How Many Collectors Of Ancient Coins Are There?

I thought I read recently that vcoins had 23,000 [Edit: corrected in the next post by Ken Dorney to 250,000] members, which I presume means people who have registered to buy there.

 

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Well, the claim is 250,000 but that would of course contain many which are duplicated, dead collectors, those who no longer collect. It also contains those who collect US and world coins.

 

I felt that J 2007 was absolutely talking on my behalf. He was utterly revealing my thoughts .

 

The first time I received a printed catalog, I was about 20 years old. It came from a famous dealer (Victor Gadoury, writer and editor of the equivalent here to your "red book") that I had never bought from previously. At first I've been wondering how in hell they'd been able to find me, but on the other hand feeled very privileged (I still have it) as it allowed me to ID properly my first roman coin (the Commodus sestertius I told you about so many times). I think this catalog has a great responsability in my further addiction to ancient coins.

No internet back then and printed catalog wern't cheap, getting them free meant a lot : dealer considering you as a "serious" customer or at least a possible future serious customer (pure speculation at this stage about my person) and beeing part of the happy fews. Privacy has been in my mind just for seconds. It would be very different today

Q

 

This is precisely why I do not collect ancients. It seems far easier to manufacture convincing counterfeits than with more modern coinage manufactured from presses and far harder for the collector to spot a fake. I fear being almost completely dependent on the expertise of ancients dealers for assurance that what I am buying is genuine. Since I am the son of a Greek immigrant I would love to own a genuine Athenian Owl but fear that I would end up a thousand dollars poorer and in possession of a modern fake. Oh, and don't tell me to buy a slabbed coin. If I'm going to own a coin from the golden age of Greece I want to feel it in my hand, just as my Ancient Greek ancestors did. That's the connection to my heritage and history I would derive from owning such a coin. Holding that same coin in a plastic sarcophagus just would not "do it" for me.

 

Trust me - nobody around here would EVER tell you to buy a slabbed coin! They are widely despised by ancient coin collectors.

I have the same fears regarding modern pieces. The Australian 1930 penny, for example - for every real one, there are 5 fakes, but they all look real! To tell a fake, you have to check several things under a microscope - eg, how parts of the lettering align with denticles. It's a nightmare.

Ancients are different - with experience you know what is real beyond doubt. Buy from a vcoins dealer, then you have the peace of mind of a lifetime guarantee.

 

No slab needed. Buy from an established and reputable dealer and you'll be fine. If it proves to be fake many of those established/reputable dealers offer lifetime guarantees.

 

Oh yes! When I published catalogs they were very expensive (well, my first ones were crappy photocopied lists with no photos) but once one graduated to glossy paper and photographs, it got expensive (and they were always sent free). I still have copies of those old catalogs. Every now and again I see coins back on the market that I sold back in the 80's and 90's.

 

I missed the original estimation quoted above, but I would have to disagree. There are far more genuine coins out there than fakes or replicas. Honestly, it is much easier to get a real coin than a fake one, but that all depends on where one is buying them. If you are in Turkey visiting a site and some hawker offers you coins, yea, 99% chance they are fake. Not many get their coins that way. Anyway, Athenian owls may be hugely popular but they are also extremely common. One can get a lower grade example for $150, a reasonable one for a bit more. I sold this reasonable one recently for $200:

 

i think i stepped in a time machine recently. i purchased a coin from a h. j. berk representative at a coin show in evansville indiana a couple weeks ago. gave the guy my address and email to get some information. the next week, a catalog showed up from someone i hadn't heard off at all. really didn't mind getting it, kind of enjoyed looking through it.

here is a sample page..



absolutely no pictures, just a description and a grade. i know this used to be the norm back in the day form what some of you guys have said. i know pictures don't exactly tell the truth all the time, but i couldn't imaging buying a coin without seeing it first.

has anyone purchased like this in the last 15 years?

 

I can't say I have, although I used to receive auction bid listings like that during the time-frame you mention and I threw a few 50% of the listing price by grade offers back ...and lost them all. Without photos, I just couldn't bid or buy the coins in a more 'realistic' and serious manner.

 

That catalog came out of a time machine! Check the postal date. Was it mailed in 1975?

 

I remember those good old days before the internet completely revolutionized numismatics. Man, I miss the late 1990's. With dial-up and slow internet, if you wanted a coin you had to get coin books and then go get what you wanted at a coin shop. At least that's how things were in 1997 when I started collecting.

Can't speak of 1975 though, that was 10 years before my time.

 

I recall a small pamphlet style listing like that and I think it was 'Spartan Coins' (??) that used to mail me stuff like that back about the turn of the millennia---1990's ??

 

In 'the day' you had to rely a lot on the taste of the dealer. I knew one dealer who I suspect was buying coins cheaply because others avoided their second rate style. I avoided him after a couple bad experiences. There was one dealer who always undergraded and never handled a coin with poor surfaces. His definition of 'Fine' was a coin I would like; VF - love. One described each coin with a paragraph so you really had an idea what the coin looked like if you knew the lingo like 'whisper of porosity' and 'crowded left'. Sometimes you might call a dealer and talk about the coin because you needed to reserve it by phone anyway. Mailing a check without the phone call risked being too late on a coin with multiple buyers. Photos of every coin and PayPal changed all this. I have not talked on the phone with a dealer for years. One dealer called my house and talked to my teen daughter who was the only one home. He said that he had a group of 194 Septimius denarii he'd like to send for me to pick out however many I wanted at $50 each. I thought he meant denarii of 194 AD which would largely be the COS II coins but the package arrived with 194 (count) denarii of which about ten were Eastern (what I collected) and only two were worth the price (which was quite high - I was expecting better coins of the right type). Communications were harder before email or answering machines. Getting the mail late one day could mean disappointment.

 

My dad has collected ancients since the early 1960's and we've talked extensively about the differences today. I started collecting ancients in the past 10 years so I've not known anything different. I think I would prefer the digital age much better, but the personal relationships you would have with dealers pre digital would be nicer.

 

Without the internet, I would never have been able to assemble the collection I have here in Australia. Local coin dealers just don't have enough ancient coins, let alone the kind of variety i see online.

 

Australia = Montana when it comes to local dealers. There are very few ancient coins for sale within hundreds of miles. In the 1980's I relied on paper catalogs and occasional long trips to the summer ANA show. We took regular trips back East to see relatives. Stopping at US coin shops in the major cities on the way almost never turned out to be worthwhile. Only ancient-coin dealers have much in the way of ancient coins, so going out of the way three hours each way visit a dealer like Kern (who had hoards, and this was pre-slabs) with many ancients was worthwhile. If I got a paper catalog and immediately picked up the phone to order it was often already gone. The Pony Express did not get the catalog to Montana soon enough. Auctions from lesser firms using mail bids were a good source.

The internet changed everything. Doug and I put up our educational sites in lte 1996 or 1997 (Is that right, Doug?) and information about coins began to be free. However, I just checked my records and internet buying did not contribute much in my case until 1999. That must have been when Yahoo and eBay auctions (Yahoo auctions folded) began to be significant. The rest is history.

 

There seems to be an unwritten code of ethics among collectors of ancients. I've experienced this level of trust several times. The first time occurred after I had bought a few small items from a well-known dealer in UAE. I then reserved a coin on layaway and he promptly sent it to me. I sent him an email telling him he had made a mistake, but that he could rest assured that I would pay off the coin, and he told me, "No mistake. I trust you."

Most recently, a dealer at the Baltimore show, from whom I had only bought two coins in the past, handed me a bunch of coins that I wanted but was unable to pay for up-front. "Send me a paypal whenever it's convenient."

I've extended the same credit to some of my buyers. We're a trusting bunch.

 

Well, ancient coin collecting is a very small community, so both dealers and collectors know that their reputations count for more than it would in a larger community like for example US coins collectors.

If someone were to advance me a coin, and I didn't pay it, I bet you half the ancient coin dealers in America would find out, as they probably have accounts here or browse the forum.