I can't explain that particular one. It's excellent and worthy of a high price, but that price seemed excessive even to me, even in the current market, even if it had an excellent provenance(I didn't research it though, so I'm not sure).
I had assumed that it was a dealer snapping up the premium coins possibly acting on behalf of customers for a fee or to resale (for a profit) later. I only mentioned Bidder 21 based on the number of coins and prices purchased.
I didn't bid. Seeing the opening bids and knowing today's market I knew it'd be a pointless effort. But I did get a nice paper catalog from Leu, so I guess that makes me an overall winner in the auction.
Don't think I've ever even put in a bid at a Leu print auction. Mostly too rich for my blood. It is however getting very, very tempting to consign some coins to them - they seem to be getting the strongest bidding across the board out of the auction houses I watch regularly.
I won this at Leu for 6% above estimate. €1.6k on €1.5k estimate. One of the best preserved examples of this style variety. Pleased. It has a documented 1975 provenance..Good value. Ignore the overpriced coins. Prices will return soon to normal values I also bought an Eagle / Pegasus ROMANOM aes signatum bar piece with part of the ROMANOM legend visible today for €300. Misidentified. So this weekends auctions were ok for me. And for other reasonably knowledgeable collectors. The nonsensical prices are I think driven by newish bidders perhaps encouraged by their agents to bid high to win. On coins thatll appear a dozen more times for sale this year
460 euros hammer for a Herennia Etruscilla is high, but she often has an ugly portrait and is usually struck with worn dies. Here is one I got recently after a lot of looking and a few losses, at cost including shipping of $91: 22 mm. 3.00 grams. PVDICTIA AVG RIC IV.II (Trajan Decius) 58b. This portrait is attractive, unlike many. There is wear at the ear and the dies show wear in the lettering. If this coin is unusually nice, what is the even nicer Leu coin worth? You can see the Leu coin has less wear and a crisper strike, if not entirely fresh dies. Apparently, a little nicer can mean a lot more expensive, but isn't that true for all coins at the top end? I've seen a lot of crazy prices recently in the sense a coin that nice could be had for a fraction of the price. But, with the Leu Herennia, I'm not sure it would be easy to find another one that nice.
Mine was $53 shipped in 2011 & despite the flan flaw, still pretty nice for the price. Herennia Etruscilla (249 - 253) AR Antoninianus O: HER ETRVSCILLA AVG Draped bust right on crescent, hair in straight lines with long plait carried up the back of head, stephane in hair. R: PVDICITIA AVG Pudicitia, veiled, seated left, drawing veil with right hand, transverse scepter in left. 23mm 4.2g RIC IV, Part III, 59b (Trajan Decius)
So honest question.. are these crazy prices isolated to ancient coins or is the phenomenon happening across a wide range of collectibles markets?
According to acsearch, of the 625 previous auction sales of the Roscius Fabatus (Juno Sospita/maiden and snake) denarius in their database, the two highest prices before this Aureo & Calico auction were $7,509 and $3,829, both in 2017. More recent prices have actually been somewhat lower: out of more than 60 sold since the beginning of 2020, I see only one in the $3,000 range, and another in the $2,000 range. So these astronomical prices, which obviously required at least two people willing to bid that high, are way out of line with anything before now. And not all of the examples are even all that outstanding. Perhaps the control mark pairs are particularly rare? Or there are two collectors out there trying to collect a full set of all the different control mark pairs?* Otherwise, I don't get it. *Crawford lists 242 different control-mark pairs for the type, so assembling a full set would be quite a task. See Crawford Vol. II Plates LXVIII-LXIX.
The Juno type is also significantly scarcer than either Pudicitia type. My 34 euro hammer from 2018: Most of the Leu prices today seemed pretty high. On the other hand, there was at least one bargain: lot 1008! A very rare and interesting item with a truly amazing provenance. I haven't been well enough this weekend to participate properly, but had I noticed that coin I would have bid quite a bit more than 220 CHF!
I had only a few coins on my Leu watchlist and this was one of them. Unfortunately I tuned in to the auction a bit too late! I'll tell myself the winner was willing to go much higher . My other bids were very aggressive but not enough . One would have easily made the #1 spot on my year-end list but alas...
The most expensive coin sold in the Leu auction yesterday (about $400k after fees) was this spectacular and extremely rare Civil War aureus - ex Hunt Collection, one of two known and the only one in private hands. https://www.biddr.com/auctions/leu/browse?a=2017&l=2220934 Also sold at around the same time and for about the same price was this Cryptopunk jpeg NFT. As far as Cryptopunks go, it seems pretty garden variety and is not even the priciest one to be sold in the past 24 hours. https://opensea.io/assets/0xb47e3cd837ddf8e4c57f05d70ab865de6e193bbb/6033 Granted, this is not an apple to apple comparison , but my takeaway is that there's a whole lotta money out there. As much as I'd like for coin prices to return to "normal" values soon, I'm not very optimistic. Also, there are plenty of easier ways to launder money than through $10k ancient coins.
Well, gee, given a choice between those two if I had $400K, it would be a hard decision on which one is more beautiful and artistic, right? I mean, you certainly can't say that one required more skill than the other to create.
The amount of money being thrown around in trashy NFT’s is pretty shocking, and a lot of these things are fads that will blow over and lose 99% of their value. On the other hand, the underlying tech of NFT’s is not something to be dismissed and along with Smart contracts, Defi, stablecoins, DAOs, Web3, staking/ mining assets this is world changing stuff evolving at light speed.
What I'll say is that after looking at some of these NFT jpegs, I take back any bad thing I've ever said about the quality of the art on Byzantine coins. I don't disagree... That looks like a beautiful Terina stater, btw.
As I don't have any knowledge on Romans, I am a bit surprised to read there was so much interest on this coin. There is nothing in the description about rarity. I could understand for example if this was the 2nd-3rd etc known example. Otherwise I see a worn holed coin with 3 deep scuffs on the reverse, scratches on the obverse and other surface problems. I am even more surprised this is graded as VF, while it should have been F or even worse.
Those observations are all true... I wanted it for the interesting pedigree . (Northumberland, et al) I was not interested enough in the civil war coins to spend thousands for a better example with the same pedigree.