Got skunked Triton XXII!

That's not a ridiculous increase in price but in supply. The price is stable, supply has increased and demand has kept pace. On the surface. In reality what you're seeing is that in the pre-2000 era there were fewer auctions because the internet hadn't yet given us electronic auctions so the pool of aurei sold in the market (as with every other coin) went mostly via private sale which is not trackable. That and the fact that I only have access to a portion of the printed catalogs from this time period. It's a worthless data point except to judge the strength of the average number. More auctions from more sources equal a higher confidence in the reported average sale price.

Also, I don't know for sure whether that pool of coins has expanded or stayed more or less constant. I don't have data for that. The market is fed by coins being recycled from the community as well as new finds. A portion is "lost" to permanent acquisitions so it's a moving target that changes constantly.

Rasiel

 

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This issue is far more complex statistically and mathematically than can be resolved here. The complexity is exacerbated by the lack of comparability of different ancient coins of the same type. For example consider the two Hadrian aurei below:



(Sold at auction for $42K in 2005.)



(Sold at auction in 2018 for $170K.)

Did prices for EF coins of this type quadruple in 13 years? Or is the bottom coin simply the finest of its type and thus commands a premium? What would the top coin sell for today at auction, especially if potentially interested parties already had a satisfactory coin of this type?

I won all three of the coins on which I bid (Hadrian travel aurei) for well under my maximum bids at Triton XXIII. This makes me a little nervous, even accounting for the fact that the aurei were not in EF condition. Maybe the stratospheric prices for best-of-type Hadrian travel aurei are lowering prices on aurei in VF / Good VF condition? Or maybe there's a current interest in best-of-type Hadrian travel series aurei.

Ancient coins are not fungible commodities, which modern coins are (to some extent -- this assertion is arguable). My personal observation and belief is that the best-of-type and almost-best-of-type ancient coins have, as a group, increased significantly more than inflation. As for those ancient coins that are not best-of-type, in the 12 years I've been collecting ancient coins my unscientific observation is that they have indeed gotten more expensive, even accounting for inflation, but that observation may just apply to the category of coins that I collect.

 

If the trend was always so clean cut and linear that would make it all easier. What conclusion do you draw when the opposite happens though? I can come up with many examples of the same top-grade type of coins selling for less on a followup auction.

Just using simple logic you'd end up concluding that if buying high grade rare coins was a guarantee of value increase you'd see a return of mutual funds invading the auction circuit.

I agree though that generally speaking when it comes to ancient coins the cream of the crop (the 0.01% elite rarities) should increase in value the same way as any other art form does. If you can afford a Van Gogh or, say, a 111 West 57th St. apartment then chances are great you can flip it for profit a few years later. What that says about the art collectibles or real estate industries as a whole is a different story.

Rasiel

 

I would agree, the high quality material is, was and always will be hot. Most collectors want perfection, me included, and in the end, everyone wins. There is nothing more satisfying then to look at a mint state coin, in all it awe inspiring brilliance.

 

John, I'm a condition freak like you . If I can't afford a coin in top condition I simply wouldn't add it to my collection. Most collectors are happy with well-worn rarities, in fact many collectors of ancient coins prefer coins with lots of wear. In regards to current prices there is no doubt in my mind that they are rising, regardless how you spin voluminous amounts of data. More collectors are buying ancient coin annually, this is what is fueling the market.

 

Amen to that! :- )

 

I will start with a bit of a story. I was talking with an experienced collector who was complementing me on my Larissa stater. He pointed out that he had paid more for his, and I know that he has not been buying coins for over 10 years. This isthe second time I have heard this the first time was with this coin which was sold about 25 years ago Stater of Metapontion Photo by W.Hansen I guess the question i would raise is despite those coins that have clearly done very much better, is the norm rather less spectacular.I have talked to a number of consignors of higher end coins who complain that the "artificially " low estimates set by many auction houses actually cause a flattening of prices. This is just a thought. I cannot offer any evidence to prove my case. However I wonder if some of our perception of rising prices may be due to the low estimates set by the auction houses.

 

Terence, Your Larissa stater is breathtaking ! This phenomenon of putting very low estimates on coins by major auction houses has accelerated during the last 5 years & is being done to lure bidders. On very rare occasions a bidder may walk away with a "ripoff" if the auction isn't well promoted or the coin is near the end of a long auction. Serious collectors aren't fooled by absurdly low estimates into thinking that the market has gone wild. I had an unpleasant experience with a major auction house two years ago with the coin pictured below. This coin was part of a large consignment & was listed in their printed catalog with an estimate of $200.00. I was outraged when I saw the catalog & immediately called the auction house & told them to change the estimate on their online catalog to $750.00. With reluctance they did change the estimate but it was too late to do anything about the printed catalog. The coin ended up selling for $1,920.00 ! Anyone with common sense & half a brain understood that an estimate of $200.00 for this coin was absurd.

 

Also went 0-for in Triton. Ah well. I'm at the show and have found other things of interest.

 

Suarez, would you happen to have those financial numbers for lower end coins too? It is my non scientic and non statistical feeling that prices do and do not rise. Certain auction houses seem to show a rise in interest and hammer price. Some do not so much. I am not talking about elite venues here. I know where to look and i know when i can try to put in a lucky bid and a more certain one. I think it is too difficult to say generally prices have risen excessively. Unlike perhaps the absolute top segment. Economy is going well and perhaps that attracts more money to the scene as a form of investment? Sounds logical perhaps? And what are the effects on the lower segment? I personally dont care about the top. Some people have too much money. If you want to buy as art a banana on the well for thousands and thousands of euros, be my guest. Same for that syracuse tet for 1.5 million....

 

I saw this coin and decided to follow it to see where it went as I could not afford to bid. It sold for $2500, which seemed quite reasonable.

For Chinese coins, the entirety of the market for high-end, rare, and/or large/impressive/beautifully-made coins has had an explosion of over 10-fold in the past 10-15 years. A coin extremely similar to one I bought for $800 hammered yesterday for $10000. One which sold for $975 in 2009 sold for $10000 as well. Some have exploded even more, particularly large XianFeng cash and old bullion ingots.

This all has one cause: and explosion of Chinese businessmen/women who have found their way to wealth. They have entered the market and are driving costs up (increased demand). I can only pounce on the scrappings they miss. The super-common stuff has stayed the same (unless exceptional in some way) because there is plenty of it to go around.

I cannot say the rest of the ancients market has had the same underlying dynamic, so it would surprise me if what you say is true.

I think it is a very arguable assertion. Imagine how more consistent prices would be if they were graded, say MS-65 Pop 5/8 Finer and MS-68 Pop 1/0 Finer.

 

I was on Stacks auction, a EF-45 1691 AV 5 Guineas William III/ Mary sold for 14,400, next lot a 1692 ex. in MS-62 realized $312,000!

Another coin, the Erthyrai EL Hekte (Herakles/Lionskin) went for $4000+fee! It was not as great quality as the CNG ex. e sale, where there where 2 exs which sold for $800/ $500.

 

I'm a bit late to the party, but have done some research in price development. Using data from sixbid for a few popular types (Caesar elephant denarius, Athens tetdrachm, and a few others), I tried to model a relation between predictors (e.g. estimate, grade, damage, slabbed vs unslabbed, etc.) and actual hammer price. I encountered various problems:
1) data is unstructured
2) sufficient amount of data is difficult to achieve (i.e. sixbid works by scrolling down. In order to obtain >1000 datapoints, I installed an auto-scroller, which takes quite some time)

Still, it's enjoyable. To overcome problem nr. 1, I programmed a text-mining algorithm to obtain information on

• grade (grouped in four groups, ranging from fine to mint-state)
• slabbed vs unslabbed
• toned vs untoned
• damage (cracks, graffiti, cleaning marks, scrapes, etc.)
• banker marks
• off-center
• other notions (luster, brilliance, etc)

This topic is 1) on the price trend of high-end coins over time and 2) whether finding a (large) hoard influences the prices. These questions could of course be answered, but problem nr. 2 will probably make it a bit more difficult. Just for fun and giggles, I will try to demonstrate one example: the Julius Caesar elephant denarius.
Going back until 2012, I extracted 837 auction results:


As this topic is on high-end coins, I decided to take only the extremely fine and mint-state coins (n=391), remove the damaged, bankermarked, and off-centred coins, leaving a total of 318 coins with a substantially higher mean hammer price of €1177.

Then, plotting the hammer price over time results in the following graph:

which is fairly constant over time.

So, yeah, this is still a n=1 study. However, the script I've coded is fairly accurate (it's coded in R) and could easily be extended to other coin types (at this moment, I'm trying to answer question 2: is coin price affected by the finding of a hoard? using data of the Athens tetradracm). The most tedious part however is scraping obtaining data from Sixbid or other sites. So if anyone is interested enough, and would like information on a certain coin type, please pm me for more details

 

For what it's worth, it does feel to me like prices are up in the last few years. Additionally, I was bidding on some counterstamped pieces from the Kyle Ponterio collection and put in what I considered to be high bids based on prior sales of the SAME coins just a couple years prior. They were blown out of the water, most of the time by multiples. It was very frustrating and I still dont understand it.

 

You bet they are, look at the AV 5 Guineas William III/ Mary in MS-62 =UK grade EF realized $312K!

 

In addition to my post below, I've looked into the following two coins:
1) aureus Hadrian (not limited to high-end, n ~750)

Or limited to high-end (extremely fine and above, no damage, etc, n~500):


And the Athens tetradrachm (not limited to high-end, n ~1000)

Or limited to high-end (extremely fine and above, no damage, etc, n~750):


The light-red around the line are marges of uncertainty.

Of course "hadrian aureus" is way too unspecific. However, this is the trade-off between an adequate number of datapoints and specificity.

 

Can you re-render the Hadrian aurei chart with a smaller range, trimming anything above 50K as just 50K? That'd help the visualization.

 

@AncientJoe: sure, this is the unfiltered


... and this is the filtered (all above extremely fine, no damage, etc):

it's a good time to sell
Also added another ~250 datapoints.

 

Octavian aureus, truncated at €200.000, again: fairly stable. (n=318)

 

The table suggests that Octavian aurei lost half their value from 2014 to 2018. That does not seem stable.

Certainly at least one of the n=318 sold twice from 2011 to 2019. If so, can someone add a line or color to link them up? I am curious about individual examples.

@Suarez Do you think the 1990s data is unbiased? It is much easier to collect data now. Your site coryssa.org is a great resource. For the 1990s data do you think you have a representative sample? Have you encoded middle-level auctions like Alex G Malloy?

Everyone: Typically when a coin type sells for a high price, for example Octavian aurei in 2014 according to the chart, everyone tries to sell their examples at the top of the market. I would predict that would cause prices to decrease, which is what we see here. Do we see the volume of an individual type change in response to last year's prices?