Leu Numismatik

[DCCR]

On 2/6/2024 at 8:05 PM, Kaleun96 said:

Who needs four examples per type? Many of them probably of the same die pairings too.

People doing die studies? I have 31 examples of the same type with 9 of the from the same die pair. Four examples of a type seems pedestrian.

[Kaleun96]

7 hours ago, DCCR said:

People doing die studies? I have 31 examples of the same type with 9 of the from the same die pair. Four examples of a type seems pedestrian.

It's always a possibility but I think its likelihood depends on the type of coinage - do you have 31 examples of the same Alexander III tetradrachm by any chance? The frequency of dies, die pairings, types, examples, availability in public collections, and prior research affect how likely it is for someone to amass such a collection so what makes sense in one field of ancient numismatics may not in another.

If it were a die study, we likely would've seen that die study published before they sold the coins and we'd expect to see provenances. Perhaps they did it for personal reasons (or didn't finish it), you never know, as I haven't come across such a study myself and I've also yet to see a recent (i.e. not Newell etc) die study of Alexander III tetradrachms that came from the author's large personal collection. All the ones that come to mind rely on a mix of public collections, hoards, and auction results. Additionally, this "collection" doesn't represent every type from Aspendos, Phaselis, and Perge and I bet it doesn't represent every die of the types it does have either. So it would seem to me odd to have four of one type, including of the same die, but none of others.

It just doesn't strike me as a personal collection at all, unless it came from someone who bought it as a hoard themselves.

[Tejas]

On 2/6/2024 at 10:50 PM, Valentinian said:

There are vast numbers of coins at auction every month (maybe 40,000 individual lots on biddr alone, some "large lots" of which have 50 or 100 low-grade coins each). Almost all those coins are actually sold (unlike fixed-price sites where coins may languish unsold for months or years). The overwhelming majority are not high-value coins (say, not over a thousand dollars) and many hammer at $20 or less. I have about 100 linear-feet of old sale catalogs, largely issued 1975-2000. It is easy to see what coins were offered at and sold for back then. Most would sell for about the same amount now in dollars and most Swiss auctions sold most of their coins then for more than they would sell for now. That's just a fact.

So, how can you have the impression that prices seem to have risen? There are major contributing factors.
1)  Since you started collecting your standards have risen, so the denarius you were pleased with then at $x is no longer of the quality that you would want, so you must spend $2x to get what you want. $x to $2x is not a price rise if the coin is a lot better.
2)  In the coin market some items sell remarkably high and they are usually items of top quality. If you are impressed by items that have gone high, you may (over)generalize and think items in general have gone up, when actually you are unintentionally selecting special cases. You are overlooking all the numerous coins that have gone lower. 
3)  Coins that have gone up and attain high prices get the publicity and interest. Coin publications are not likely to highlight cases where the price went down. Such cases are not unusual, but don't usually get a Numis Forums post or a note in Coin World. Beware of selection bias.
4)  The top 1% of earners are doing well and they tend to want top-quality coins. I don't deny that some very high-quality coins have sold for notably high prices. 
5)  Many collectors assert (lament) that prices have gone up. It is easy to join the club without paying attention to the actual data.

In contrast, how can you believe that prices have fallen? 

Anyone who collects Greek copper, Greek silver fractions, Roman provincial, or Byzantine copper coins knows prices have gone down. The supply side is very many times what it was. Look at a few old top-quality auctions of Byzantine copper (e.g. the Berk/England auction of 1989) and you will see virtually all the coins would cost less now (and they were outstanding for the series). 

Vast numbers of common late Roman coins are on the market at auctions. Many are in low grade and would not have been auctioned before the internet and auction platforms made it easy to offer low-value coins. Prices for them are lower than ever since the 1970s when there were "you-pick" boxes of unidentified coins at major coin shows. The really excellent late Roman coins ones sell now for much less than they auctioned for 30 years ago. The same holds for Greek copper, Roman provincial, and some other collecting areas. 

I, personally, bought several $100-$500 coins last year with auction pedigrees that I was able to determine the old PRs for.  Most I bought for less--some a lot less.  

It may be that the types you want in the condition you want cost more than you want to pay now. But, what about all the other coins? What about all the coins you bought in the past? Would they cost more now?  Sure, maybe some of them. But, by and large, coin prices have not gone up.

These are very good points. I was also under the impression that prices are trending higher, but I realize my biased perception. I think the advent of metal detectors and the opening up of eastern Europe may have a lot to do with the increased supply and the downward trend in prices. Hence, it would be a supply-driven phenomenon, which is not so worrying as it was demand driven, i.e. fewer and fewer collectors buying coins. The supply is naturally limited and will at some point dry up. However, it is also possible that demand falls as well when baby boomers retire and eventually die.

[John Conduitt]

On 2/7/2024 at 4:10 AM, Sol_Invictus said:

Very interesting discussion in this thread!

I wonder if Noonans Mayfair might be a useful source of statistics on this issue? They make a point of highlighting “Detectorist Finds” in their auctions, including ones that aren’t large enough hoards to be reported to the PAS. If you focus just on British coins, where there is no incentive to obfuscate new finds, you might get a reasonably decent estimate for the ratio of new to recirculated British coins currently in the market. In their current auction, for example, Detectorist finds make up only a rather small fraction of all the pre-17th century British coins in the sale. However, they also have auctions where they sell a single large recently found hoard, and 100% of the coins in the auction are “detectorist finds.” So I guess a proper estimate would need to look back over a number of auctions from several years. Of course it’s also not clear how representative Noonans is of the overall market (do they sell more or fewer recent finds compared to other auction houses?), or how representative the British market is of coins sourced from other countries.

I collect coins that are British finds. Most coins you see are from old finds (well over 95%) but there are some auction houses - Noonans, TimeLine and Chris Rudd, for example, who have a steady supply from detectorists. These are the auction houses that sell most British coins, so the proportion of 'detectorist finds' is high. It's sometimes obvious that these are the same half a dozen detectorists who consign their finds every few months. If a big hoard appears it might make up 25-100% of the sale, but that is only a few times a year. So the proportion of new coins might come to 5%+. That's a lot, given in less than 20 years you have double the number of coins. I think the same is true of dealers, like Silbury. eBay might have an even higher percentage of new finds (once fakes are excluded).

You get into a problem with definition. What is a 'new find'? Noonans sold the Colkirk Hoard - found in 2020 - in December. In January, I already saw several coins from the hoard up for sale again on eBay and dealer websites. The East Harptree Hoard, found in 1887, was only sold in 2016, but some of the coins have been resold many times since. Are those old or new?

In line with the above estimate, I think the number of finds in the last 25 years has exceeded the number of coins that were on the market before that. With Celtic coins, almost everything is 'extremely rare' and 20 years ago (when they wrote the references) there may have been only a handful of most types of coin known. Now, some of these reach the heady heights of a couple of dozen (so there are now enough examples to work out what the legends say!). These are the types of coin that are not found in hoards but singularly, and have been found in proportionately higher quantities more recently because they were so hard to find before decent detectors came to the market.

[Rand]

This proportion of new coins also depends on the collection area. Historically, some coins were more likely to end up in a melting pot than others. Now, nearly all ancient coins are preserved for sale. The exception could be finds from countries with restrictive rules when converting coins to bullion may still be safer.

Newly discovered types of Roman aurei are unusual, but for the coins of the migration period new types appear all the time and they were not known to academics 25 years ago or so.

Rare Roman aurei remain rare, while some Byzantine/migration period 'rarities' keep such a designation only as a tradition kept by dealers.

 

 

[Curtisimo]

7 hours ago, John Conduitt said:

collect coins that are British finds. Most coins you see are from old finds (well over 95%) but there are some auction houses - Noonans, TimeLine and Chris Rudd, for example, who have a steady supply from detectorists. These are the auction houses that sell most British coins, so the proportion of 'detectorist finds' is high. It's sometimes obvious that these are the same half a dozen detectorists who consign their finds every few months. If a big hoard appears it might make up 25-100% of the sale, but that is only a few times a year. So the proportion of new coins might come to 5%+. That's a lot, given in less than 20 years you have double the number of coins. I think the same is true of dealers, like Silbury.

Very interesting observations. Your point concerning the fact that even small percentages of auctions being made up of new finds becomes significant over time is a good one.

I wonder if the reasonable laws concerning cultural property in the UK are skewing the results toward a higher percentage of new finds than you might find elsewhere. Even though smuggling happens it only makes sense that recent draconian laws would have a dampening effect on coin finds in those countries, especially on single or small coin discoveries. The hobbyists detectors would be dis-incentivized to search and the financial rewards for smuggling small coin finds is certainly not in line with the risks for individuals.

Perhaps I am too much of an optimist. I certainly have a temperamental tendency towards giving the benefit of the doubt on matters of honesty and intentions. Hopefully more countries will follow the lead of the UK and the whole topic will become moot.

[NewStyleKing]

Look at the number of Danubian Celts stuff, and Thasos , Maronia stuff...all indicative of Balkans hoards. Lack of NewStyles worrying, but made up with Macedonia first meris.

Edited February 8 by NewStyleKing

[Deinomenid]

2 hours ago, Curtisimo said:

I certainly have a temperamental tendency towards giving the benefit of the doubt on matters of honesty and intentions.

On reading an extraordinary Italian thread on the repeated insider theft of coins from local museums ( @NewStyleKing more grist for the mill!) there were some who were  hoping the relevant theft would  turn  out somehow to be an error, to which a poster replied "A pensar male si fa peccato, ma ci s'indovina quasi sempre..." which translates roughly as "It is a sin to think badly of people, but it's  usually the correct thing to do"!

In the case of these unusual lots under discussion here, I'm a sinner.