What is your view on prices over a period of years?

i can't even give mine away, nobody wants them!

 

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According to Bowers, due to Gradeflation, it's virtually impossible to compare prices over time. I guess one could factor in gradeflation, which would show a larger price increase.

https://www.cointalk.com/threads/gradeflation.274303/

 

While I'm not sure that I understand the OP's intended question/topic for this thread, I have a number of personal and general insights and comments that may be relevant.

First, my personal reasons for collecting ancient coins rather than modern coins (which I collected in grade school and junior high school) are primarily for the history and beauty/artistry of the coins. The former criteria can be fulfilled reasonably with many ancient coins in fine+ condition. The latter criteria, however, is fulfilled better with coins that are in VF+ through FDC condition, for reasons so obvious they don't need further explanation.

I'm fortunate in having the financial wherewithal to acquire mostly EF coins, but I would still collect ancient coins for their history even if I couldn't afford EF coins. Even so, most collectors will prefer to acquire a coin in the best condition they can afford, all other things being equal. This makes sense -- why would you choose the lower quality of two coins that were approximately the same price within your budget?

There is also a "numismatic" reason I collect ancient coins -- namely the idea of coins themselves, their denominations, how they were used in ancient, everyday commerce/living, how they were minted, how they fluctuated in size, weight, and metal fineness during the era of the issuing authorities, etc. While this is a secondary reason for me, for many collectors on this site it may be the primary reason that they collect. For these collectors, condition may be less of a criteria for their purchase of certain coins, and they may prefer to allocate their coin budget to purchasing multiple lower-priced coins rather than just a few higher-priced coins. This is also perfectly sensible.

If I collected mostly for numismatic reasons, I would pay little or no attention to the increase or decrease in value of my collection. I would, however, pay attention to the effect of inflation, and the number of collectors, on the prices and availability of the coins that I wanted to acquire. Any collector would prefer to acquire his/her desired coins at the best price possible, even if you don't care about the eventual value of your collection.

My particular view about inflation and the number of collectors is a bit different from some of the other posts in this thread. I see no possibility that the value of ancient coins, even those in F condition, will ever substantially decline if inflation continues -- at least over a medium/long period of time (i.e., a decade or so). This is because I see little or no possibility that the number of collectors of ancients will decline over the same period of time. While it may seem that there are fewer collectors now than 10 or 20 years ago, I doubt this is the case. The rising population of the world as a whole, the increasing financial well-being of the developed countries, and the Internet as a medium for sharing collections and interests, all combine to make collecting more widely shared and serves to draw in new collectors. I don't have any statistics to validate these assertions, so I'd be interested if anyone else can cite reliable data that studies the number of collectors and the trend during the last few decades.

In addition, the highest quality ancient coins of their type will always increase in price, except in the rare circumstances of either a hoard find that floods the market with similar coins, or if the coin was the object of a bidding war that escalated its price far beyond its current value. Similarly, second-tier coins will also rise in proportion to their value relative to top-tier coins.

I would think that F to F+ coins would, over the long term, mostly keep up with inflation, but again I cannot validate this assertion with any hard statistics.

Let's acknowledge it -- most of us on this site would prefer that our collections at least keep up with inflation (minus the premium we may have paid to the dealer from whom the coin was purchased) even if we never envision selling any coins, but for all of us that's not the reason we're ancient coin collectors. Always buy and collect coins you like, and in the best condition that your budget allows.

 

I had a couple of thought while reading replies.....


1. We never "own" our coins, we are just temporary curators. The coins will outlast us all.

2. Any coin price comparatives over time are statistically meaningless unless gradeflation is considered. (Dave Bower's column this week in Coin World).

 

While I have no doubt this statement accurately applies to U.S. coins, I'm less certain it applies to ancient coins. In my experience, almost all ancient coins are purchased on the basis of individual evaluation of that particular coin (except maybe large lots), so a grade of, say, "about VF Vespasian denarius" would almost never be sufficient to entice a collector to purchase that particular coin.

In other words, a grade of MS-60 may be adequate to describe an Indian Head cent to a collector who is interested in U.S. coins, and he might buy it without ever examining it personally. But a description of "VF Vespasian denarius" would almost never be enough for a collector of ancients. Is the obverse legend completely on the coin? Is it a double-strike? Is the portrait of Vespasian reasonably artistic? Does the reverse have a historically significant event or item portrayed (e.g., Judaea Capta)? None of these considerations comes into play when evaluating modern coins, but can be crucial to a collector of ancients and render the VF grade almost irrelevant in making a purchase decision.

I'm not saying that there isn't gradeflation in the ancients world -- there clearly is -- I'm just suggesting that it wouldn't need to be factored into a statistical analysis of comparatives over a few decades of pricing ancient coins.

 

Great posts, IOM. This hits the nail on the head with why price guides are impractical for ancients. I was recently discussing this with a dealer who primarily sells US coins. He referenced the fact that having a type pictured in the Red Book dramatically increases demand and a similar book should be created for ancients.

That would need to be an enormous book. Most non-ancient dealers don't appreciate just how many different types were minted in antiquity, and the impact of the vast differences in artistic quality. In theory, it could be possible to create a price guide in ancients for very narrow types (i.e. Tiberius Livia aurei should only require 50 individual entries or so) but for now, it's far easier to just look up comparable examples in CoinArchives/ACSearch and come to an independent conclusion.

 

I always try to agree with smart folks ...

An actual Red-Book would obviously be ludicrous => ummm, but my hero, David Sear, has done a very good job of attempting to create one sweet data point ... and although a few dudes chuck mud at ERIC-II's rarity table, it is still another sweet data-point ...

Yah, I am always a total fan of anybody who attempts to create an additional data point (it's baby-steps, my friends)

 

Don't faint but I'm going to recommend an idea from David Vagi. Before he got in the business of slabbing coins (not my thing, you may recall) he wrote a 2 volume book Coinage and History of the Roman Empire. It took the position that you could list a ruler and provide a price in three grades for their common coins and then list separately a few more desirable coins of that ruler. Sometimes there would be a dozen 'special' types; sometimes none. That is correct. Some rulers only had a few types and none of them were any more interesting than the rest while some had a few really good types and a bunch of 'somebody standing there' coins. This enabled a book of reasonable (not small by any means) size. I believe he missed the boat for a best seller in a couple ways. The photos were excellent but too few and mostly unlabeled. The book was small and thick but the subject would have been done better if the pages had been two inches wider and all that space filled with photos of coins on that page. I wonder what the effect if the history volume had been sold separately. I liked both to a point but my suggestion for more pictures could have priced the set over the market's willingness to pay for whichever book they would not read. If I had only one, I would have taken the History because any F, VF, EF priced book is worthless to me since I don't believe in those grades. What we have is more or less a Red Book for the coins covered but it was too small to beat out Millenium Sear (which has taken forever to complete) and was too complex for the beginner 'one per' crowd. I believe going either direction (smaller, larger) with the book would have been more successful.

I reviewed it in 2000:
http://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/book.html#vagi

There is currently a copy of only the Coinage volume on Amazon for $0.41. Someone should buy it. If you later buy both volumes, you can give it to someone.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=vagi+david

 

Thank you for writing this. As I read it, I went, yup, yup, yup, yup, straight through, on every point. Everything you said, from start to stop..... spot on.

It's as if you read my mind. But you took the time to put it to pen. Merci

 

Here is an opinion: Like broccoli, the kid would learn more from a hundred $10 coins than from one $1000 coin. He would never get all of his $1000 back but the experience of seeing and handling all those assorted actual coins would be as good for him as a vegetable he does not like and certainly more than a plastic box with a single EF denarius of a ruler he had never suspected existed (Pertinax is cool but not THAT cool). We on the Internet have given away free education on coins. I'm as much to blame for that as anyone but although I am not asking for tuition you still have to cover lab fees and room/board. Eat the broccoli, kid.

 

It depends on what the kid is trying to learn. I feel like I personally would do better with 10 coins at $100 each than 100 at $10. I am a not quite novice coin collector, but very new to ancients.

Also, I love broccoli.

 

I like to think my meagre collection is worth more than I paid for it. I wouldnt tie money up in it if I didnt at least think i could sell it for what I paid.
I have formed my collection by buying uncleaned or semi cleaned coins and cleaning them or by buying groups, keeping the best few and selling the rest to pay for the keepers. Seldom have I bought a coin in the condition it now exists in in my collection.

 

Done, thanks . I've been meaning to pick this up for awhile now, mainly because of the section and catalog of the Festival of Isis series. Of course, by the time it gets to me, shipping will probably have bumped the cost up to $25, but that's my own fault for living where the coinbooks don't roam.

 

I can feel responsible for zumbly wasting 41 cents if it turns out as a book he does not like. I can not be responsible for postage rates. I buy a number of books from Amazon used listings for one cent plus $3.99 postage but I live in the same country as the sellers. It works the other way when I buy a coin from Europe.

I find it interesting that Amazon still lists five more volume II alone (now starting at $30) but none of the History volume I. Maybe I am not the only one who felt it was the better half. I wonder: How many others here have or have read Vagi? Did I treat it fairly in the review?

 

Eight years ago when I first started purchasing ancient coins from, and through, my dealer he gave me a copy of these two books. They are incredibly engrossing to read, especially if you're new to ancients, but even if you've been collecting for many years.

Doug's comments above are pretty accurate but I would like to specifically quote from his review:

"Volume Two begins with a truly great 180 page introduction to collecting Roman Imperial coins. Chapters cover types, denominations, mints, dating, grading and other subjects that must be understood by someone at all interested in collecting these coins. This section alone, if published separately, would be a great service to hobby and to the education of beginning collectors."

I have read and re-read these 180 pages at least a dozen times, and they never grow old. I wish the publisher had taken Doug's advice and published this section separately at a reasonable cost, since it would be the de facto best primer available on collecting ancient coins.

I highly recommend these books to everyone.