Bizarre auction prices ...

I've found a number of places where one can get a good idea about the fair market value for an ancient coin, but at the end of the day it's really about what one is willing (and able) to pay for the pleasure of owning it. I usually go to CoinArchives, Vcoins, Heritage, and Wildwinds to get an idea what might be a fair price. I'd be interested in hearing about other venues folks use.

One issue I have a difficult time with is currency translations. When buying from a CNG auction, it's in $, so that's a calculation one doesn't have to consider if buying in $. But I often wonder if the price for a coin from a Roma Numismatics auction, considering the difference in Pounds/Dollars, could have been acquired at CNG for less.

 

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I never go to Heritage to get an idea of fair price. I find even the prices in the Sear books more relevant. Vcoins is good. CoinArchives too. Wildwinds is often dated information. Acsearch and Sixbid archives are good resources too.

 

What I do is keep my own database of coins in my collecting area, together with prices and sale dates. I normalize all prices into dollars adding in buyers fees.

When preparing my bid limits for an auction I do the reverse, and figure out what my max bid should be in the auction currency given a max dollar price I'm willing to pay.

e.g. If based on historical prices, etc, I think a coin is worth $100, and the auction is in UK pounds (1 UKP = $1.31) with a buyers fee of 20%, then I'll calculate my max bid as 100 / 1.31 / 1.20 = UKP 63.61, then maybe round up (and anyways probably allow myself to go an increment over my "limit" anyway).

Google is great for currency conversions (all sorts of conversions actually) as well as math. e.g. If you want to know the current UKP to USD exchange rate then do a Google "search" for "1 UKP in USD". Or, if you want to know what 50 UKP would be in dollars with a buyers fee of 20%, then "search" for "1.2 * 50 UKP in USD".

 

Back to the Helena in the OP, here's one I have which looks to be from the same dies - I am not aware of anyone doing a corpus on these but just in case!

The coin is rated scarce in the London Mint of Constantius and Constantine, which equates to 5-24 examples

 

It's very close, but I'm not sure it's an exact match. The Roma coin is an obverse die match to one in the BM though:





Here are the obverse dies of the ones I've got photos of. 11 coins, 9 (?) dies, with two dies with matches. Not sure what Warren's die formula would say about that, but the large number of singletons suggests quite a few more dies out there.



A lot of these are very close, but look for differences in drapery, alignment of legend with bust, etc.

 

Thanks for the methodology. It's excellent. Those currency conversions on Google really are great. It appears that the currency differences between the pound and the dollar puts someone in the US at a disadvantage when attempting to make a fair priced coin purchase (or anything for that matter) from a British auction dealer. All other things being equal, doing so in Euros not so much. With Australian dollars, being cheaper than the US dollar, a possibly better bet?

 

I really don't think it makes a difference... It's an international market, and I'm sure most collectors are buying from all over the world and comparing prices everywhere. If a UK collector sees a coin worth $100, they are not going to be bidding £100 for it - they'll also do the currency conversion and bid appropriately.

There are for sure differences in prices according to venue, but it's more to do with reputation and clients rather than country.

 

Good points. The one thing that impresses me is the respect the company shows and their customer service. Both Roma in England and Leu Numismatik AG in Switzerland have consistently been outstanding. I'm willing to pay more when I look at their coins only because I know the delivery will be spot on and if there is a problem, they jump on it with courtesy and professionalism.

With Leu, they were able to deal with a couple coins a few weeks ago that were hung up at US Customs. They communicated with FedEx directly and right away providing the necessary documents Customs wanted. I got the coins within a few days after the delay. There was also a hand written note with the coins thanking me for using their company.

 

I always ask that they Leu/ Roma send coins via Swiss Post/ Royal Mail. This way NO customs hassles/ taxes I stay away from FEDEX/ UPS/ DHL.

 

I recently bought a £30 unsold from a Roma auction, and it received the same top-tier handling as anything more expensive - arriving a few days later in the nice velvety little black box. I still don't like paying so much for shipping, but they do such a nice job it's hard to be mad! It has to be said the coin was horribly misattributed, but I'm happy about that else I doubt it'd have gone unsold!

 

Hooray! High-fives Panzerman.

 

Misattribution can be a collector's best friend! It's the main reason I occasional go trolling through some of the new budget auctioneers we're all aware of. I got all of these ones, all badly misattributed, for what I considered to be very low prices:

Rare Price 2712 misattributed as a much more common "lifetime Tetradrachm" (note: I believe CNG recently misattributed one, as Heritage has a couple times, as Price 818-819; following up on his volumes and the coins he cited as examples, I think Price himself got those ones mixed up with the 2712 vars. [actual examples in ACSearch]):


Rare Alexander III Hemidrachm misattributed as a drachm (the larger but much more common and cheaper denomination, compared to the hemi):


Crab Diobol/Trihemiobol misidentified as a smaller much more common obol/hemiobol:


All those are from the same auction house notorious for such errors. Of course, buying from that source also means I have less confidence in their authenticity. (Archaic fractions with zero provenance, like the Kos Diobol, make me a bit nervous.)

 

I must say I’m getting increasingly suspicious about some of the most commonly offered silver fraction types. Then again, they look rather old when they are covered in horned silver.

Congrats on a really nice looking tet, with a very cool mint mark! Think I found it here?
http://numismatics.org/pella/symbol/monogram.price.1486

 

Yup, that's the one! That and -- very confusingly -- Monogram 1045 (both are slightly wrong, but I believe both mistakenly cataloged the same types or even the same exact coins): http://numismatics.org/pella/symbol/monogram.price.1045

I think Price Monograms 1045 and 1486 are based on the same coins, but both drawn incorrectly (the ANS examples and the Belin coin shown in Pella – ANS is what Price cites – have the bars horizontal to the sides on the left monogram, like mine and the supposed 818 specimens AND 2712 specimens).

Any differences from variant to variant seem to actually be in the right monograms (i.e. under the throne). (PELLA has those ones "even more wrong," I think.) PELLA's Price 818, 819, 2712, 2712A, 2713 are linked at the bottom. I think 818 & 819 are actually the same as the 2712ff categories. Just for more confusion, one of the PELLA Price 2712 examples should be Price 2711 (no monogram to left); but PELLA's Price 2711 entry is the only one that may have gotten the right/throne monogram correct! (Price Monogram 161.)

For the left monogram (1045 or 1486), the horizontal bar shouldn't be at the base (or completely absent) but higher up the circle. More like this (my own edit of the 1045 / 1486 monograms given by ANS-PELLA):



Here are the excerpts from Price's table for 818-9 and 2712-3. Notice that none of them actually get the monogram correct (the horizontal bar isn't at the base, but part way up the circle, or a little less):



Neither transcription of the left monogram in Price is quite right, 818-9 or 2712ff. Also the right monograms (beneath throne) given by Thompson for Armenak don't really match Price’s monograms...

Below is a revealing little excerpt from Thompson, building also on ET Newell's prior work, where Price likely got the Armenak info from. (I believe they were actually also the ANS coins Price cited for 2712, since the Armenaks ended up in ANS, via Newell.) Her report doesn't illustrate those particular examples, but Price may have seen additional photos not included for Armenak; and I assume he saw the ANS' actual coins (or photos of them).

I believe that's where the confusion started (these should be his 818 and 819, which he cites as Armenak, but he gets the throne/right monograms wrong for 818-819-Armenak, and actually uses Thompson's 2nd example for his 2712):



VERY CONFUSING!!!

It doesn't help that PELLA gets 818 wrong!
See also:
http://numismatics.org/pella/id/price.818
http://numismatics.org/pella/id/price.819
http://numismatics.org/pella/id/price.2712
http://numismatics.org/pella/id/price.2712A
http://numismatics.org/pella/id/price.2713

For correct right/throne monogram:
https://numismatics.org/pella/id/price.2711
http://numismatics.org/pella/symbol/monogram.price.161

 

I love this post @ambr0zie! Spot on. Here's an extremely rare & interesting SEVERINA AVGVSTA I got for peanuts due to a sparse ID in an auction.

And a unique year 9 Justinian II:

Just two examples of many, lucking out as the only one to spot the rarity.

I swear by acsearch. Cheap, easy to use, flexible (be sure to check out the search codes), with a huge database. It has repaid me the subscription fee many times over. Re: exchange, a little-known feature is that it builds in currency conversions taken from the time of the auction, so you can see what the hammer was in USD equivalents back in 1997 or whatever.

 

Did anyone bid in the Künker auction today? They had a large number of wonderful Roman Republican coins, including several that have been at the top of my want list for a long time. Including another M. Volteius snake biga, which of course I didn't win; I think this is at least the fourth time I've bid on one unsuccessfully!

Overall, I bid on four coins, and lost out on three of them by margins of 400, 650, and 2,200 Euros over my maximum bids. I am disappointed. I did manage to win one, a type I've also bid on several times before, for 100 Euros less than my maximum bid (surprisingly!). Here's the Künker photo. I'll post it again with a write-up once I pay for and receive it! It's certainly a popular type, and far from the best example I've seen, but I like it very much nonetheless and will be happy to have it:


Unlike some other examples I've seen, the lions actually resemble lions instead of large dogs!

 

A sale with insane prices. Even for uninspiring pieces like this Aspendos which sold for 7k Euros:

Or for this tooled specimen from Neapolis which still made 1300 Euros:

The sale was dominated by 4 or 5 paddles who would push the prices to stratosphere. Practically no bargains left.

 

I managed to win a coin early on in the Kunker sale today, which was surprising considering as the majority of the remainder of the sale seemed to have very high prices.

At the risk of jinxing it:

 

That is a smart purchase! Congrats!

 

What about the 3200 istros or the ~500 chersonesos sold to a phone bidder (!!!). What about the little break before the dikaia fraction because one of their favorite bidders was not reachable?

There is no end to the downfall...