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Message:: [QUOTE="Heliodromus, post: 8296188, member: 120820"]Indeed, and the ancient coin market seems extremely inefficient in general (in sense of efficient market theory and price discovery). It's hard to say that a single price point means much of anything. As others have noted though, the concept of "overpaying" is itself tough to define since we're not dealing with uniform commodity goods, or ones where there is generally any widespread agreement on value. What is the value of a rarity where only a handful of collectors in the world give a crap? What if there are only two collectors who care, and one of them dies. Did the value of the type just drop? The best definition of overpaying I can suggest would be can you turn around tomorrow and resell for pretty much what you paid for it (minus fees, postage)? Or maybe given the inefficient/thin market, perhaps tomorrow is too much to ask, so could you consign the coin at the price you bought it for and reasonably expect it to sell within a year, say. All rather fuzzy. While it's certainly ridiculous to say that you are by definition overpaying if you buy at auction, there are obviously cases where auction fever took hold and people are overpaying! $3K+ for a London Helena nummus is just too much![/QUOTE]