NGC population reports for graded coins

Catalogers of high grade modern coins often boast about coins having only a few specimens, or even no specimens, known in a higher grade.

Ancient coin catalogers will sometimes say "finest known" but they rarely say things like "only a population of 43 coins better".

On NGC's slab verification pages, for example https://www.ngccoin.com/certlookup/4629247-016/NGCAncients/ , there are no population reports comparable to modern coins. That page says "Total Graded by NGC: Not Available".

Yet I noticed the Heritage Auctions web now includes NGC Ancients population reports. I noticed this watching their Long Beach auction yesterday. Here is an example from a recent Heritage online-only auction: https://coins.ha.com/itm/ancients/g...m-9h-ngc-ms-5-5-3-5-test-cut/a/231836-61011.s . The auction listing displays the slabbed population with the grade of the current lot highlighted in yellow.

Here is the owl population as of September 7th 2018:


The auction house gives an NGC population report and includes the count of star (= "impressive"). They don't mention "fine style" or "test cut" or the x/5 ratings. This particular lot has a huge test cut that doesn't make it into the numerical chart.

I was curious to see the single starred "Choice MS" example in the above population report. It is https://coins.ha.com/itm/greek/anci...22-gm-5h-ngc-choice-ms-5-5-5-5/a/3066-30035.s , and it sold for $36k last month.

 

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IMHO I think pop reports for ancients can be very arbitrary because of many variations of a single coin. Would all these variations be under one coin or each one its individual pop? (retorical question, unless you have an answer)

 

What a farce, you are seeing what NGC wants to do to this hobby. Heritage loves it though, because now they can take a $2,000 coin, encase it in plastic, and get some US investors-type to pay $36,000 for it (the plastic tax).

It worked wonders for the U.S. Coins Market, which is why U.S. coins are so grossly overpriced today compared to any other coinage in the world. How long before we start seeing Athenian Owl coins rated MS-67* or MS-66 First Stike, or MS-65 Deep Cameo, or maybe even MS-65+.

I give it less than a year before CAC stickers become a thing for slabbed ancients too. Anything to bring the "It's all about the highest grade and investment value" US-investor types into the untapped ancients market so they can ruin it like they did with US coins. They'll drive away actual collectors who care about the history and artistic value of coins, and it will all be about "grade", "CAC stickers", "resale value", "which coin is the best investment".

PS: Population reports are meaningless because they don't account the coins that haven't been submitted, and some coins are submitted more than once. Meaning it is not an accurate reflection of anything, really.

 

You are totally right. Someone if they wanted to screw up the pop reports. They can submit, crack out, wear down, submit again and could mess up the details pops also

 

Heritage announced the availability of this pop report database for ancients with a press release a month or so ago but I didn't see it yet on their website. I wrote to inquire about it but never heard back.

 

I reviewed the prices realized for that auction and was utterly flabbergasted. This was a prime example of that reaction.

I'm glad you dredged it up. I meant to post this coin and sales price after the auction so we could discuss it. Does anyone here see a reason for the outlandish price it realized?

 

NGC "precious resin"? I guess the market price for plastic is a lot more than I thought.

 

The amounts people will pay for a plastic holder that says something on it is beyond me.

 

This is why I used the example of an MS coin with huge test cut. Earlier in the day an XF owl sold for 1.5x what the MS example sold for. NGC lists a few attributes such as "fine style", "test cut", "brushed", and star (="impressive"). Star is the only one currently worthy of display. It is possible the market wants something like baseball statistics ("... average against left-handers on the home court ...").

WINGS is already doing stickers for slabbed ancients.

Two possibilities. The first is "a second Cleo has entered the arena".

I glanced at that coin at the preview last month. I didn't spend more than a few seconds because I didn't know what a star it would turn out to be. I recall thinking it might sell for over the high estimate.

Perhaps the coin was actually good and worth the money? This can be hard to tell from photographs. Mint state owls especially. Here is an exercise that I have found helpful. Pick a few dozen nice coins that will be in an upcoming glossy-catalog auction without looking at the estimates. Then write your personal estimate based on the catalog photos. Do it again with the online photos. Then do it again with the coins in hand at the preview.

Sometimes the numbers won't match up, especially for high relief coins in high grades.

 

I'm not surprised this hasn't happened earlier. 10 years ago Vagi was commenting on how undervalued ancients were (I don't remember if he was working for NGC at that time or not). I would have to agree with him but a 36k price for that tet is just absurd. I foresee more high grade 'popular' coins going for what the rest of us consider ridiculous prices. To me those coins are similar to a pyramid scheme with the person paying the highest amount will be stuck with it while there will be similar coins around for a fraction of the price. How long will it take before we see that coin being sold somewhere else for 5k?

 

Well, if Vagi gets his way and coins that used to be $100 are now $900 thanks to the "plastic tax" easing the way for investors, and this forum becomes like the U.S. forum or the Coin Chat forum, where 95% of the conversation is either "MS-65 vs MS-66", "which coin is the better investment", "which coin is the most popular to buy to make money," or "which is better, NGC or PCGS," I'm done! I definitely will not take part of my time to spend it in a forum where everything is "grade, investment, re-sale value," and the history, artistic value, thrill of discovering something new, the joy of sharing research and knowledge between collectors is completely or almost completely gone.

I've said it before and I stand by it, what NGC and PCGS did to U.S. coins is allow a large number of new "collectors" to come in because they could invest zero effort in actually caring and learning about grading coins, studying coins, collecting coins, the history of the coins, etc., which led to U.S. Numismatics becoming perceived more as a commodity market and less about the small thrills of learning and collecting. You see the change in the Coin Chat thread, with new collectors with ungraded coins which are considered "junk" by the community because they may not meet PCGS and NGC standard. These new collectors frequently get treated with scorn or brushed off for "wasting" the time of the established collectors for daring to change the topic from the endless debate loop of whether this coin is one point higher, one point lower, going up or down in price, or a good or bad investment. In the end, the new collector either gives up the hobby in frustration, or allows himself/herself to be programmed to see the hobby in the same commodities investment mindset as the rest.

 

Not much crest for $36k.

I know where the best owl in the whole world is with a complete earring and its only $1,000,000!

 

$36,000 from the ancient coins equivalent of a 'Pump and Dump' auction house:




VS this one for $4,200 on v-coins.com




For around $32,000 less you get more crest, a cleaner reverse, a better shaped flan.

If you ask me, the Athenian tets are grossly overpriced as is. It's a shame how much these coins have ballooned in price considering how common they are, but if you are going to pay thousands of dollars for a coin that survives in XF-AU condition in the many hundreds, if not thousands, better off paying $4,200 than $36,000 + 20% Auction Fee for one just like it simply because if comes in fancy plastic and it has a fancy population report.

 

As a small-time dealer in US coins, it was disheartening (and I guess demoralizing) to think about most of my coins purely as commodities. I did have some that were really hard to let go of because they had interesting stories or had a very appealing look. But I have been able to use the commodity market to my advantage to pay off my school expenses and ancient coins I want to buy.

I now only buy coins (to keep) for their beauty or they story they tell. Give me an MS seated half dime or an EF shield nickel with a strong Doubled Die Obverse with crazy die cracks (value aside), I would go for the latter. It tells the story of the trouble the US mint had minting coins with the “devil’s copper.” They went through dies so quickly due to cracking, that they really did not care about the quality of the dies, leading to many crazy varieties. The half dime is just a high-grade example of a boring type. I’ve sold off most of my US coins and now only keep ones that are actually interesting. I am unfortunately in the vast minority with this mindset.

With US coins, these “interesting” coins can be few and far between, or priced at sky-high prices, making the field as a whole generally uninteresting. Just about every decent ancient/medieval is interesting and many of these are affordable, so you can guess where most of my money has been going over the past couple years.

 

I also started out as a US coins collector. I left that community after 16 years of US coin collecting because I got bored of the repetitive nature of the conversation on US coin forums. It didn't feel like a community, but rather a gathering of investors.

I still collected US coins for a little while longer, but I also got bored with the dreadful modern designs of the US mint, and the practice of selling their new offerings to investors instead of collectors, and being forced to either overpay for the coin from the investors who bought the entire supply up from the mint so they could rip off collectors, or have to wait years to finally buy the coin once the price gouging died down.

Then I found ancients and never looked back!

 

Interesting post, @Ed Snible !

 

As a side, I collect world coins, but not ancients and have been the proud owner of three coins that were top pop, but they were the only example NGC had graded.....lol.

 

I find this trend disturbing in the extreme -- specifically, the increasing evidence that non-collectors are getting into the ancient coin market simply for investment purposes, and relying on slabbed coins to make their decision for them.

Right now, I see two ways that this trend may go in the future:

(1) Slabbing becomes the norm for ancient coins, and investors who are primarily non-collectors take over the market (as they apparently have in modern coins) because they find they can make a profit.

(2) The individuals who ignorantly overpay by 1700% or so find out that they can't resell their folly for a profit any time within their investment time frame, and prices drop precipitously. Slabbing of ancients continues on its merry way but investors look for better, more reliable markets.

I don't know which trend will prevail, but I'm rooting vociferously for #2.

 

I like some US stuff, but on the whole it is for me a very expensive series to even consider collecting. Ancients is something I can enjoy a lot more, because the coins are much older, but cost about the same.
In ancient coins, each coin should be valued individually, and not by forced standards that are originally based on the amount of wear a coin minted with the same sharpness, relief, thickness, and weight as the next one recieves over time.
I personally don’t care much for slabs, and own none currently. The only time I see use for a slab is to guarantee authenticity, and only if I’m truly unsure.
I see almost no use, with the exception of the above, to slab an ancient coin at all, and I certainly don’t see how that translates to a price increase.

 

This is definitely something that worries me — I mean, ancient coins probably are undervalued, no? I assume we all had a similar reaction, at the time we started collecting, of how cheap the entry-level items seemed: bemusement that one can pick up an antoninianus in respectable condition for thirty or forty bucks or so. It just feels slightly unnatural that something so old could be so inexpensive. Obviously with more experience comes the knowledge that the quality material isn't nearly so cheap; and the price and commonness of low-end stuff makes a lot more sense once you appreciate just how many of these things the Romans were turning out every day.

But nobody is going to have a good idea how much an ancient coin "should" cost before they get into the hobby and start gaining this kind of understanding. If the price of a beat-up Gordian III rose to ten times as much as it currently is, I suspect the attitude of the prospective new collector would be something like "well, this seems about right, these things are super old after all" — that's in no way an irrational or illogical line of thinking if you have no experience to set it off against.

Then combine that with the apparently inexhaustible amount of people who're content to let slabs do the thinking for them — there'll be big profits to be made selling graded Severus Alexander denarii in the future, I'm very sure. Regrettable but probably unavoidable.