On September 15, 2010 I won a beautiful tetradrachm of Caracalla from Tyre, Phoenicia, at CNG Auction 85, lot 683, for $2,645.00. See photo below, courtesy of CNG. I decided to sell the coin with a large consignment in the Heritage Platinum Auction on January 7, 2018. Before sending the coin to Heritage I sent it to NGC for slabbing. See photos below. The time between buying & selling the coin, almost 8 years, the ancient coin market lost a lot of its value as did the entire coin market. The antiques & collectibles markets took a similar hit. It appeared that all these markets had peaked & finally corrected. Heritage ended up selling my coin for $2,640.00, so I didn't feel too bad with the result. Yesterday while browsing thru the latest auction of Roma Numismatics of London, lo & behold, I spotted my Caracalla tetradrachm stripped of its NGC encapsulation! See the link at the end of this post. The coin currently has a bid of 1,600 British pounds which converts to $2,078.33 American dollars. The London auction closes on the 26th of this month. I found it very interesting that no mention of the coin being in the Heritage auction was in their description. Will this coin sell for more raw than it did slabbed by NGC ? Time will tell.... http://romanumismatics.com/auction/lot/0482/
What a beauty. My line of business, old books, has been hit by modern times a lot harder I think. But real toppers (like this one) keep their value.
I would observe that, to my eye, the original CNG photo makes this coin much more attractive than the photo of the coin in the slab. I wonder if this affected the hammer price?
The eagle behind bust is a nice touch by the engraver. I haven't seen that used before on a Provincial Phoenician tet. As far as the price; it's hard to gauge off a single coin. Too many variables to come to a sure conclusion. It could be based off of one person being out of cell service, forgetting about the auction, alarm not going off, winning something earlier in the auction and budget running out, if @AncientJoe or Clio are busy, etc. I think the trend is going up, price wise. I've seen several of the same coins come to auction within the last decade. Though I can't quote many off the top of my head, in discussion, I seem to always talk about the increase of price in ancients, using prior hammer prices as a reference. The opposite of what you're expecting happened last year. The following stater, slabless, sold in Roma 13, 3/23/2017 for 5952 USD (incluing Buyer's Premium) Image Source: https://www.numisbids.com/n.php?p=lot&sid=1884&lot=370 Note: only 3 examples exist, and 1 of them is nearly cut in half. (I still can't believe how cheap, relatively, ancients are to US.) 5 months later, after receiving its plastic, it was consigned to the ANA 8/3/2017 Heritage Auction. It sold for 11,162 USD (including Buyer's Premium.) A difference of 5000 USD, in plastic, 5 months later. Did the NGC slab make a difference? My answer: "Conjecture, conjecture, conjecture. In conclusion: chaos theory, philosophy and conjecture." Michael
IdesOfMarch, there's no comparison, photos of raw coins should always look better than slabbed coins. In the case of my coin I don't believe that's the case, although the Heritage photos were vastly inferior to the photos I posted. The Heritage auction & the current Roma Numismatic auction, which are only 9 months apart, will be a good test on your theory. If the current auction yields a much higher price than the Heritage auction you'll most certainly be correct.
