Your "Not such a great deal" coins

Hello everyone,

We all have our coins that we're super proud of. Either they look amazing, are rare, or have particular historical significance. Or, they could be common coins that you got at a great price. However, secretly we each have some coins that are none of these.

When I first started collecting ancients a year ago, I made a list of the three coins I absolutely had to have. They were

1. An owl tetradrachm from Athens, because I grew up reading Plato, Aristophanes, and Sophocles.
2. A lifetime tetradrachm from Alexander the Great, because he was awesome.
3. An Olbian dolphin coin, because dolphins are awesome.

For the first roughly two months, I only bought from Forum Ancient Coins. They were the only ones I trusted, but they had no owls, Alexanders, or dolphins at the time. Then, I learned about auctions. At first I was distrusting, but slowly I learned that there are some reputable ones out there. The first I learned about was CNG, where I would eventually pick up my owl. However, my first auction as a participant was Savoca Blue.

To my delight, there was my dolphin! And, it even looked like a dolphin! The majority of dolphins I'd seen looked like they'd crawled up on the beach and died fifty years ago. I had to have it.

I did what I thought was research and couldn't find any dolphins this nice. Later on, I'd learn where to look. So, I placed my bid and... someone outbid me!

This was my dolphin, how dare you! I wasn't going to let this fisherman with no respect for aquatic mammals take what should be mine. I bid again, and he responded.

Finally, at 140 Euros, he'd had enough. I nervously expected to bid higher during the Live auction, but for some reason no one wanted to. The dolphin was mine!


Scythia. Olbia circa 437-410 BC. Cast dolphin Æ
25 mm., 1,50 g.

Of course, it didn't take me long to realize that I'd paid easily three times too much for it. In fact, for what I paid I could have bought one of the larger APIXO ones.

Still, I like my dolphin, because a coin shaped like a dolphin is still IMHO one of the coolest things ever. I also like the ΘΥ abbreviation, whose meaning still vexes people today. There was some speculation that it means "tunny fish", but that's since been discounted.

Well, that's my story. Post your coins that until now you were hesitant to admit that you paid so much, and the healing process can begin.

 

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Although most of my regrets are with bullions that I bought for really high premiums, with ancients I've been a bottom feeder so far, however this coin really made me regret my purchase.
Seller's image, the ugliest coin I bought for 100 usd, excluding shipping and taxes!
Silver issues for the Chola dynasty are extremely scarce, so when I saw this coin being offered, I didn't think too much before buying it, but after the initial excitement wore off I just felt disappointed in buying such coin and thought I should've waited for a better one, the regret only got worse when I received the cruddy coin.
So to make it worth my money, I decided to do a proper cleaning, I treated it with acetone, used lemon juice and scraped the encrustations and dirt with toothpick, then again treated it with acetone and lemon juice, finally dropping it in an aluminium foil covered bowl containing hot water & sodium bicarbonate, after it cooled down I lightly cleaned it with a steel wool, and this is the result!
Definitely an upgrade to my eyes!

 

Nevertheless, that is a really good looking dolphin.
Here's mine:


And some coins that I over paid on early in my collecting. I went to my local coin shop, big mistake, and asked to see their ancients. Brick and morter stores are known for over pricing and double so on ancients. I paid $25-$40 for each coin. I can get these things for dollars in ebay or around ten bucks a piece at auction :/

 

One of my biggest regrets was paying something like $3k for this lot


Seems like a pretty solid deal, right?

Well, the auction house had carefully arranged the coins to hide the fact that almost all of them had one crisp side and one side that was almost completely smooth from a poor strike. My dreams of turning multiple hundreds of dollars' profit turned into paying over $1,000 for these few keepers



Maybe not *so* bad with today's market prices, but in 2017 I certainly would have been better off just buying nice examples off of Vcoins.

 

...patience is a virtue...but when you 'have' to have, or 'need' a certain coin 'now'..its possible to make errors..and most of us make'em..and thats why i have 2 of a lot o coins, because i found one better or cheaper after buying the 1st one, a few times buying the 2nd before i even received the 1st

 

Great post, @kirispupis ! Welcome to ancient coin collecting. Some call it crossing over to “The Dark Side” but I prefer to liken it to stepping into the sunlight.

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Here is my first ancient coin purchase from 2005. I found these collections advertised in the back of a Biblical archeology magazine. I was not a coin collector in fact I knew nothing about coins. I was a troubled young man shopping for Holy relics. I paid $,$$$.$$ for this collection. Far more than what the individual coins in the collection would cost in the condition they were in.

You know what? I don’t regret a penny of it. It was the first step into an awesome way of life.

 

This may set the record for highest price paid for a Gallienus Libero P Cons Avg. But no regrets!!


Gallienus, 253-268 AD.
Roman Æ Antoninianus, 2.63 g, 20.8 mm, 5 h.
Rome Mint, 10th emission, 267-268 AD.
Obv: GALLIENVS AVG, radiate head right.
Rev: LIBERO P CONS AVG, tiger walking left, B in exergue.
Refs: RIC 230K; Göbl 713b; Cohen 586; RCV 10281; Cunetio 1341; Hunter 112.

 

Care to name the auction house? As a group lot buyer, I am always interested in how the houses present them. Of course, the best, (for me), is always either the thrown on a table or pics showing both sides. I really dislike those houses that intentionally mislead.

The weird thing about coins is as long as they are high quality you tend to forget you overpaid for them. I have many coins that the purchase price stung a lot when I bought them, (avatar for instance), but quality coins always go up it seems. The OPs dolphin is a very nice example, with the denomination listed and much prettier than normal. I bet you in 5 years you are no longer upset at the price and just glad you got it.

 

Very good idea for a thread!

I rarely got (seriously) carried away and spent too much on a coin.
Paid 30 EUR for a coin with a 20 EUR value, but not often.

One coin I should have passed is this one.


The coin is not bad and it is important for me as it's connected to Dacia.
But it is not a rarity and I feel the 75 EUR hammer price (+taxes) is not something to write home about. I have seen nicer examples sold with 40-50 EUR.

Also won this lot (100 EUR + taxes)

I managed to correctly attribute, without doubt, 12 coins from a total of 13.
But, as I was expecting, the coins are worse in hand and the pic shows the better sides. So not a tragedy, but again, nothing to write home about.

I could say the rest of my coins were won, usually, with the sum I was expecting or less.

When I see that a coin I want gets up in the sky I just quit. Especially if I know another one will appear, not being a rarity.

Fun fact - a few months ago I saw 2 coins in an auction. I really wanted them. A Column denarius and a DAC CAP denarius. As I was determined to pay slightly more for them than normal (20-30%) I was 99% sure I will get them (modest conservation). But what do you know, somebody wanted them no matter what. I got carried away and my last bids for the 2 coins were MUCH more than I was comfortable with. Still lost. That was in fact a victory.

 

100 Euros. Not sure you can buy much for 100 Euros today in terms of group lots. You did fine there.

I am finding myself, (surprisingly), loosening up on the pursestrings. If I don't I am buying nothing, and I haven't received a package in the mail in a couple of months, so starting to peeve me off. I am bidding on many coins this weekend, one I am planning on bidding 4 times the estimate for a duplicate, (don't judge me), and want to lean in strong on at least one auction group lots. The thing I am finding is you are better to lean in on one auction since the postage and handling is simply getting BRUTAL. One can no longer buy a lot for 100 Euros anymore economically, the shipping eats you up. Better to buy multiples from one firm to be more economical overall if you can.

 

For many of us, the recent hoard of high grade owls made our previous coins worth a fraction of the former price. Mine cost what would now bring one without flat places.

 

You didn't say what you paid, but Leu had one that hammered last month for over $800!
https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=8418826

 

I overpaid for some LRB bulk "hoard" lots which were priced by the kilogram. I bought a few half-kilo lots (around 150 coins) and some kilo lots (270 coins or thereabouts). The marketing pitch on the website was that nothing had been picked out of these lots so there was a lot of upside and who knows, maybe hidden treasure? About 20-30% were attributable, some were OK and a few were impressive. But not really worth the total amount I paid which was around $1800.

Caveat Emptor.

Nowadays I avoid group lots (unless they are photographed obverse and reverse) so desirability can be determined beforehand.

 

I have tried to be careful but it seems I forget sometimes on the premium that comes along with buying. I have found Heritage very forgiving on canceling a bid. I bought this Mithradates III at auction for 270.00 and think I paid too much. Not sure though. I like the coin so I guess that is what counts in the end.

 

@Roman Collector , i paid like $4 for my big cat




My worst deal I think is this Gallienus provincial I paid like $85 for.
Its pretty cool, but the reverse has been tooled to death, surfaces poorly smoothed, and just was a pretty disappointing price to pay. I would be happy at 40, but $85 for a tooled coin was a bit much for me.

 

That lot was from Leu. I learned a hard lesson about bidding on any of their Roman lots - usually any super nice Roman you find in their Large Lots section is going to have something seriously wrong with it, unless it's in a smaller lot with both sides photographed. Greek and non-classical are a -little- better.

 

It would be a long list for me... I feel I am overpaying most of the coins I picked up this year, ancient and otherwise. It is hard to get good deals in auctions, especially those high-profile ones such as Heritage and CNG. I guess I'll pause for a little while.

 

Boy, here's a thread right up my alley, unfortunately. Here's a coin of Agrippa that I wanted for the longest time, as it appeared in the seller's listing:


I loved it, but something looked "off", and there were all kinds of little fibers stuck all over it, so I suspected a lot of wax was on it. I sent it in to (I forgot where) for a professional numismatist cleaning to get rid of the fibers and see what else was going on with the coin, and it turned out to have been painted...painted!...and then filled in with a ton of wax! So I asked for all of that nonsense to be removed, but the coin ended up down to the brassy level, and I wanted it dark brown like it looked in the original listing, so it was "repatinated" to brown. I got exactly what I asked for and they did a great job of cleaning the garbage off of the coin, but man...I really, really don't like it now and don't even want it.

Here's probably the worst coin photo ever taken, just now, with my crappy phone camera. Not a real good representation of the coin as it looks now, but close:



Naturally, I paid the going rate for the coin, and I take it as a lesson learned all the way around, but it's a heartbreaker.

 

Interesting thread idea and good posts so far.

I certainly overpaid for this coin. I bought it in an antique shop in the old town of Jerusalem in 2016. However, when compared to any other type of souvenir I could have bought for the same price I think it is a good buy. I have no regrets.

 

Would thirteen attempts to buy “just the right” owl count?

I wanted one to carry with me in a leather pouch on my keychain to share with others. It had to be in poor enough condition that additional handling wouldn’t significantly affect it, good enough condition that when I showed it to people they didn’t go “where’s the owl again?”, and most importantly, cheap enough I could afford it.

After expending my collecting budget for over a year on one failed attempt after another, I settled on the thirteenth coin as the perfect owl. Though in truth I probably would still be hunting to this day if my long-suffering wife, tired of hearing how my latest purchase failed to meet some trivial aspect of my exacting specifications, hadn’t forbidden my purchasing any more owls. So now I’m sitting on hoard of a dozen poor condition owls that I neither wanted nor needed that total more than the cost of an FDC.

And people wonder why I rarely buy coins anymore…