As many of you know, I collect mainly German coins. There is one seller on EBay I have been buying from for a long time. He posts mostly coins from one or more countries each week and about once every other month it is nothing but German coins, often in excess of 100 coins. I usually bid on anything which looks interesting and which I don't already have. It can be anything from 5 old pfennings for $1.50 to a single coin for $100+. Over the years I have won around a quarter of all his auctions I have bid on. Last time I won almost nothing. This time I bid on 42 auctions and only one 3. Two of them were low value and only one was of any significance and I think I probably overbid a little as it is a coin I have been looking for for some time. Anyway, the point of this post is that this does not seems to be an isolated case with German coins. It seems that they are costing more (at least on EBay) than they were a couple of years ago. Has anything else noticed this?
Prices of everything has gone up, except the majority of people's income... Haven't bought anything recently as collecting is just a hobby.
I've been trying to sell a large selection of German coins from the empire and Weimar time and I feel like no one wants them. I had a big collection and decided to cut it down drastically, so I've probably unloaded or listed about 70 percent of what I had. They are mostly common date but I feel like in the past they were an easy sell and now they're just sitting around. I have a lot of 19th century coins for less than $1.50 each and they've been sitting around unsold for months. So for these, no, my experience doesn't match yours.
Interesting. I would certainly by looking at them if I saw them. I have lots of gaps. Where are you posting them? But when I posted I was thinking more of higher end coins. The one I did win this week was a Weimar commemmorative and it was not cheap. Perhaps you are referring to lower quality pfenning coins.
Yes, I'm referring to the pfennig coins, and I'm selling them on eBay. In the past I always knew if I got doubles I could flip them pretty easily, but this time they just stagnate. It's the classic example of when you're buying everyone seems to want it but when you want to sell, no one is buying. I sell one once in awhile but not like I expected. Usually I figure there's people who like to get a coin from the 1800s for cheap.
I don't generally collect too many German coins but was looking at their overall performance on the recent HA auction. Many of them were very attractive Thalers and several went for multiples of the highest estimates. They certainly seemed to be doing better than the French, Spanish and Byzantine offerings and at par with better 16th-19th Century GB coins which also seem to be strengthening.
I collect mainly Mexican coins and have noticed the same thing over the past year or so. I wouldn’t have mentioned it if it were just me, but I hear similar remarks often enough to think it’s a trend in world coins in general.
Yes but there seems to be a trend away from the standard stuff towards the premium stuff. The former is declining whereas the latter seems to be strengthening, in both Ancients and Moderns.
German numismatics is very vast so one needs to be specific about what one means by german coins. After all, there were more than 30, And sometimes many more coin issuing entities (Kingdoms, Dukedoms, Principalities, free cities) until 1918. I tend to break it up by time periods, for example: mediaeval Germany up until about 1500, city-coinage up until ca. 1790. The so-called "Schwalbach" Era coinage from 1790-1871 (on german Unification ), and after that the Reichs Coinage (German Empire) until 1918. After the Great War, the coinage of the Weimarer Republik, including the 3- and 5 mark commemoratives. Finally, the coins issued by the 3rd Reich, followed by the coinage of the Federal Republic from 1948 onwards. I focus on the coinage from 1790 until 1871 (including Talers and Doppeltalers) and my observations here have been that prices, even for some really scarce issues are very strongly affected by the state of preservation of the coin. Unless you have an extreme rarity, it will not bring strong prices, often below catalog, if the coin is not at least "ss" (sehr schoen, or VF30). I believe prices in grades lower than VF30 this have actually dropped for most issues over the last years. The above applies even more to the coinage of the German Empire, all the way from 1 Pfennig to the 20 mark (gold). Unless you have a specially scarce issuing state, prices are very soft for grades up to VF. In lower grades, VG or so, some of the more common coins (for example Prussian silver) brings as little as bullion value. Only at Vorzueglich/Stempelglanz (about MS60+), and specially for true Stempelglanz (brilliant uncirculated), you can expect good prices and in-line with the catalogs or better.
Unless they are before 1871 I only look at coins which are VF at a minimum. After that I mostly look at silver coins from 1872-1933: states' 2, 3 and 5 mark, plus Weimar commemoratives is what I had in mind. But I also bid on some low end, non-silver West German coins and they also were higher than usually. This time I bid on coins all the way from the mid-1600s up to the late 1900s. So it seems to be across the board as long as the grade is decent.
