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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;IdesOfMarch01, post: 7844405, member: 39084&quot;]&quot;Blame&quot; is a mischaracterization of my comment regarding Heritage and NGC.&nbsp; I&#039;m theorizing about the reasons for the rapid rise of prices -- far more rapidly than inflation -- for otherwise common ancient coins.</p><p><br /></p><p>No one would disagree that people should choose how to spend their discretionary funds in whatever manner they wish.&nbsp; Inflation alone doesn&#039;t appear to explain the rise in prices for the (e.g.) Julius Caesar elephant denarius, though.</p><p><br /></p><p>Based on your graph about inflation, my own personal observation is this: because net household worth has risen significantly in recent years, people are spending their inflated net worth in uneducated ways on &quot;collectible&quot; ancient coins that have been commodotized by the meaningless application of modern coin grading and slabbing to ancient coins.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>If my observation is accurate, the obvious conclusion is that these individuals are not collectors in normal definition of the word, but rather speculators or &quot;investors&quot; who wouldn&#039;t otherwise have purchased ancient coins without the slab and NGC grade.&nbsp; They have been misled into believing that the slab and accompanying grade are valuable and a substitute for actual research and knowledge about the coins.&nbsp; Sadly, this seems to apply equally to highly priced ancient coins as well.&nbsp; The most information they&#039;ll ever know about their coins is that which is printed on NGC&#039;s label.</p><p><br /></p><p>Maybe this is just a bubble (my hope) but more ominously maybe it&#039;s a trend and collectors who are truly interested in ancient coins for their beauty, history, and artistry will eventually become marginalized by the artificially inflated prices.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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