Over priced ancients

List coins that you think are way too pricey/ since they are not rare.

My pick the Athenian owl/ some auctions have over a 100 or more. There are tens of thousands out in collections/ so why are they still going for 500+ euros????? show your exs...

 

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Actually, I often think ancient coin prices are too low!

For one thing, they tend not to factor in a lot of "externalities" (mostly having to do with the costs/benefits of preserving the data/information and the objects themselves in some form for as much of humanity & future generations as possible).

For another, I don't think there's one correct price for a coin. I think the same coin can reasonably be worth a different amount to different collectors (and a different price under different commercial circumstances).

Am I the only one who has this experience:

I buy a coin and think to myself, "Thank goodness it wasn't cheaper!" (I genuinely feel this way almost every time I buy a fixed price coin.)

Recently a certain major American opened the unsold coins from their latest Buy-Bid Sale for purchase at the reserve price. There were several coins I wanted, but wasn't willing to pay the "Buy Now" price. I could only afford to buy 1, so instead of bidding, I waited to see which went unsold.

Thankfully, the coin I wanted most became available at a very acceptable price:


If it had been priced any lower, someone else would've bought it (or at least been willing to bid above the reserve).

And then it would've gone to someone else -- quite possibly someone who didn't recognize that it was actually a very rare variant (the BALINEUM, a bath building): https://rpc.ashmus.ox.ac.uk/search/browse?q=trajan+bath+building

... or who didn't care that it was also (unmentioned) from the Wetterstrom and Garrett collections and published in RPC and Kampmann & Ganschow.

Honestly, I still think I got it too cheap (someone who "needed" it for a collection of architectural types might value it much higher, since there are only a couple coins illustrating this particular building outside museums).

I've also seen a lot of coins sold before I could get to them and thought, "Dammit, I wish that had been more expensive so it wouldn't have been bought before I had a chance to get at it!!"

 

I 100 percent agree/ that 99% of ancient/ medieval coins are very underpriced compared to US coinage. However those Attica Owls are way too pricey for how many appear in auctions. Rumour has it that a hoard of 100K+ was discovered/ hence the flood of these common coins. But in general rare world coinage 670BC- 1933 are still under priced/ compared with US/ Canadian/ UK coinage.

 

Alexander Tetradrachm and drachm, hundreds in every condition at every auction. I'm so sick of seeing them I just scroll right past.

Kings of Lydia, Kroisos - nice coins but over priced due to hoards found in the past decade.

and whoever paid about $425 (hammer price + fees) for this Pamphylia coin at todays N&N London auction. Again nice coin but not for $425.

 

Very true/ also AV Persian Darics. Those Lydian AV Staters sell for 50K should be 5K.

 

Tetradrachms of Tigranes II of Armenia. A major hoard was found recently, but the average price hasn't come down as the hoard is being slowly trickled into the market. A very attractive design, I've been thinking of getting one but the price is still too high for me to justify to myself.

Honorable mention: Common denarii of Tiberius ("Tribute Pennies") and tetradrachms of Tyre ("Thirty Pieces of Silver") due to the Biblical associations. Common 1st century BCE prutot ("Widow's Mites"), though sometimes sold at inflated prices, are also still available at more realistic levels.

 

We must all be on the same page. When thinking of something to post, my list would have been:

1. Owl
2. Alexander
3. Tyrian Shekel

Probably wouldn't have listed it here, but I actually made a post a few months ago asking why the Tigranes II Tets were still so expensive.

I guess great minds think alike .

Just to add one to the list, I'll go with the Augustus denarius with Lucius and Gaius standing next to shields on the reverse. It seems as though this type makes up more than half of existing Augustus coins, but the prices don't seem to reflect the availability:

Not my coin

 

The answer is simple. Collector popularity. The same is true for the 1907 High Relief St. Gaudens $20 gold coin. Probably as many as 10,000 still exist, but it’s hard to find one, even with issues, for less than $10,000.

 

Same holds true for 1857-S Double Eagle. Over 9K recovered from SSCA/ most in MS-63 and higher/ yet prices remain high. But US coinage is way overpriced compared to World coinage. World stuff would have to increase 200% to compare to US prices.

 

In the Art Institute of Chicago, they have a specimen of this coin which is the most abominably tooled ancient coin...



https://www.artic.edu/artworks/142497/coin-portraying-emperor-trajan

Now let's be more serious.

On these Trajanic coins of Alexandria, the legend ΒΑΛΑΝΗΟΥ (?) is probable. But the building is certainly not a bath, even less the Baths of Trajan built in Rome. The triangular pediment with a globule (the sun?) in the middle is never found on baths. In ancient times the triangular pediment had a very clear signification: this stela, this building is sacred. These pediments were only found on temples, shrines, funerary stelae, sarcophagi, on top of niches with the statue of a god... They were also found on triumphal arches like in Orange, or on the imperial entrance of the Colosseum in Rome. Never on baths, as far as I know.

Monuments depicted on coins always were monuments of the city which minted the coin. You will not find Alexandrian monuments on coins from Rome, and not Roman monuments on coins from Alexandria. This tetrastyle facade with a pediment, an attic and a quadriga with trophies and captives was most probably a religious monument of Alexandria.

Could the legend ΒΑΛΑΝΗΟΥ mean "of the bath"? (it's at the genitive form). Nobody considered another possibility. The Greek name βαλανῖον can be "bath" but is also the name Bαλανῖον of the idol of Jupiter Heliopolitanus at Heliopolis (Baalbek) in Lebanon. Balanion is derived from Baalan, "Our Lord" in Phoenician Aramaic. I think we could consider this possibility : a shrine of Zeus of Heliopolis in Alexandria. Why not?

 

Interesting theory about the Baalbek and the shrine.

But note that the type you linked is a different building and doesn't have a reverse legend (just year).

That's the so-called "Triumphal Arch." It is the common type (Emmett 602) struck in 7 different different regnal years (some are rare, others very common). This is also what HJB mistook it for.

The ΒΑΛΑΝΗΟΥ type (Emmett 603) was only struck in Year 12, and does not have any arches between the columns, or those panels with the square statues.

Also note, on the ΒΑΛΑΝΗΟΥ type, the Corinthian Order columns with the decorated volutes on the type I posted. Clearly a different structure.

If it becomes possible to identify it, it should involve those details of architecture. (From my bibliography, almost a dozen books and articles on Alexandrian coinage over the past 100+ years have puzzled over the ΒΑΛΑΝΗΟΥ coins in detail, back-and-forth, so I leave it to them, at least for the moment. I will note, though, that many large bath complexes did have such arches and other comparable entry structures, including Caracalla's, and the one at Sardis, compare also Sev. Alex's Nymphaeum coinage, so I don't see a reason to rule it out on those grounds.)

(Dattari had 3; Aiello has/had one; there are several in museum collections, possibly incl. the Jungfleish sale specimen, which is the best known to depict this building/legend.)

I'm not sure which regnal year, but the Art Institute coin is (or was once!) one of these types from RPC vol III (all Emmett 602):

• Illustrated by various numbers of specimens & regnal years: 4337.2, 4456.3, 4456.5, 4547.1, 4547.2, 4547.3, 4547.4, 4696.1, 4696.2, 4955.1, 4955.2
• Not illustrated: 4337.1, 4456.1, 4456.2
• Head left: 4456.4

 

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You are right, the tooled coin from Chicago must be one of the "triumphal arch" coins with a reverse copied from the Domitian Alexandrian triumphal arch reverse. The date "L I" is a mere result of tooling, as is the central square panel.
It is very clear that the tetrastyle facade is derived from this triumphal arch : the upper half of the monument (pediment, attic, quadriga, trophies) is identical. It's just the lower half that's different, with the absence of arches and square panels between the 4 columns and a garland between the 2 central columns. I wonder what the die-cutters intended to represent... Certainly not a bath, I don't see any parallel. The four columns are not evenly spaced, the central gap is larger.
I am convinced we should investigate the Balanion hypothesis. It must have been something exceptional for Alexandrians, for they added on the exergue a legend in full letters at the genitive form...

 

Tarentum/Taras Didrachms. Common as dirt, still go for hundreds of dollars.

 

Hi @GinoLR,

See F Kleiner "An Arch of Domitian in Rome on Coins of Alexandria”, available at JSTOR here.

- Broucheion

 

How about the best UNDERPRICED coins?

 

This one I bought from Teutonburger Auctions/ were it remained unsold??????
AV Aureus ND (struck 255-57AD) R-5 (Unique)
Joint Reign of Valerian I & Son Gallienus 25 3-60AD
Tis is the Calico Plate coin/ provenance Ars Classica 2004

Starting bid/ 7200 euros (EF-MS) quality. One could imagine 7 figures if it were a US coin.

 

I don't know whether it is a rare coin or not, but this is selling for 20000 USD on eBay:

 

Very rare, very fake.

- Broucheion

 

https://www.vcoins.com/en/stores/nu...na_aureus_201_rome__gold/1812777/Default.aspx