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<p>[QUOTE="Roman Collector, post: 4961536, member: 75937"]Like everything else, it all comes down to supply and demand. The demand for high-grade sestertii is extreme, but the demand for common, circulated sestertii is low.</p><p><br /></p><p>While high-grade sestertii have always been coveted by the well-heeled collector, I think the philosophy of collecting has changed in recent decades. Numismatists in the 18th and 19th centuries -- and even well into the 20th -- aimed for completeness, and when one looks at the collections of Sultzer, Banduri, Wiczay and others, it's apparent that their purpose was to amass as many different types as possible, grade being secondary. Many of the university museum collections -- even the British Museum and BnF collections -- contain thousands of bronze coins in F-VF grade.</p><p><br /></p><p>However, the modern trend in collecting has been toward type collecting, obtaining fewer but high-grade examples, getting them slabbed, and then commiserating with one's fellow collectors when a TPGS assigns a grade of MS-66 instead of MS-67. We see this somewhat in ancient collecting, when a collector/investor wants a coin of Trajan -- any Trajan as long as it's well-centered and extremely high grade -- without regard to reverse type or historical interest.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now throw in an infamous historical personage, such as Caligula or Nero, or a biblical tie-in, such as a IVDEA CAPTA issue, and the sky's the limit. There is such demand for high-grade material that a HUGE percentage of such sestertii have been tooled or smoothed.</p><p><br /></p><p>Meanwhile, coins such as this historically meaningful sestertius of Antoninus Pius, celebrating the birth of grandchildren, sell for less than $100 because they aren't desired by the one-per-ruler collector/investor. At least this one hasn't had more work done than Cardi B:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1192791[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>
[QUOTE="Roman Collector, post: 4961536, member: 75937"]Like everything else, it all comes down to supply and demand. The demand for high-grade sestertii is extreme, but the demand for common, circulated sestertii is low. While high-grade sestertii have always been coveted by the well-heeled collector, I think the philosophy of collecting has changed in recent decades. Numismatists in the 18th and 19th centuries -- and even well into the 20th -- aimed for completeness, and when one looks at the collections of Sultzer, Banduri, Wiczay and others, it's apparent that their purpose was to amass as many different types as possible, grade being secondary. Many of the university museum collections -- even the British Museum and BnF collections -- contain thousands of bronze coins in F-VF grade. However, the modern trend in collecting has been toward type collecting, obtaining fewer but high-grade examples, getting them slabbed, and then commiserating with one's fellow collectors when a TPGS assigns a grade of MS-66 instead of MS-67. We see this somewhat in ancient collecting, when a collector/investor wants a coin of Trajan -- any Trajan as long as it's well-centered and extremely high grade -- without regard to reverse type or historical interest. Now throw in an infamous historical personage, such as Caligula or Nero, or a biblical tie-in, such as a IVDEA CAPTA issue, and the sky's the limit. There is such demand for high-grade material that a HUGE percentage of such sestertii have been tooled or smoothed. Meanwhile, coins such as this historically meaningful sestertius of Antoninus Pius, celebrating the birth of grandchildren, sell for less than $100 because they aren't desired by the one-per-ruler collector/investor. At least this one hasn't had more work done than Cardi B: [ATTACH=full]1192791[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]
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