Künker Auction surpise

The estimate was laughably low (as was the case with much of the sale). I placed a bid of 20K on it for the great pedigree as well as the shell condition... alas.

It's undoubtedly in the top 0.1% of existing Aegina staters but is any Aegina stater worth nearly $100K? To me, no, but there were apparently seven phone bidders.

 

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The Aegina turtle doesn't surprise me too much. This is an exceptional coin, and when you get into that stratosphere prices can be all over the place. Bidding can become fierce and when two parties have a lot of disposable income, prices like this can happen.

What I find interesting about Aegina staters in general is - which one you favor says a lot about what type of collector you are. Simplifying things significantly, there are two types of ancient coin collectors.

• Those who see ancient coins as works of art and seek the most perfect copy
• Those who see coins as remnants of history and seek the most representative ones

Aegina staters can be divided into two types (again a simplification).

• Before 456 BCE, when it was occupied by Athens and coin production ceased. These staters depict the sea turtle.
• Afte4 404 BCE, when coin production continued, but for some reason with the land tortoise instead.

In general, the land tortoise (after 404 BCE) coins tend to look nicer due to the details. However, the famous Aegina staters that at one point dominated trade on par (or by some accounts better than) the Athenian owls was the earlier one. Because the earlier coins were heavily used in trade, they tend to be rougher.

So, art collectors tend to go for the later coins, while history buffs should go for the earlier ones.

In terms of the Salonina, I still don't think it makes sense. Maybe if the coin were "best of type" it may fetch this price, but I doubt it is.

 

Here is my Salonina of the OP type:



22 mm. 3.34 grams.
It cost me $35 in 1985.

It seems to me that recently almost every auction has a few excellent coins that will end up losing the buyer a lot of money. The OP coin has almost no wear, but is far from full flan and Salonina is not a favorite of collectors. I'd prefer to have my reverse than the OP reverse (the full-flan strike is better), and the reverse, not the obverse, is key to the value of the coin. If you just want an excellent obverse, there are many Salonina coins which are better.

I think that if that 3800 euro coin were flipped to another major auction it would bring less than 1000. It is a crazy fluke.

 

If I were in the class that allowed such bids, the land tortoise I would seek would not be selected for the shell but for the head detail. Rather few of those coins have heads on flan with enough detail to show that the head is shown from the top with two eyes as on this coin. The Triton coin

appears to show the head turned the opposite way from the sea turtles that preceded the land tortoise type. Frankly, I have trouble accepting that coin but would need to see quite a few more land tortoises with good head detail to have a meaningful opinion. Who else has a full face detail tortoise? I do not have one and probably never will but I do prefer to show my sea turtle swimming left in keeping with its head orientation.


Even my low grade one has enough head to tell it is turned. This last coin does not show a killer whale swimming right at the bottom. Die cuds can be deceptive.



I assume everyone is aware that the change from sea to land animals on coins came when the city lost their navy at war.

 

Athens besieged and conquered Aegina, then forced the Aeginans to resettle elsewhere, where many of them were slaughtered. By the time Sparta let them come back after the end of the Peleponnesian War, they were a tiny fraction of their previous glory.

From what I've read, there's no widely accepted reason why they switched from a sea turtle to a land tortoise. Some guesses I've wondered:

• Athens forced them to stop minting sea turtles, which competed with their owls. Aegina snuck around this by using a land tortoise. I kind of doubt Athens was in a position to do this after losing the war, but maybe.
• Aegina felt for some reason the sea turtle had caused them bad luck.
• They wanted their coins to be prettier, and when an engraver showed them the land tortoise, they really liked it.
• Something to do with Jack Sparrow's story about sea turtles.

 

How about there was a longer gap between the two types than usually believed. History records battles but tends to ignore coinage. Wikipedia says, "Staters depicting a sea-turtle were struck up to the end of the 5th century BC. During the First Peloponnesian War, by 456 BC, it was replaced by the land tortoise.[12]" The author has trouble with dates, possibly not realizing that the end of the 5th century BC was 56 years after the date given. What turtles were made between 431 and 404 BC? I say none.

 

According to this article, there were no staters produced between 431 and 404 BCE. However, there is a diobol that seems to date from this period, and is speculated to have been minted by the Aegina exiles in Thryreatis.

 

I bought a coin at Kuenker for exactly estimate, not 10 times or 50 times estimate. Volteia tripod denarius ex Dr. L.A. Lawrence collection, 1857-1949, sold by Glendining in 1950. No. 179 in the Lawrence sale below. Same coin also surfaced in Seaby Coin and Medal Bulletin March 1975. Neither outing was mentioned by Kuenker tho they mentioned it was ex Seaby. Hammered at Kuenker this weekend at estimate and am content

 

My two favorite Saloninae:

$8 for a decent billon Vesta


$15 for a lovely high silver potin Tet.

 

..sounds like to me maybe there's a couple of clowns/angry ex customers/ aliens that maybe decided to throw a big wrench in that auction .....idk for sure..but...could be a conspiracy

 

I have a feeling that some of Künker's customers are not coin collectors per se, but who buy coins as investments. If they are not experienced, they have probably never heard of Salonina. Get a couple of such customers who are busy with their stocks and shares and running their businesses and no time to see what similar coins are sold for, and their bids go up and up..