Dropping auction prices?

I bid over $750 on one thing but didn't win it, everything that I landed was under that. At least things are flattening/dropping for us middle class folks

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

I agree with you, anything that should be above $1k is either continuing to hammer very strong (still increasing) or staying flat. I've still not been able to get anything much below what I would consider retail prices in that $1k+ category yet.

 

View attachment 1499972

@kazuma78 , spot on, I was bidding on this guy, but it went way above of what I was willing to pay, given surface & strike issues…

 

I did like that Claudius I As, but again, it hammered closer to $1,000 with the juice

 

When talking about bids or sale prices, I always include the juice. I hate that we even have to distinguish. I feel that auction houses using buyer's fees is an underhanded attempt at manipulating people into spending more than intended (They could take the fees off the top of the sale price....same difference without the math). Not like I can boycott Heritage though, they are the only ones that reliably sell the slabbed coins that I'm after. In any case, most of the others do it as well, so I would just have to deal with it either way

That Claudius As was a nice coin for sure, but I still can't believe that it went that high ($1050). I had it on my watch list initially, but deleted it after it went over $650 or so.

The coin that I bid the most on was the Otho Denarius. It actually sold for what I felt was a pretty good price. I didn't want to push too hard though because that type of expenditure destroys my coin budget. I'll just wait for one that's more in my wheelhouse.

 

@El Cazador I was able to pick this up for what I consider a good price- but thats been my only collection win in a few months that I considered a "good" price. It needs just a little cleaning and it will look a lot better I think.

BRUTTIUM, The Brettii. Circa 216-214 BC. AR Drachm (5.06 g). Second Punic War issue. Diademed bust of Nike right; simpulum to left / Dionysos standing facing, crowning himself and holding scepter; snake and Σ right. Arslan dies 38/56, Scheu S42; HN Italy 1961. Grey cabinet toning, a few light marks. Good VF.

 

This is a lovely example from Kunker, @kazuma78 well done!

 

The one thing I would caution to those who advocate waiting until prices come down would be: What if they don't? There were many times over the last 20+ years in ancients I have heard people advocating waiting until the market cools. We are talking about people who said any RR except Caesar related should never be over $50 in VF, and "wait until prices die down". That was over a decade ago, how is that advice working?

Point being, just like the stock market, I have no idea when it will "correct" if it will at all. So, I simply try to buy what is available when its available, trying to not overpay but not stressing trying to catch a bottom or buy at a top. I still say hoards cause much more price variation than overall market prices. Buy into a hoard is always sound advice, regardless of market prices overall.

 

Ya, it's a tricky thing. Buy something that you could have gotten for half the price a bit later...vs...Miss the opportunity to buy something when you could have afforded it. Damned if you do, damned if you don't (Or visa-versa).

I've only been into ancients for about 6 years, so the only market change that I've experienced has been the doubling or so over the last few years. However, if there's one thing that I've heard repeatedly from experts while trying to educate myself on the subject in the past (videos, interviews, etc), it was that "Ancient coins are very undervalued".

Maybe we should think about recent changes less as price inflation, and more as prices moving closer to where they should have been in the first place. But who knows

 

Eh, everyone in any hobby believes their hobby is undervalued. I like it where it is and I can still buy things.

Another thing to remember about ancients is the ability to buy at all. Some coins simply are not for sale for years at times. I told the story of how I was looking for a Constantine VII silver naming Christopher, ( my name), and it was not for sale anywhere for years and years. That is another wildcard.

Pay attention to my "buy into hoards" comment. You might think an Athenian tet should be $500-800 since the entire time you have been in the hobby a huge hoard has been disbersed. One day that hoard will be gone and the same coin will be $1200 like it used to be. I have many coins that I own 35 or 50 of that you might only see 1 or 2 for sale today on Vcoins. I bought into the hoard and those coins are up 100% before today's price increases. That can be a huge benefit long term to a collection. That is how a lot of us longer term collectors got so many cool coins unavailable today, we bought what we can when we could. Heck, most of my Chinese collection was bought 20 years ago when they were more widely available and cheap.

 

Sounds about right

 

Can’t agree more!

 

No matter how i look at this, I can’t see prices dropping.

In 2019 this used to be $500-750 coin

 

Back in September of 2021 my coin of Lykkeios was placed on auction achieving $2500 US
Kings of Paeonia Lykkeios 358/6-335 BC Obv Head of Zeus right Rv Herakles strangling Nemean Lion (note Herc is missing one leg.) HGC 142 12,73 grms 21.5 mm Photo by W Hansen CNG E Auction 500 Lot 178 Sept 22 2021.THIS IS NO LONGER MY COIN This coin had a minimal pedigree. I cannot say anything about the coin cited by @El Cazador However I thought I did well on my coin. Evidently not as well as the one cited above. Still

 

Wonderful coin!

i was also watching this Diadumenian (have 2 in AU or better condition myself) just for giggles, was shocked again at the final hammer price

 

Summer is usually not the best time to sell coins - but other than that the only thing I have noticed about prices is that coins are generally too expensive overall - you still see some coins going for what to me are absurd prices. But I have had some bad experiences with consignments, it is really difficult to estimate where a coin will end up - I had one sold by a European auction house where the photo wasn't good and the price came up short accordingly - after that I stuck to another place that II have used for years. BUT it takes them months and months to put up coins.

 

I have been buying and selling coins on ebay for over 20 years - I have bought many MANY beautiful, rare and in some instances - rare these days - absurdly underpriced coins on ebay - and sold thousands which has been the only way I can afford to buy - yes it is a minefield for the new collector because of all of the fakes, but for a knowledgeable collector with alot of patience as well as a seller who knows what kind of coins do sell on ebay it is the place to be.

As for slabbed coins, I have many many issues with slabbing ancients, and I am pleased to see that most auction houses have few in slabs, but do not want to start that again - ridiculous over grading and equally absurd overpricing is only one of many issues I have with slabbed ancients, but I realize it is a personal choice

 

Ya, there are gems to be had there for sure, but you really need to know your stuff in order to avoid the pitfalls. Each to their own, but developing expertise in distinguishing forgeries from authentic coins is simply not something that interests me.

Everybody is entitled to their opinion when it comes to slabbing ancients. But, you at least have to acknowledge the fact that slabbing solves many "Ebay type problems" for people that want to buy coins without having developed a lifetime of experience in sifting through fakes.

If the coin is in an NGC slab and can be correlated with photos by searching the serial number, then buyers can rest assured that it has been analyzed by an expert and determined to be genuine. Which, unfortunately, is about as close as we can get to a sure thing.

 

just wondering how much a miss print of the fifth of november £2 coin with november misprinted as novembep would go for with the dropping auction prices. wonder if it will even sell

 

I have been watching the market closely this summer, hoping for a good deal or two. Prices may have come off a little on some areas, and Republican coins haven’t had the same extreme rise in price as Greek coins to begin with, but it doesn’t look like prices have come down very much. Perhaps there are a few less coins with stupid prices, but looking at Corinthian and Akarnanian staters grade VF go for 1000$ at the Leu today, I don’t see the big buy signals yet.

I agree your pic #2 of the Balbus den is a lot better than the first. It is a great coin, but I can also remember a tray full of these types in EF selling for 40$ each back around 2010, after a lot of them had been found. It is not an uncommon coin in EF. Still sorry you didn’t get a better price.