Why aren't these coins worth more

Actually, the opposite tends to happen. When a large hoard of rare-ish coins comes to the market, prices actually remain roughly the same and sometimes increase, as more people view collecting them as a reasonable option, since they're available. Now, if there were a coin with one known, and a whole hoard is found, obviously the price is going to dip. There have been a bunch of big Carausius hoards floating about, but does anyone see them going for less?

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

There is nothing like seeing a lot of something to drive up demand for it. For example I show below two coins from my collection. Neither are particularly high grade or particularly poor. Each would sell for roughly the same price. One exists in a quantity that would allow all the known examples to be picked up in one hand (???estimate???). The other is common enough that rock stars (well, Milli Vanilli anyway) can make them into charm bracelets. Rarity means nothing; demand is everything.

 

Nice, @dougsmit Obviously, I recognize the Athenian owl, but what's the attribution for the other coin? I can make out SEVERUS AUG / VICTORIOUS ... (I think) in the legend, but have no idea where to start on attributing it.

 

the niger worth more than the athens tet. These days stupid niger that you can't even see the face or his name sell more than post 475bc tets.

 

I wonder how much this would go for.
Most wouldn't even lay their eyes on it if he didn't point out it was a Didius.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/371562348350?_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

 

I'm waiting for the Eid Mar's to be found!

 

a hoard of Eid Mar like the cassius tripods? There would be some serious pissed off collectors ouch.

 

Yes, exactly like that!

 

It may be a meaningless question but I believe the market could absorb a reasonable size group of new EID MAR denarii without a lot of problem. There are about 100 of the things and at least 1000 people who would love to have one so the added opportunity to get one would be met with at least as many additional people waving big money. Certainly a mint bagful of 5000 would be a problem to people who paid $100,000 for VF's but we'll worry about that when we come to it. EID MAR is not 'just' a rare coin but commemorating the most famous murder of history as it does complete with legend dating the event would make it the kind of coin that every collector would buy if they were as common as Tribute Pennies or owl tetradrachms. I just hope that IF they find that bag of 5000 we find them to be die linked to the existing specimens so we don't have to go through the endless arguments over authenticity we saw with the Black Sea Hoard coins and several types since. There are still a few people who do not believe in the authenticity of the ones we have (especially the gold) so we really do not need 5000 new coins all from the same dies that probably are genuine but who really knows???

 

A well centered cassius tripod once worth close to 5 figures. The same coins would have difficulty fetching more than 2 grand today, because of 1 hoard, that probably doubled their number?
A hoard of 100 Eid Mar will drop the lesser pieces to 1/5 to 1/10 their current value, and the expansive ones, those that go for half a mil today, would be lucky to retain 5% of their value. The effect of demand (for rarity) on prices is exponential.

Given the circumstances surrounding minting of the coin, there probably isn't much chance for an undiscovered hoard containing more than handful of them to exist.

 

These certainly are interesting assertions, but comparing the desirability of Cassius tripod denarii to EID MAR denarii (in order to establish a similar price drop if a hoard of EID MAR were to appear) seems a bit of a stretch. MANY, many more collectors covet EID MAR than Cassius tripods, so I would speculate that EID MAR denarii prices would not be affected anywhere nearly as much, on a percentage basis.

 

The only way to settle this is for someone to find a hoard of Eid Mar denarii. One can only hope.

 

Get digging, then!

 

I wish I were able to go on a MD trip. Maybe someday. This year, however, I'm planning a salmon fishing trip with a fellow CT member.

 

I was just being silly with my comment, but this is a very interesting question.

I think the market would gladly absorb 100 Eid Mar's. I do think that we'd see the $500,000+ prices for a EF example drop significantly because there are only so many collectors that can come up with that kind of money, but they'd all be bought for 6 figures.

They are being found today as seen by the unprovenanced ones that have been offered in recent years. If several of them are found at any one time, you can be assured they would be released in a very controlled manner to control the price impact. There may already be a hoard...we just don't know.

 

for a type struck with so many different dies, that's not impossible

I think though, the expansive Eid Mar are expansive because of their condition (and rarity of specimens in such condition), and that probably had little to do with historical significance of the type or the total amount that's accounted for.
Many imperatorial types are like that, where there's a big margin between high and low quality pieces, and a hoard that increased availability significantly would change that situation drastically.

There would only be that many people willing and capable of affording above certain threshold. Once that demand had been met, what would happen to rest of the pile?

People who had discovered the hoard containing cassius tripod and brutus knife dispersed them discretely and carefully enough that we don't even know how many were in that hoard, to this day, but the floodgate still opened eventually, and many collectors were left with excuses like "non-hoard" and "circulated" to justify what they had paid.

 

P.S hoards usually contain more high quality pieces than the opposite, because people who hoarded them would had picked out the bad coins and stashed the better ones. The Ionia drachm and tets, after more than half a century of dispersion, the hoard coins are often sold few times as much as circulated ones, even for just a little better surface.

 

Hmm. So, people buried their best-looking coins? For what purpose? Wouldn't the value of the coins at the time of burial have largely been determined by their weight? Circulation doesn't reduce the weight of a coin by much.

I had always thought that if hoard coins were higher grade than non-hoard, it was because they sat in the ground for hundreds of years not circulating, rather than because they were higher grade than coins that weren't buried.

 

Manual coin production methods used in the ancient worlds meant
1. not all coins were made to standards
2. a lot of counterfeits circulating with genuine coins
Shouldn't be difficult to imagine people would want to filter and trade out their bad coins ya?

 

Most of us Ancients collectors are probably ex-modern collectors, including myself. Mint production and condition seem to drive a lot of modern coin prices. Low mintage of 100,000 or 10,000 or 1,000, or even 100 was considered "scarce" or "rare". I dropped out of modern collecting 20 years ago roughly concurrently with my collecting Ancients 25 years ago. I started getting more serious in Ancient collecting around 5 years ago.

I collect based on history, capturing the coins as placemarkers touching that time in History. I like them circulated as I enjoy the concept that they have been held and transacted by humans during Ancient times. I never plan to sell my collection, rather I plan to will them to interested Grandkids. That being said, I have specifically focused my efforts NOT to spend large amounts on high-end coins (however, I am quite capable to), rather to focus on what historical placemarkers that I can acquire.

I find it very exciting that using this strategy, I have found and acquired several coins with a known population of under 20 pieces. I have some with under 5 pieces known. One of my coins has an impeccable provenance and only two known: one in the British Museum and the other one is mine. I am not spending big money per coin. Over the last year I have probably captured around 200-300. However, I am satisfying my collecting urge to "touch Human History" at several, and at some really cool and critical junctures in time. Each of these coins fall within my strategy of being affordable virtually on anyone's budget.

There is no way that I could have this kind collecting strategy in Modern coins, and have the satisfaction of "touching history" as well as having some incredibly rare coins like I do collecting Ancients.

I do not approach coin collecting as an investment. I use other asset acquisition strategies for investment. Rather, coins are my Hobby and Ancient Coins touching ancient humans as placemarkers in History are my passion.