Do you ever question relative values within your collection?

In terms of "value", there are two types: intrinsic and extrinsic. Extrinsic value is the monetary value of a given coin. Intrinsic value is the value that is placed on a coin based on more vague criteria: does the coin appeal to you on an emotional or aesthetic level? Does the coin have historical significance? Is the coin significant enough to you that you will keep it until you are carried out feet first?

While I keep monetary value in mind, trying always to acquire coins within my means, the ultimate determinant of a coin's relative value has always been its intrinsic value to me.

Going through life reducing the things we pursue to simply monetary terms cheats us to a large extent from enjoying the wonders of our world, including coins.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

I think what you're looking to quantify is a view of the "je ne sais quoi" per dollar for each coin.

A coin of Julius Caesar has a lot of excitement packed up in it whereas a coin of an obscure emperor might not, even if that rarer emperor is more expensive.

This ultimately comes down to preference: many people collect rare emperors which is why they're relatively expensive even if they don't have the same outside-of-numismatics name recognition.

I suppose that, outside of Surface and Strike, we should add a 5/5 of Style, 5/5 of Historical Importance, 5/5 of Novelty and Numismatic Interest, and 5/5 of Layman Name Recognition, among others.

Plotting all coins on this map would be a challenging and highly biased exercise but it might help quantify what you're perceiving.

 

You know, I sometimes do.

There are some rarities that have little historical connection but that I "must" have to finish a set, and I may eventually spend silly amounts on them, however when I step back I realize I am chasing them not because they are rare, or interesting, or attractive, but because they are a missing piece in an incomplete set. And my nature (and the nature of many collectors) is to fill that hole. In the end, it's sometimes a bad acquisition strategy, and once the numbers become large, you have to step back and ask yourself "is this how I want to budget my limited funds?"

And so some holes that are not impossible to fill go years without procuring a specimen.
But in the end, usually one of two things happens (and sometimes both).
1) The collecting mentality wins and you buy the damn thing
2) You get tired of this perpetually incomplete set and give up, maybe sell the set, maybe not, but certainly move on to something else.

Then there are some coins that are truly coin perfection- high artistic merit, historically important, large size, high quality precious metal, available in high grades. These are the pieces that transcend numismatics, and sell for amounts that don't seem commensurate with their availability, yet always seem to appreciate faster than ugly rare ones.

On the opposite side of the perfection scale are medieval coins

 

I just likes what I likes. If I like it, it's interesting to my eye and I am interested in the history it represents then I take my time to find that one piece of currency, that one historical artifact, to spend a little of my currency on. Its a passion for the history and artistry that drives me (and certainly others here), learning everything I can about that time, place, person, event, engraver, what came before and after. I am interested in currency, how it began, how it evolved, how it is made.

The only way value enters into it is that if I am going to spend money for money, I want it to be the right one and it's probably better to spend a little more then regret spending a little less and not getting that one example that was just what I was looking for. Numismatics is not just collecting. It is another of the many important disciplines that study a field of human endeavour, it is much more than just representative value or a medium of exchange. It is history, art, art history, propaganda, symbolism, the history of economics and monetary systems.

It's so much more than just coin fondling.

 

I think of relative value in terms of opportunity cost. I have a certain monthly budget which often might allow me to buy a handful of decent bronzes or a single nice denarius. Sometimes that single nice denarius might cost multiple months' budget, or might require me to sell off some Second Punic War duplicates or something. It gets more complicated if one or more of the coins involved are rarities I might not see another example of for another 5 years or a decade. I want a healthy mix of sympathetic rarities and beautiful coins in my collection, and I've also been trying to make my collection more balanced towards the late Republic/Imperatorial period as it is currently very Second Punic War heavy. Sometimes it is really, really difficult to balance these considerations and figure out what to bid on. That said, I'm actually quite happy with where I've landed recently. In the last few months, I've bulked up the Late Republic end of my collection, while also keeping a slow trickle of earlier rarities coming in. This has given me a nice balance of interesting and pretty coins that even non-specialists enjoy, and interesting "academic" coins that help fill holes in the collection and in some cases provide material for future research. The latter often aren't available in high grade so I am not as bothered settling for lesser examples of them