The "Dark Side" of the Dark Side: unpublished coins of Asia Minor and Greece

Here is an unpublished coin listed on ebay(and VCoins). What do the experts here make of these kinds of coins? Are there thousands or hundreds of them out there just waiting to be listed? Does their value only depend on interest historically, artistically or with specialist collectors? List any you have if you wish with their stories. The one here has some fascinating imagery. Does anyone just collect these rare types?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Thrace-Per...609233?hash=item2a93ff4f91:g:hmYAAOSwPyBZt0U4

 

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I dropped in at the CNG offices today to pick up a couple of auction wins. Their walls are covered with shelving from top to bottom, packed with probably every numismatic reference and auction catalog ever published. I'm never going to believe a coin is unpublished unless they say so!

 

So is it possible JA to send them info on a coin and see what they say?

 

I don't know. I do know that those guys are crazy busy, so personally I would never ask them to look up coins for me.

 

It's not uncommon to find an unpublished provincial every now and then. Seller lists as extremely rare which is not unpublished.

 

You too can have a ridiculous library thanks to CNG. All you have to do is bid high on their current Electronic sale. While I have seen better selections of coins, this sale has a huge library including books you just don't see all that often (or ever???). There are cheap used copies of common books sometimes grouped together and some books I would love to see, let alone own. Those of you who say we should "Buy the book before the coin!" need to treat this sale as an opportunity to put up or shut up.

 

Coins that are rare today probably did not get much use in ancient times outside of a small geographic area. Coins with just a few examples known contributed very little to economics or art. A common coin like an Alex tet is part of a larger story and the super-rare coins usually aren't.

Of course, if you are a specialist in some city or mythological story you can work hard to acquire extremely rare coins in your area. But there is little point in collecting only for rarity unless you are planning on donating the coins to a museum.

Extremely rare coins outside of popular series have near random "values." Here is an example from my collection:


Mysia, Parion. AE12 1.5g
Obv: Head of Gorgon (?) facing.
Rev: ΠARI. Grape bunch on vine.
ex-Pecunum, auction 14, March 2014, lot 224.

Competition was fierce on this item. I ended up having to pay 5.6x the estimate. I believe it was described as unpublished however I know it appeared as a line drawing in Imhoof-Blumer's Choix de monnaies grecques de la collection de F. Imhoff-Blumer (1883), pl. 3 #90. I knew that because the American Numismatic Society in New York has a better library than CNG and it has open stacks except for the rarest items.

My treasure is in AG-3 or G-4 condition. Imhoof-Blumer's was not much better. For three years I considered mine the second known of two examples.

Yesterday a much better example, I'd grade it as VG-8, was sold in an online auction. It went for only one tick past the opening price and I was the under-bidder. Perhaps I could have gotten it cheaply and upgraded my example... but as they are from different dies I probably wouldn't have been able to part with mine. It didn't seem right for me to own all of the examples sold in the last century. That is the other problem with really rare coins. There is no one to have a friendly rivalry with.

 

Thanks Ed. I was hoping you would have a reply with an intriguing answer for what you can't deny is a fascinating side of ancients. For me it is the religious/mythological that often holds the interest. I do believe some of these coins hold secrets of the mystery traditions that only those initiates would understand. The coins however are another means of ensuring the survival of what might be vital information but encoded in a sense. These coins hold religious and cosmological history and development as well as as socio-political and artistic/cultural history. But you are right, there are not a lot of folks to share the appreciation of it all.But that has probably been the plight of many archivists in various genre of antiquities.

 

I don't collect anything just because it is rare.

Unfortunately, a lot of the artistic coins I do want also happen to be rare, making it hard or impossible for normal collectors (like me) to own them.

I wish there was a huge supply of genuine Akragas Dekadrachms for example, so everyone could have one.

 

Thanks Mike. Here is an example from my collection of a not-so-rare coin that may hold the kind of information you describe.


PISIDIA, Etenna, AE16, 3.7g
Obv: Woman with snake; tipped pitcher beside
Rev: ET-EN Curved knife

Barclay Head wrote in Historia Numorum that "These types may represent a local myth of a nymph attacked by a serpent and rescued by a hero (Imhoof, Kl. M., pp. 369 ff.)." The local myth has not come down to us. A paper by N V. Sekunda, 'Anatolian War-Sickles and the Coinage of Etenna', tries to deduce what the myth was about. (There are super-rare Provincial coins also depicting the myth, but in this case the ordinary coin does the job.) We also see this in vases -- the depictions show us things that we don't get from written sources.

There are probably a lot of coins depicting local myths that we don't know about. How often do you see a coin depicting "Athena" or "Apollo" or "Zeus"? It is likely many of them depict a local version or completely different figure. Some professor proclaimed 200 years ago that since the face is beardless it must be Apollo. We don't even think about other possibilities any more.

 

I couldn't agree more with you @dougsmit the selection is outstanding. For those that haven't looked, some of the Greek highlights are as follows:
Kraay & Hirmer - Greek Coins
Houghton & Lorber - Seleucid Coins Parts 1 & 2
British Museum Catalogue of Greek Coins - most regions and the complete volume.
Price - The Coinage in the Name of Alexander the Great x2
Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum - a huge selection of countries.

That's just from the pages of Greek relates works. There are also some great works on Roman, Medieval, and modern coins add well. My 2018 coin budget is going to take a serious hit before the year even starts.

 

Thanks for the heads up Doug. they do indeed have some great books available. I have already bid on one and I am looking to bid on 2-3 others.

 

Rare ancient coins are a weird breed. Like others have alluded to, the rarity actually makes them less collectible and desirable. There is a reason morgan silver dollars are worth so much, and that is because there are so many of them. It might sound like an oxymoron, but large quantities breed large number of collectors. I have a gold coin that the greatest dealer in the world of the series declares unique, and I think I paid $400 for it. Tiny populations breed tiny amount of collectors who care about the coin, if any at all.

To me, I don't worry too much about the "rarity" of a coin. If you love it, feel free to buy it, but don't throw money at it only because of rarity. There is a good chance when you go to sell no one else may care about the rarity. Yes, you may have to wait for a long time to find another, and if that means something to you feel free to chase it, but that does not mean the coin is necessarily "worth" that.

You what makes all of this conversation easy? Treat coin money as throw away money, never worrying about resale value. I waste money all of the time, considering the money simply consumed for my hobby. Then I don't worry about resale and simply toss money away for my coins.

 

I agree whole-heartedly. In the Marketing world, the concept is called "Awareness". The more aware the market is of your product (coin), the higher the incidence that they WANT it.

Me: I like rarity too, knowing full well the smaller niche that some coins fulfill. PERSONALLY, some coins' unique niche in history causes their rarity, and becomes attractive to me... ONLY if I WANT it.

 

I agree with one minor reservation. Very rare coins can have extra demand if they have some other factor that makes them known to more people than can possibly own one. The EID MAR denarii are hardly rare with 80-100 known but the thousand or so people who regret not having one offsets the population count. Below are coins I will never own but would like to if only the other people richer than I would stop wanting the few that exist.

The early Greek Phanes decided to write his name on coins inventing legends.
CNG 105, Lot: 290. Estimate $15000.
Sold for $32011. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

IONIA, Ephesos. Phanes. Circa 625-600 BC. EL Trite – Third Stater (14.5mm, 4.65 g). ΦANEO (in retrograde archaic Greek), stag grazing right, its dappled coat indicated by indentations on the body / Two incuse punches, each with raised intersecting lines. Weidauer 40; SNG München 14; ACGC 54; GPCG p. 98, 3; Kraay & Hirmer 585; Zhuyuetang 8. VF, lightly toned. Very rare, fewer than twenty trites of Phanes known.





The 'Poros' medallions/dekadrachms of Alexander have more theories as to why they were made than there are surviving specimens. It may well be the most expensive ancient coin in relation to the ugliness of the surviving specimens. When I was much younger, some thought these may have been issued in relation to the wedding of Alexander and his soldiers to women from the East. Other explanations have risen to higher promenance more recently.
http://www.livius.org/sources/content/arrian/anabasis/the-weddings-in-susa/

Triton XVI, Lot: 284. Estimate $75000.
Sold for $75000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

KINGS of MACEDON. Alexander III ‘the Great’. 336-323 BC. AR ‘Medallion’ of 5 Shekels or Dekadrachm (33mm, 38.75 g, 5h). Local (Satrapal) mint in Babylon. Struck circa 325-323 BC. Alexander, wearing military attire and holding couched xyston in right hand, on Boukephalos rearing right, attacking toward an elephant retreating right, upon which sits a helmeted mahout, holding goad and spear in left hand, turning around to throw another spear held aloft in his right hand, and, behind him, another helmeted figure, who also is turning around, his right hand holding the tip of Alexander’s xyston; Ξ above / Alexander, wearing military attire and sword, standing facing, head left, holding thunderbolt in extended right hand, left hand holding spear set on ground to right; [above, Nike flying right, crowning him with wreath held in both her hands]; monogram to left. Price pp. 452–3 and pl. CLIX, G–H; F. Holt, Alexander the Great and the Mystery of the Elephant Medallions (Berkeley, 2003), Appendix A, E/A 10 (dies 2/F) = M.J. Price, “Circulation at Babylon in 323 B.C.” in Mnemata: Papers in Memory of Nancy M. Waggoner (New York, 1991), 13 = M.J. Price, “The ‘Porus’ Coinage of Alexander the Great: a Symbol of Concord and Community” in SPNO, Obv. B/Rev. d = MIG type 21, c (this coin). VF for type, toned, some minor cleaning marks, usual areas of weak strike, a few minor flan flaws. Extremely rare, one of ten examples known, five of which are in museums (ANS, BM [2], BN, and Copenhagen), and the only example from these dies.


Finally: my #1 (I want this coin - not just any specimen) - It lacks the last letter of the name ΝΩΕ on the side of the box which is a much larger fault than the holes but I want the Septimius one. Gordian and Philip are more common. No one would care about this coin except it is said to depict Noah and his wife in and leaving their Arc (see the dove?).
SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS (193 - 211)
Apameia (Kibotos) in Phrygien
Großbronze, unter dem Agonotheten Artemas. AVT×K×L×CªPT - CªOVHPOC PªP-TI. Gepanzerte Porträtbüste des Kaisers mit Lorbeerkranz nach rechts. Rs: [ªΠI AΓO]NOΘª TO V APTEMA (im Abschnitt)AΠAMEΩ/N. Noah und seine Frau stehen in einer kastenförmigen Arche, deren Deckel aufgeklappt ist; links in einer zweiten Szenerie danken sie im Adorationsgestus Gott, darüber eine Taube (oder Rabe) mit Ölzweig im Schnabel nach rechts fliegend, auf dem Kastendeckel weiterer Vogel sitzend, auf dem Kasten NΩª 22,99g.


Rarity means little unless........ or if you are like me and just like rare coins even if they are not popular and would be hard to sell.

 

Just to follow up on this: There are two copies of David Sellwood's "An Introduction to the Coinage of Parthia (Second Edition)" and one copy of Fred Shore's "Parthian Coins and History: Ten Dragons Against Rome" in the current CNG auction. These are the two books you need if you are serious about Parthian coins- especially Sellwood. (I consider any Parthian coin sold without assignment to the correct Sellwood number to be unattributed.) If you have been considering getting into Parthian coins, this could be your big chance.