Value for money?

Seleukid Kings of Syria. Demetrios III Eukairos AR Tetradrachm. Antioch, Circa 96-87 BC. Diademed head right / Zeus enthroned left, holding Nike and sceptre; [N/A in outer left field], monogram below throne. SNG Spaer 2823; SMA 435. 15.43g, 27mm, 1h.



This coin sold for over 5000 GBPs in the last Roma auction. Acsearch says that it's a 500-700 GBP type coin. Roma estimated it at 400GBPs.

Any thoughts on why this happened?

The photo is from their site.

 

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Someone either really wanted the coin or meant to type 520 and typed 5200. That begs the question: there must have been an underbidder as well... I'll be curious as to what CoinArchives/ACSearch shows after the sale closes.

 

Dont forget there must be at least 2 people bidding.

 

Hi everyone,

I just saw this thread (I'm normally to be found on another prominent forum for ancient coins). The simple answer is that it is a really, really rare coin. Apart from that, this one was the best of three available at the time - hence the price. Whoever was bidding on the coin clearly wanted the best one, and at least one other person felt the same way.

Jim

 

JBGood says that he found a value for the type on acsearch but I failed to find it. Coins of the listed ruler are all another type. Best known of 3 is an easy way to bring 10x estimate in any event. Was the ID as provided in the OP correct? Sear 7190 lists the type at considerably less than the common cultus statue reverse 7191 which makes no sense. Can you shed light on this?

 

A quick search in the online archives reveals just one other coin of this type (in rather uninspiring condition), sold in 2005 for about 700 bucks.

Now, I'm not a Seleucid specialist but from experience I know that Sear (and other pricing guides) often take educated guesses when it comes to the values of certain rare coins in their books, particularly if no sale prices are available to compare against.

I can think of several other significantly less rare and interesting coins than this in the Seleucid series which frequently sell for much more. You might even venture to say this coin could be considered a bargain!

I have no reason to think the ID wasn't correct. What is an OP in this context by the way? For me that just means 'observation post'....

 

Military?

 

Yes, long ago..

 

Original Post or Poster. In this case, the coin posted at the top of the thread.

 

Original post - this separates a coin from the twenty that seem to follow invariably when all here pile on with their coins. The fact we got no coins on this post suggests the coin is not terribly common.

Being listed in Sear with any price suggests that the coin is not one of three known. He usually selected typically seen types which in this case is the cultus statue.

 

Maybe i did the search wrong but with the estimate at 400GBP the hammer price didnt make sense to me. I will concede that rarity drives up price and i was unaware of its rarity.

I am a type collector so i dont dig that deep but there are a lot of coins that look pretty much like this one out there so I thought the deal looked hinky.

I am set straight! Thanks.

 

Hi JBGood,

It's well worth spending a little extra time when considering your next coin purchase or auction bid, since a rarity that goes unnoticed will often bring you a healthy return as and when you may decide to part with it. I've had many fortunate experiences buying technical rarities that when sold years later have made as much as ten times what I bought them for.

Jim

 

The coin will bring a good return if sold properly annotated through a dealer savvy enough to attract two competing buyers but what will make this coin retain or increase value more is its condition. Many of us have coins that exist in very small numbers (even unique) but there are so many types that the market hardly rewards being rare unless you are also beautiful or interesting. There are many coins where best known does not grade fine. These will require a change in attitudes by the market before they become high dollar items.

 

I believe as the world becomes smaller this will happen. I think once the good corpus is created a scramble for the rares will occur and all the laws are in place to prevent us from collecting ancient artifacts and coins. They will be wort a fortune. You never know in the distant future there might be a special collecting niche, "ancient coins of the early internet contributors."

 

I am relatively new to ancients so i would appreciate some tips on how to determine the rarity of an ancient coin. What is your approach.

Please all chime in on this, i need the scoop.
JBGood

 

Well it's usually quite simples *squeak*: auctioneers will often provide some note on rarity. It's then up to you to go and double-check to see just HOW rare they actually are. Several thorough searches on one of the main archive sites will certainly shed a great deal of light on this. You can search for the reference, you can search by distinguishing feature or symbol, whatever - as long as you're happy your search has been thorough and comprehensive. If you're finding that the total population passing through major auctions in the last fifteen years is low, then you're potentially onto a winner.

That said, the more you collect ancients, the more you'll come to recognise when something is truly rare. If I come across something these days that I've never seen before, I certainly take notice.

You should also definitely buy the reference books for your relevant collecting area. These will often give you some indication of rarity.

Jim

 

Rarity for a given coin may be stated in a reference book, but the designation only takes into account the collections and databases reviewed by the author and it may have no bearing on the number of coins available for purchase by collectors. Age of the book is also a factor since new coins and hoards are found often.

A more practical approach is to look as many sales databases as possible to get a feel for the number of examples which have come to market and the price they brought.

ACsearch
CNG's archives (which are not included in ACsearch)
CoinArchives

If you have old auction catalogs (pre-internet) and their 'prices realized' sheets, that can also be helpful but there are tons of such catalogs.

Once you've researched prior sales, look for currently available fixed price examples to see the asking price and number currently available. Vcoins and ma-shops are good resources (many dealers are on both). Not all dealers participate with Vcoins or MA shops so you might want to start amassing bookmarks for those dealers as you find them.

Also run it through Numisbids and Sixbid to see if any are coming up for auction. Depending on the coin, you might also check eBay.

 

Than you!