Dropping auction prices?

I often find myself agreeing 100% with @medoraman . I think the last thing he said here is a very good reason to have at least a few more venues that you follow besides ebay:

«There is a real danger at looking at Ebay. The danger is if you look at enough fakes, pretty soon your eye cannot pick them out as well. I haven't looked at Ebay in over a year, but looked at tons of good auctions. I bet I would simply see the fakes pretty clearly right now, since my eye is used to good coins. However, with enough looking at Ebay and not at good auctions, eventually I feel this would go away and you would get used to looking at fakes.»

When I started collecting, it was 95% ebay. I tried to do my dilligence, and was not fooled too many times, luckily. But at that time I couldn’t imagine spending more than 100$ on a coin. Things have changed since that. Ebay has changed too. I tried it for selling in 2020, but that was a really bad experience: Several coins didn’t make it through the mail; or at least that was what the buyers said. It’s not easy to fix sales that go sideways when you’re on another continent. One guy returned a coin, for no reason. I soon found out that the reason was that he wanted to return an ugly cull of his own, while keeping the coin I sent him. All in all ebay was a bad experience in 2020, and the company did nothing to help me out. So I’m done with ebay.

I find that I learn a tremendous lot by following serious dealers a auctioneers. The service and safety adds to the experience, and not having to deal with unfriendly crooks alone is worth the extra cost for me.

It’s been said here many times before, but is is highly likely that those who make the best profit out of our collections, are the dealers and auction houses where we sell them. Dealers and collectors have shared the profits and losses in this way for generations.

 

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I agree about the silver fractions. There’s no end to them, right? How many thousand Kyzikus obols are left from 2500 years ago, I wonder....
I’m also a little concerned with all the new auction houses popping up the last few years. I’m not convinced they are all serious either. But I have my favorite ones and will continue buying from there. However, I’ve been very much into Greek bronzes lately, and it’s possible to do some good buys with the lower end biddr houses. As long as one does his due dilligence, that is.

 

Ebay is still one of the few places you can find deals through misattributed, really poorly photographed, or unrecognized rarities etc but great deals are few and far between now except in the last month:

I just bought an extremely (extremely) rare Caracalla as Caesar RIC 398(b) sestertius in great condition except for a few problems with flan and inscription - but the coin is RIDICULOUSLY rare - I have found no examples - none - on ancient.info and all of one in the British Museum collection, with the same die - none in any other major databases I searched.

The Caracalla cost $293 including shipping and completes my collection of very early Caracalla sestertii - it is also an obverse die match of my Caracalla Securitas sestertius which is how I can identify the obverse inscription. I think this is an An extremely important coin for a collector of Severan sestertii. I am going to do an article on it shortly.

I also just bought a worn Septimius IMP X sestertius Salus reverse on French eBay for $39 including shipping. It is an obverse die match to the same type I bought last year on Spanish eBay also for $39. Both coins are mightily rare - the one I just got is a die match to one in the British museum. I will be posting this coin as well when I get it

so for me eBay is a rewarding place to be I guess. Blake

 

Well, I disagree 100% But good luck on ebay! It’s probably a little less complicated if you live in the same country as the buyer/seller.

 

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It is very difficult to find rare coins like the Septimius Severus Salus I just bought on ebay without the rarity highlighted because the seller is not aware of it, on say VCOINS or in an auction house environment simply because the these sellers are FAR FAR more knowledgeable, would know about its rarity and charge accordingly = as an example some years back I bought a Septimius Severus IMP X sestertius with Genius on the reverse on VCOINS and it cost about $145.

I have found many coins on ebay which should have been priced much higher because of some attribute of the coin that was unknown to the seller whereas I do not think I have ever had the same situation buying from an auction house or on VCOINS - they know the coins they sell - which is a good thing sort of I guess.

It is a flea market and the buyer better beware - but there are safeguards like paypal protection too

- Blake

 

Well clearly I picked the wrong year to go on my shopping spree (2021). But I mean, interest rates are going up all over the place and also you don't have any of that covid relief money floating around anymore... So I imagine that is a factor in prices staying flat, maybe even bringing them down a bit.

 

But alas, what a wonderful way to enjoy life... exploring and buying 1800-year-old plus treasures from the Empire that shaped the world forever.

 

I guess it is a phony?

 

I lost a hundred dollars on a Faustina Sr. sestertius consignment consignment in a Leu sale - the photograph wasn't that great which is why I think I lost - and that is VERY unlike them since their photographs are uniformly stellar. As does happen I wish I had not sold it at any price.

One thing I do not understand is this: unlike many hobbies, where there are a fixed number of objects - the number of ancient coins increases all the time. Not simply those coins in auctions that are sold without pedigree, but the thousands of coins sold in large lots that are a part of every major auction.

I have written before asking where the tens of thousands of coins that I used to see in the early 2000's at the New York Show, for example, went. For those who weren't there you used to see bags and bags of coins from recent hoards, plus huge pick through trays. Also there were ebay dealers like Ancient Auction House, which stopped selling shortly after its 20,000th positive, were among the Bulgarian sellers who sold beautiful and not so beautiful denarii and other coins in auctions, not one price sales.

All those coins year after year and continuing to today - after all that, prices should come down since the market should be filled to the brim with coins, but it is not so - prices, especially for good coins are still IMHO unreasonably high.

I suspect that many of the coins that were sold are sitting in drawers somewhere, collecting dust after uncle Joe passed on - or perhaps in dealers inventory, but it has to be one huge amount of inventory. At one time a dealer had mentioned being fairly often offered collections - is that still happening today?

I have been looking at the ancient coin market since I started collecting 1999, and I know less about how it works now than I did then!

 

Agreed. It’s mysterious. I think we can consider some factors:

- more hoards illegally smuggled from countries in the Middle East from countries that have fallen apart
- more coin hoards being discovered as the metal detector has had its triumph through Eastern Europe (late 90s/early 2000s) and on to Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, etc.
- a possibly large amount of fake coin types that are so common that people don’t look twice at them
- more collectors, apparently with deeper pockets, for example a growing market in Asia
- the market is actually filled to the brim with coins…. I listened to Harlan Berk describing on their podcast that when he started collecting there were about 2-3 auctions per year, now it’s “every day”, (plus the ebays of the world)
- a larger number of dealers of ancient coins, so a larger inventory all together

my 2 cents

 

Nope - I was the seller. It's an authentic posthumous Philip I that honestly I never dreamed would hammer for less than $75, let alone for half that

That's the danger of no-reserve selling I guess.

It's actually in the next FSR auction ending in a couple weeks - I'm a masochist so I'm waiting to see how much I should have gotten for it.

https://www.biddr.com/auctions/fsrcoin/browse?a=2789&l=3102459

 

I think your pic made it look like it was a fake , I would have just scrolled past it.

 

We are rapidly approaching the dreaded Singularity in which the number of auction houses will equal or exceed the number of collectors. For now, unfortunately, not even the most cynical among us can see beyond the event horizon...

 

Having been blown away in the latest Heritage auction of pre-1066 British coins, I am wondering where these cheap coins are.

 

The most recent CNG auction, the few items I wanted went far beyond what I was willing to throw at them.

 

Last 3 days: Heritage Scholar collection, Stacks and CNG all confirmed tha fact that prices for quality continue to climb!

i feel extremely lucky to be able to win 2 great Tetradrachms at the most recent Spink auction this past Thursday

 

There was coin in the current auction that interested me. It had an “x” scratched the field. The cataloguer even mentioned it, even the coin got a straight grade.

I could have lived with it the right price, but the bids have blown way passed the previous high prices realized for grade, and there still a day left before the sale. I love to find these “dead auctions.”

 

Wow, I just scrolled through my "watching out of curiosity" and "watching for coins like what I have in my collection" list and the prices at Heritage were berserk. I really can hardly believe how the rediculous prices are continuing this long.

 

3 days in the row it was a bloodbath- i had 40 coins on my watch list for Heritage alone, and about 10 for Stacks, nothing came close to my final bids - got utterly destroyed. With that said, this year shapes out to be great in terms of good deals

 

I've yet to buy a new ancient since May of this year. This is the longest I have ever gone without buying any coin, not even a cheap modern world. Prices are just out of hand to me and I admit, I have gotten much more selective then I once was, which isn't helping.

Seeing what the prices of the recent auction have shown, all I can think of is WOW and shake my head. I wonder when the cooling off period will finally arrive.