Do many dealers buy ancient coins?

Also, gold has an intrinsic value that puts a floor on the acceptable sales price. Not true of other coins.

 

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Oh ok I thought they were saying 30-40% on all coins.

It makes sense to pay 40% on a $50 coin because the profit margin is small but I’m glad to hear that higher priced coins get more than that.

 

If you're already buying from Heritage, why not talk to them (Sam). Even after their charges and BP I'm sure you'll get more than what a dealer might offer, especially if you sell several low value but graded/slabbed coins as a single lot. They even do uncertified coins and provide you access to a very wide client base automatically.

I've done regular business with them and am very impressed with their service and attitude. They treat even small guys like me with a huge amount of respect. I would drop them a line.

 

I worked for seven years in a larger coin shop. We sold a few ancients, but they were not something we dealt in much. For common material, we might pay only 10% of a coin's worth. This was because we'd have to identify and research these coins, which we did not have expertise in. Of course, for better material, we'd do considerably better. I remember paying good money for a gold Macedonian stater once after the owner conferred with another dealer friend of his who knew the value of such things. In general, better material that was not Canadian was typically sold to dealers south of the border in the US because we simply did not have the market for those items in Canada. (This has implications for people selling to dealers, too: if a dealer has to sell to another dealer to get rid of an item, and that dealer then sells to a customer, there are two middlemen rather than one!)

Speaking very generally, and not specifically with reference to ancients--though this will all still be relevant--what we paid for coins varied dramatically according to demand, as you might expect. Some coins (modern decimal pennies from George VI), we might pay only a few cents. We might list them for sale at say 25 cents. This is a huge markup, but it's simply not worth it to treat this kind of coin otherwise, particularly when they were always coming in. They might also sit for years in our back rooms before eventually getting wholesaled out--e.g. for 15 cents each for a quantity of one hundred, or something. The amount of time an item will sit in a dealer's store before being sold is a BIG part of the equation for that dealer when buying your coin.

Other coins, we might pay 30% of trending sales prices for. People would sometimes be shocked at this, but we were actually paying considerably more than anyone around for almost all of the coins we bought. The owner had a lot of overhead, too: rent, insurance, staff, electrical bills, maintenance, computers, and so on.

When we lacked stock of coins that were always in demand, then we would pay much more for them. Some coins we might make only 25% profit on, or even less.

So really, it's all about supply and demand. Does the dealer have a ready stock, meaning that they have no need to buy your unremarkable coins? Then expect an offer of 30% or even much less. Does the dealer badly want that coin, perhaps a high-end coin that he knows he can sell easily for top dollar? Then negotiate until you can find something you can both live with.

The thing that used to irk me was that customers attempting to sell their coins would often get very angry and say "but they're going for so much online" when those were actually prices that dealers, or even ordinary people, were hoping to sell for, not necessarily prices that coins were selling for. eBay, for example, makes it very easy to distinguish a search for current listings from a search for sold listings. There is often a gap between the two. Then, too, condition is everything, and so are things like mintmarks and errors. There are just so many variables that most people who somehow come into possession of an "old" coin and think they've struck the jackpot cannot grasp. It's not rocket science, but it does require an ability to do the hard work of actually studying the market and the product. Bogus listings of perfectly ordinary coins for thousands of dollars, typically on places like Etsy, help to confuse the novice. There is a special place for would-be sellers like that somewhere in the hot underworld, I'm sure!

The other unfortunate thing is that people have a tendency to equate "old" with "valuable." I think this is probably an issue only here in North America, because our (European) history only goes back a few centuries. A 100-year-old house in Vancouver is "old." In Toronto, that might be 200. In Europe, that could by some standards be a young house!

Just because something is a few thousand years old does not make it valuable. Supply and demand does. This applies even to very rare items. If something is quite rare, and there is still no market for it, that item will change hands very cheaply.

I remember reading somewhere that one thing collectors should do, aside from "buy the book before the coin" is actually sell a coin before buying too many. I tried this, and was quite surprised at how little I was going to get for my little treasures. This was a real eye-opener, but it was also an incredibly valuable experience for me.

Finally, in general, I tell people not to treat coin collecting as an investment. People who bought certain kinds of fairly common coins in the mid-twentieth century in many cases were able to sell at massive profits decades later. That's no longer true today in the vast majority of cases. In *most* cases, you should expect to lose money on your coins. Why? Because coins in general do not continuously go up in value, which is an assumption that too many people here in North America have.

Let's say that you buy a coin for $100 today. A year later, you look to sell it, and you are offered only $30 by a dealer over the counter. You are taking a loss. And that is a very typical transaction. On the other hand, let's say that you wait 20 years, and the market changes a bit, and you end out with a coin that is valued at $200. But now the dealer offers you maybe $100 for it. Now you've broke even.

Or have you? You've actually lost money because of inflation.

In other words, in order for you to make money on a coin when you are selling to a dealer, the market for something has to move enormously.

Even if you are selling to a collector, you should not expect to make money. A collector will be able to offer you much more than a dealer can, but they are expecting to save money, too. And if your price is too high, then they won't buy.

The bottom line? In numismatics, whether modern or ancient, don't expect to make money. Unless you really know what you are doing, and you possess an ability to pick out excellent buys that you can turn around and sell at a good profit (because the profit is really in the buying), this is not something you should be "investing" in.

In general, for most people without deep knowledge and deep pockets, coins are a hobby, not an investment. Buy them for the love of the designs, for their beauty, or for their historicity, but do not buy them thinking you are going to do anything but lose money on them. And that way, when you are able to profit the odd time, you'll have a pleasant surprise.

Now obviously, people who make a living dealing in coins, ancient or otherwise, can pretty much disregard my entire post. If they are successful, they already know what they are doing.

What I have written also does not apply so much to gold coins, because of the high intrinsic value of gold in proportion to collector value. It's very different for silver.

 

Yeah I might hang onto them for now and then if I have enough coins I could consign them to HA. I think HA has a minimum too.

 

I've selled many coins to collectors in the past, using (a dutch version of) Ebay. Many of those collectors regularly come back and inform whether I've got something new.

On the other hand, some coins don't sell well (either the price is too high, or it's a rare coin that needs a broader audience). I've consigned with CNG and Roma. Just send them an email and ask for a consignment.

 

Thanks! Do you happen to have the contact information? Or the website address for CNG and Roma?

The 3 coins I wanted to sell now are relatively low value but I do have higher value coins between $500-$1500 value (such as the tetradrachm above) and I don't plan on selling them anytime soon but it would be nice to know who to contact if I did want to sell them.

 

I always wondered if these offers were real. For example I find the offer for your coin very surprising and if I were you I would sell it for that price. I'm pretty sure you could find an other, as finest as yours, for half that price.

 

They are real. I contacted Sarah M. at HA and she said that the offers made are binding offers just like when someone makes a bid on an auction. So people can't just make offers and then change their minds and not follow through. If the offer is accepted the person who made the offer is obligated to follow through. Just like if I bid on an item at auction and won. I would be obligated to pay the winning bid I made. I couldn't just change my mind and not pay or my account would be closed and I would be prohibited from participating in the future.

The reason I didn't accept the offer is because mine has a large flan and was struck with high relief dies (particularly the reverse) for this particular coin. It would be difficult for me to find a similar coin for less.


Believe it or not the difference between a coin struck with high relief dies and one not struck with high relief dies can be huge price-wise. Just take a look at high relief St. Gaudens Double Eagles.

It's true there are other MS Athenian Owl Tetradrachms that have sold for less but the majority of them either have oddly shaped flans or they were not struck in high relief and are just normal strikes.

 

These email adresses can easily be found online. It's probably against forum rules to post them here.

I usually send pictures and information to multiple auction houses. Some don't react. Others do, and provide a rough estimate. There is some space to discuss the premium (usually 15% or so - in my latest consignement, I agreed on a counteroffer of 8% for a consignment of about 7000 GBP). Obiviously, the higher the estimate, the lower the premium.

 

@Nathan B.

Excellent reply.

 

One day I will probably sell my whole collection on consignment, save for worthless LRB's of which I have almost a thousand coins. My collectible coins number around 350, though if I consigned them don't know how long it would take a dealer or auction house to dispose of them. Might take several auctions I suppose.

 

If your collection is anything like your avatar, then you have a truly impressive collection, indeed. (And thousands of LRB's is remarkable in scale anyway.)

I have a feeling that any auction house would love to sell your coins, and they might even make a special auction with multiple parts just for you.

I just wish I could make you an offer on the Eukratides tet, but I simply can't afford it at the present time. But that's a coin I've been meaning to obtain in the long term, and I haven't given up on it yet.

 

this is not true

 

Not that I agree or disagree, but what is your reasoning?

 

well for a fact I just bought a collection at a show that was brought to me I paid much much more than 40% of the retail perhaps if you were bringing low quality material or just slow moving types, the offer would be low like that.
I just know a statement like that is false by experience.

 

...so, you paid "much more than 40%..." which means nothing about what the dealer paid for these.

 

If you paid that much, you are an exception. My experience is with major dealers like Stack's Bowers.

 

@Gam3rBlake what's to be lost by offering them here?

 

I understand what you mean but lets not lump every dealer into this vulture/ Barricuda-like category I think it is unfair. plus a dealer gives somebody money on the spot not months away like an auction house and the house might not even sell some of the submissions.