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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;red_spork, post: 8215789, member: 74282&quot;]Personally I don&#039;t really pay more for modern named provenances in general, especially those where nothing indicates that this is likely an old collection. I always write all that information down because you never know what you&#039;ll learn later, and sometimes those named collections are far more interesting than the generic names let on but overall I don&#039;t see them any different than, for instance, a provenance listing a very recent sale which also doesn&#039;t really add any value for me.</p><p><br /></p><p>In my mind the factors that can add value for a provenance:</p><ul> <li>Pre-1971. Due to the signing of the UNESCO convention, 1970 is the cutoff for most museums and some collectors</li> </ul><p> <ul> <li>Pre-MOU(so 2011 for Italy), even if the type is unrestricted</li> </ul><p> <ul> <li>Rarity of similarly-provenanced examples of the type. If a particular type has become more common in the last decade but pre-MOU or pre-1971 examples are quite rare, that&#039;s a factor to consider.</li> </ul><p> <ul> <li>Famous collection - A famous collection that is known for the quality of the coins and the overall collection, like Martini, is in my mind worth a little bit more than a random collection from the same time. In some cases I&#039;m willing to pay a slight premium for coins where I personally know the prior collector(s) as well, as it does add some interest for me. That said, I would not consider any random named collection a famous collection. There are plenty of people who put together a few coins and later sold them with their name attached, especially in recent years, but most of them aren&#039;t worth anything extra to me.</li> </ul><p> <ul> <li>Hoard provenance if it is unlikely to be problematic. Buying a denarius from the Mesagne hoard likely isn&#039;t going to cause any problems and I think a provenance like that is super cool and interesting. A denarius from some more recent hoard that someone might write an article in a journal about next year and say &quot;this hoard was reportedly dug up outside Salerno last year&quot; is playing with fire and I&#039;d pass.</li> </ul><p> <ul> <li>Published - If a coin is the coin cited in the standard reference for the type, that&#039;s worth something to me. If it&#039;s pictured or cited in a die study, maybe. Both can often be a good indication of quality since researchers and authors are generally looking for the best examples to illustrate and I&#039;ll concede, it&#039;s kinda cool to be able to cite a reference that illustrates my coin.</li> </ul><p>These factors are basically multiplicative for me when formulating a bid, for instance last year I bid on one nice example of a type with a fantastic provenance and ended up on a final bid that was about 175% of what I&#039;d have bid on a completely unprovenanced example. It&#039;s hard to explain how I arrive at a final number and sometimes it is only after some discussion with other similarly-minded collectors. I&#039;m still trying to wrap my mind around some of the prices we&#039;ve seen in the past couple years for coins so more often than not the provenance helps me decide whether or not to bid at all as I can&#039;t always bring myself to place realistic, competitive bids on some nicer coins with absolutely no provenance.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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