What are your very favorite Ancient Coin auction houses?

Discussion in 'Ancient Coins' started by VirginiaMan, Jun 12, 2019.

  1. Dougmeister

    Dougmeister Well-Known Member

    Frank Robinson FTW
     
    Jims Coins likes this.
  2. Avatar

    Guest User Guest



    to hide this ad.
  3. Sallent

    Sallent Live long and prosper

    I hate you guys so much. After reading this thread I am now bidding on four separate auctions. You guys are enablers to my coin addiction.:depressed:

    Serves me right too. I should have known better than to read a thread about people's favorite auction houses. :p
     
  4. ancient coin hunter

    ancient coin hunter 3rd Century Usurper

    I like Frank Robinson, some of the Vauctions, and a few others. I also buy fixed price coins from time to time from M-A shops and others. They often have 20-30 examples of coins from a single ruler and you can pick and choose. Some of the dealers are very high priced ($200 Constantine bronzes) and others are at market rate with some real good deals available on occasion. A lot of times dealers like to move their inventory if stuff remains unsold. I also have purchased from a dealer that has lots of coins of Roman Egypt available, however, their imperial coins tend to have desert patinas a bit too frequently for my liking. (Won't name names). I also have picked up coins from our very own John Anthony and Bing.

    Anyways, it's always a case of caveat emptor, esp. when dealing with Ebay.
     
    Trish and Jay GT4 like this.
  5. Johnnie Black

    Johnnie Black Neither Gentleman Nor Scholar

    What website does John Anthony have his auctions? I’ve been missing out here.
     
  6. Sallent

    Sallent Live long and prosper

    He has auctions through PMs in the forum, but you can also send @John Anthony a private PM and tell him what you are interested in, and I'm sure he'll be able to show you a few coins for your consideration.
     
    Johnnie Black likes this.
  7. Suarez

    Suarez Well-Known Member

    There's a lot of angst against ebay. Sure, there's a ton of fakes but it's not that hard to lower your risk considerably. If I had to give a new collector advice on this I'd say look for accounts that have been selling for a long time. This often, but not always, correlates to a high number of feedbacks (like over a thousand). When you click on the seller's username you get a number of stats and in the center of the screen a message saying "Based in [country], [seller_username] has been an eBay member since XXX". Accounts used for selling fakes tend to be new and stick around only for a few weeks. The turnover with them is so high that they often use 'burner' names with appended numbers or unreadable text strings which is a useful hint that they don't expect to last very long before they're shut down.

    But why buy on ebay at all? Well, that's pretty much the only place you're going to find coins sold for wholesale. The business plan of every single coin dealer or auction house is to buy wholesale and then add a markup to make their time and labor profitable. If you have plenty of money and/or are paranoid about getting stuck with a fake coin then it's a no-brainer. Pay the expert for his or her effort. If however you want the best bang for the buck then ebay remains pretty much the only venue where you can skip the middleman.

    And that works fine up to about the $500 range. After that you typically have many fewer choices on ebay and need to start looking on the auction circuit or dealer inventory.

    Rasiel
     
  8. Andrew McCabe

    Andrew McCabe Well-Known Member

    My favourites are several that no one has yet mentioned and that routinely get completely ignored, yet often sell high end rare genuine Republican and Imperatorial coins from old collections with good toning and provenance. If I can buy a good coin for half or one third the regular price, things such as shipping fees and commission percent become pretty irrelevant. Its worthwhile checking under moss-covered stones and through doors covered in cob webs for auctions every one else is ignoring and then when you find a source of good coins (whether auction or retail), guarding the information carefully so it stays that way. Everyone should develop their own secret sauce, but the one general advice I'd share is that auction firms which do NOT generally sell ancient coins are the ones to look for.

    My silver medal goes to auction firms which are difficult to deal with because for instance they don't list on Sixbid or have complicated websites not in English language.

    And my bronze medal goes to whichever firms not already covered that the dealers are buying from. How to find these? Go to the retail section of a high end dealer such as CNG and Waddell, see what's for sale and go to ACsearch and see where they got their coins. If they can get them cheap then so can you. You might also want to have a look at where I'm buying my ancient coins because if I'm following my own rule set then I'm not over paying :)

    Get a stick and poke about a bit; the less user friendly a seller is, and the less obvious it is that he sells lots of the coins you want, the better the chance of getting a great bargain.
     
    Last edited: Jun 23, 2019
    rrdenarius, Jay GT4, Orfew and 2 others like this.
  9. kaparthy

    kaparthy Well-Known Member

    Cognitive Dissonance is a theory of knowledge that explains how people justify choices that they cannot change. Everyone has recommendations based on their happy purchases. No one had any warnings or horror stories. Everyone bought into their own success with the prices of their coins.
    No one wants to start an argument. Ultimately, you can get sued by a dealer and certainly backlisted among them. My advice is to do your own research.

    One item I will undescore. My best purchase of an ancient - a museum piece at a bargain price - came from a dealer with his own speciality and little interest in ancients. He was fully aware, and made his money on the coin, but was not wiling to own it until he got the highest possible price in history. So, we were both happy. But the conversation started when he offered me something that he did not have on display. I said that the coin was misidentified. He said... I said... and everyone was happy.

    I mention that because every dealer touted here that I have dealt with - happily, I confess - also made mistakes in attribution, sometimes egregiously, and in some cases, I believe, with malice aforethought.

    Caveat emptor.
     
    Last edited: Jun 23, 2019
  10. dougsmit

    dougsmit Member

    Here we differ. When I believe a seller is acting with malice, I am not happy. He is dead to me. There are too many honest dealers, amateur and well skilled, to make me want to patronize known crooks. Mistakes are one thing and something that will happen to each of us. Lying, cheating and stealing are not to be tolerated.
     
  11. tartanhill

    tartanhill Well-Known Member

    Lots of good advice here and I've bought from most of those mentioned both in the US and abroad. Maybe a warning from members about auction houses they've had problems with would be helpful. One I no longer will buy from is HD Rauch. Their payment site was hacked and I sent my PayPal payment to some guy in France instead of to them. This had happened twice before but they did not correct the problem before I paid. I made a second payment in order not to delay my receiving my coin thinking they would refund my first one. Didn't happen. Lesson learned.
     
  12. Trish

    Trish Well-Known Member

    So far I've received great coins from an amcoinscanada.com auction, Frank Robinson's auctions and Marc Breitsprecher's site (mrbcoins.com). Since I'm new to ancients and would be fooled easily, I go with other's recommendations of who to trust. I would go to Ken Dorney's Vcoin site too. :)
     
    Clavdivs and Severus Alexander like this.
  13. Finn235

    Finn235 Well-Known Member

    Savoca - Probably my favorite. Their fees are low, and their Blue auctions are sometimes peppered with very nice material. And the FedEx Shipping is lightning fast - Usually at my door the same week I pay.
    Cons: Their job lots are usually junk.

    CNG - Another favorite. They have very nice Greek and Roman coins, and usually have some decent non-Classicals. Their job lots are top-notch; lots of my permanent keepers have come from CNG lots.
    Cons: High fees, lots of competition, I know for a fact that it doesn't cost $20-30 to ship a heavily insured first class package. Their photos of job lots are always just random coins from the lot dumped into piles; it can be hard to know what you are getting.

    Leu - Usually some nice material, always exceptionally low start bids, some outstanding job lots with true rarities.
    Cons: High fees and lots of competition; I once bought a lot of ~50 high grade antoninianii, and they failed to disclose that almost every coin had an extremely worn obverse or reverse die, not visible in the carefully arranged auction photo. I refuse to even calculate how much I lost on that lot.

    Naumann - Usually nice grade material; used to have excellent job lots, but quality has really gone downhill.
    Cons: Can take up to a month and a half to get coins.

    Frank Robinson - Great guy, great customer service, usually great coins. I was shocked when, as a first time customer, he sent me my winnings before I even sent payment! No buyer's fee is also a big plus!
    Cons: Have to ask what the current bids are.

    Nomos: Usually excellent coins, almost always some great rarities.
    Cons: Usually lots of competition!
     
    Roman Collector, Trish and Orfew like this.
  14. Stevearino

    Stevearino Well-Known Member

    As a newb in the "ancient world" my buying has only been from our own John Anthony here on CT, Davissons in Cold Spring, MN, Agora auctions, and one or more from miscellaneous dealers. I've been satisfied, especially, with John Anthony and Davissons (no buyer's premium, fast, reasonable shipping, good people to deal with).

    Steve
     
    Roman Collector likes this.
  15. DonnaML

    DonnaML Well-Known Member

    Does anyone know if Savoca still uses Fedex, and does so in their "Silver" auctions as well as the Blue? Today's Savoca Silver Auction 133 was the first time I've bid in one of their auctions, and I won two lots. So I hope they do still ship via Fedex, because I'm completely disgusted at the moment with the state of international shipping from Continental Europe via the regular international post: my coins won from Kuenker (Germany) and Cayon Subastas (Spain) were both shipped about a month ago by international post and there's no sign of them yet.
     
  16. Ryro

    Ryro Trying to remove supporter status

    They sure do:)
     
    DonnaML, Spaniard and Roman Collector like this.
  17. Spaniard

    Spaniard Well-Known Member

    @DonnaML......Yes I completely understand your frustration and I really don't understand why it takes so long.!... Recently I sent a 4 coin gift to a friend in the states , a simple certified letter 8 bucks and he received it in 6 days!...This is the second time I've done this recently with the same result...
     
    DonnaML likes this.
  18. Chris B

    Chris B Supporter! Supporter

    I recently made a low-price purchase from someone in Finland. It was literally in an envelope with some stamps on it and I got it in less than a week. I think "packages" get more scrutiny.
     
    DonnaML and Spaniard like this.
  19. DonnaML

    DonnaML Well-Known Member

    Thanks. For $25 extra, it's definitely worth it to avoid situations like the ones I'm in with Kuenker and Cayon Subastas. So I've already paid the invoice. I was also pleased to learn that Savoca charges only an 18% buyer's fee -- compared to at least one house that's up to 24% -- and charges no fees for using Paypal. (I actually paid with Amex through Paypal, rather than directly from my bank account, because Amex makes the payment in Euros and uses a better exchange rate than Paypal itself. I didn't feel like taking the 5-10 extra minutes necessary to set up a new payee on Wise.com, assuming that Savoca even takes bank transfers.)
     
    Ryro likes this.
  20. Herodotus

    Herodotus Well-Known Member

    If it's any relief..

    It's been a little while since I've won any auctions w/ Savoca. Yet, IIRC, the process was fairly seamless, and my order was shipped/received fairly quickly after payment was submitted.
     
  21. robinjojo

    robinjojo Well-Known Member

    I feel your frustration. The coins should arrive but, yes, shipping from Europe has been fraught with delays, generally speaking.

    In the end, if your coins do not arrive you will get your money back from your credit card company.
     
    DonnaML likes this.
Draft saved Draft deleted

Share This Page