[ancients] fun new lot of Alexandrian tetradrachms

Well, I sure hope that the first four steps are associated with rolling around on your awesome pile of new coins!! (congrats) ... never look back, Wagon-Princess!!

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

Wouldn't that be a 40 step program? Lets be serious for a minute. The price you paid is a matter of record online. After allowing for buyers fee and postage, I calculated an average cost per coin. Then I went through and decided that, to my standards, 10 of the coins were not what I wanted for my collection. I then found seven duplicates within the lot that I would not want since the lot itself had better. A couple of those groups overlapped but lets just say you have 15 losers and 25 winners. Now lets divide again the total cost but this time by 25 and get a new per keeper coin number. Next take that number and see how many of the 25 you would pay over double the average. I saw five making the adjusted keeper quotient 35. That means the 15 losers need to be sold for an average of 1/3 the overall average. My convoluted way of thinking places this loser requirement at about $5. Five of those 15 losers you can be counted upon to give away to charity or the next 14 year old that impresses you (if we ever get another active one) so the question is can you sell the other ten for $7.50 each. We should all have such problems.

Why was it you didn't buy the other two lots? (...or did you?) The second, from the photo, looked less promising. The third went for more which suggests someone saw something in it. I'd like to know what it was. I love to play the game: 'Why did that sell for that?' I have looked at several CNG end-of-sale lots and wondered how they brought so much over estimate. Here I wonder if people were allergic to make up. The reason that I would not buy the lot is that I already have many of these common types not that I don't think they were worth the price.

...and now the rest of the story: Just after this sale came the announcement of US import restrictions on coins from Egypt. How would this change the potential for a group of not-so-special tets? We don't know. I seriously doubt it would cause these forty coin to be worth less than what you paid. In fifty years, you might even make a profit. Let me know how that works out.

 

Nah. Sometimes less is more, but in the case of coins, more is always better.

 

Convoluted but it makes sense and was similar to my thought process, although I'm in no particular hurry to unload the duplicates and non-keepers. Selling is work and not much fun. Perhaps trading opportunities will arise at some point.

Fair questions. I did not buy either of the other two. I waited until near the end to bid. Bidding was similar on all three at that point. All had the same starting price and same estimated value. They appeared to be roughly equivalent in makeup although my lot had 38 coins and the other two 39 and 40 coins. Whichever I bid on was likely to end up selling for more than the other two-- simply because a new bidder was joining the fray. My lot went for $25 over estimate and the other two for $25 under.

I went for the first lot over the others for a few reasons. First, the photo showed more non-eagle reverses. Second, the second lot photo showed fewer coins and they didn't look quite as nice as the other two lots. Third, I was hoping to find at least a few coins of higher interest/rarity and wondered if the smaller number of coins in my lot might indicate the presence of some higher value coins in the group (CNG's sales price estimate was the same for all three). I probably would have been content with any of the three lots but it sure would be interesting to see the attribution list for the other two.

[shrug] It will be interesting to see what happens. I'm not happy about the impending restrictions since I am fond of Roman Egyptian and Ptolemaic coins and would like to get many more.

 

I erred in IDing which lot you bought. I wonder who bought the other two and if we will see them again soon.