back when I was an ancient coin newbie, which was a couple of years ago in 2019, it seemed like he periodically jacked up the prices of his coins, just so he could drop the prices soon afterward, and claim that the prices were discounted. One day, a coin's price, would be twice as high, as it was, the day before. Then, soon after that, the coin's price, would drop back down, to its usual "discounted" price, with a slash through the jacked up price, and saying "save 50%", or something similar. This seems ethically questionable, although somewhat ridiculous. Who cares, whether a coin is "on sale" or not? I just care, about the price, of the coin. I'm not the type of person, who buys something, just because it is advertised as being "on sale". However, I know, that some persons, fall for this sort of marketing. I don't know, if Ilya still does this. If he does, then it is his biggest downside, as far as I know.
3. Maybe he believes, that his niche, is the newbie market.
4. Maybe it's difficult, to make a decent amount of money, if you only sell on Ebay, and don't sell on more numismatically responsible web sites. Maybe he has to have high prices, in order to cover the expense, of some Ebay customers, who fraudulently claim, that they never received the coins they paid for. I don't know.
5. Maybe he pays more, than most dealers, for the coins he buys, and therefore has to pass the cost on, when he sells the coins. I don't know.
The pros :
1. I have really enjoyed watching his Youtube videos. Here is one of my favorite Ilya Youtube videos, about Byzantine coins :

2. His coins seem to be authentic, as far as I can tell. However, I am only familiar with his Byzantine coins.

 

I was also surprised by those, so went to the NGC web site to see how they define these things.

The "5/5" ratings seem potentially a bit misleading since they could be interpreted as saying these aspects are perfect, when really it only means top 20% (with 1/5 being bottom 20%, etc).

I guess you could argue whether the strike is off-center, or simply the flan is too small, with the latter apparently considered as a grade issue, not strike.

Unless I've missed it, I don't see any definition of how NGC define "choice" (as in Ch AU vs AU). Is choice meant to mean "one of the best" or merely "top 50%", or what ?

 

Just checked eBay - The coin page states that it has been relisted.....Go figure!

 

Hmm... Maybe the buyer has found a better deal (which can't be that hard)

 

Yes, the owl has been relisted at the original price.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/324708522173?hash=item4b9a22d8bd:g:zzQAAOSwvM9ggzGN

 

Who gives a "hoot"...? Seriously, have tried to appreciate this ancient stuff, but just can't get into it. To each their own.

 

I’ve also seriously tried to get into this modern stuff but just can’t find a way! A huge turn-off is this practice of giving coins a mark out of 70, then entombing them in a plastic coffin. And then applying stickers to indicate that a coin is on the higher end of a 64/70. And then having nonsensical online debates about whether a coin deserves the 64/70 with the sticker, or maybe the sticker is too generous because there’s a tiny tiny mark somewhere on the coin under 10x magnification?

Why not use the traditional scale of Poor to Extremely Fine? And then use your eyes to judge the merits (style, toning, patina etc) and then decide for yourself if you like the coin?

Besides, I don’t have the storage space to accommodate piles of slabs.

Anyway, that’s why I can’t get into modern coins. My non-participation doesn’t make any difference though - modern coins (especially US) are huge business!

 

Folks tend to be awed when you hand them a coin and tell them it was struck when the New Testament was written.

Not so much when you tell them it was struck when The Grapes of Wrath was written.

 

@Mac McDonald It's funny, how a person's tastes, can change, or broaden, over time.
Until 2018, I only collected US coins, and English coins.
My favorite US coins, were the trade dollar, and the large cent.
My favorite English coins, were the old English large copper pennies, which were minted as early as 1790 AD or so.
Then, one day, I was reading "The Fellowship Of The Ring". I read a passage, about how Bilbo gave some "silver pennies", to some young hobbits. After that, I started to collect English silver pennies, which were minted as early as 700 AD or so, because the English silver penny, was the ancestor of the English copper penny. However, the earliest one, that I ever purchased, was a Richard The Lionheart silver penny, from 1195 AD or so. The earlier ones are pretty pricey.
Then I read, that the English silver penny, was sort of a descendant, of the Roman denarius. So I started collecting Roman denarii, which go back to 211 BC.
Then, I read, that the Roman denarius, was sort of a descendant, of the Greek drachm. So I started collecting Greek drachmae, which go back to 450 BC or so.
Then, I decided, that the Greek drachm, was sort of a descendant, of the Greek stater. So I started collecting Greek staters, which go back to 650 BC or so.
Then, I decided to try to bridge the gap, between my Roman denarius of 100 AD, and my English silver penny of 1195 AD. That's when I got into Byzantine coins. I became fascinated, with the Byzantine Empire, as a child, after seeing a Byzantine exhibit, at a museum. I decided to collect mainly Byzantine copper coins, because Byzantine silver coins were minted in small quantities, and were not used much, by average Byzantine citizens. And Byzantine gold coins, while used by the Byzantine upper class, are expensive to collect.
So that's how I started collecting ancient coins. So, since 2018, I've mostly collected ancient coins, except for an excursion into Spanish pieces of eight cob coins from the New World.
So watch out. The ancient coins, may one day, come for you, and take you away, on an unexpected journey.

 

me and apparently many here do. enjoy your Morgans or whatever there is only 50 gazillion and they all look the same (Cited from: https://www.cointalk.com/threads/an-owl-sold-on-ebay-today-for-7k.383239/page-2)

 

He must have made an oopsie when setting his username to lowrating_highprice

 

I feel the same way about modern coins... who cares what some big industrial press can spit out with some graphic designed on a computer.

 

I guess I am more of a universalist collector. Over the years my focus, or lack of focus, has gone from US, to world and ancients, to world only, then back to mostly ancients with a smattering of world coinage. Maybe this is due to my multiple personalities, plus an ever decreasing memory and sloth of organization.

I still have some US coinage, mostly gold. The US silver coinage has minimal representation: a bust dollar of 1798, a trade dollar, a California commemorative half-dollar, some Peace dollars, and one lone 1884 Morgan (CC mint), in its GSA hold and a note from Nixon, before his exit in 1974.

This is a pretty typical GSA CC dollar, with the usual bag/contact marks. That black spot on the reverse rim is a little bit of plastic from the holder:

 

It looks like the seller re-listed it.

Maybe the buyer was trolling?

In either case I got an offer of $2,363 on my owl and it’s in MS condition so I can’t imagine why someone would pay $7K for a lesser conditioned one.

Unless there’s something special about it.

 

That's a very nice owl. Unless you need to raise cash, I'd hold on to it.

I think a lot of the drive behind escalating prices for ancients, including owls, is due to a lot of cash in the hands of people who have no or limited knowledge on the vast and complex field of ancient coins, and are willing to plunk down a fist full of money on a coin with little or no consideration. This has happened many times in the past, during boom cycles, usually followed by bust cycles, and so it will continue, in the words of Shakespeare "...until the end of recorded time".

Enjoy your coin.

 

Thanks .

According to the listing it was minted with high relief dies “especially on the reverse”.

I think it’s interesting that the same person who made 2 different offers on my owl also made offers on at least 20 other different MS graded owls.

You can see via Heritage Auctions the offers that have been made that day and all of a sudden there were 20+ owls that had offers made of at least 30% higher than the original buyer paid.

Not just owls either! They also made offers on like 20 different Alexander the Great tetradrachms.

I’m wondering if it was some really rich person trying to corner the market by buying up as many as possible and then slowly selling them over a long period of years to make a substantial profit.

Afterall there are less than 3,000 MS graded owls so it would be pretty easy for someone who was rich to corner the market.

 

Given the ocean of owls out there, I imagine that there many more than the 3,000 graded MS by the certification firms. Think any attempt to corner the market, with tens of thousands of owls out there, with more found each year, would be akin to Nelson Bunker Hunt's attempt to corner the silver bullion market in 1980 - doomed to failure.

Some people have done extremely well, thank you, in the stock market. Many have become overnight millionaires through IPO's and buyouts. A lot of CEOs have raked in handsome salaries and bonuses. This has been going on from many years, but it really accelerated over the past year or so. There are also relatively newly minted millionaires from China and other Asian countries. The fact is that people in this rarified stratum need to put their money into assets that have a good yield. Savings and treasury notes have a miniscule interest yield. So, money flows into real estate, art, antiques and, yes, coins, of all sorts.

So, we get into a feedback loop, of sorts. Money floods into owls and other coins, ancient and modern. That drives up prices, which, in turn, causes more money to drive up prices even further. This is a classic case for a bubble, be it stocks, collectibles or coins. Nothing lasts forever, and eventually, what stock managers call a correction, or corrections, at the macro level will occur, usually caused by some external event. And then the cycle begins anew, but not necessarily immediately. Remember, the US really did not pull out of the Great Depression until World War II. I don't think that is a very good model to follow now, given a world of countries armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons and other means of mass destruction.

Well, on a far less serious note, here's an owl that is sort of like yours, but different. The weight is significantly lower, which, coupled with stylistic differences, does make it an imitation.

14.57 grams

 

That’s a pretty nice owl!

As far as number of MS owls I’m just going by the NGC population report since PCGS doesn’t do them.

It shows that there are 2,298 owls graded MS/MS* and another 92 graded Ch MS for a total of about 2,390.

Even in all grades it shows less than 10,000 graded.

I imagine there are just as many ungraded as graded so if we double that it’s still only about 20,000 owls total.

That’s not many when you consider the extremely expensive 1893 S Morgan Dollar had a mintage of 100,000.