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Author Topic: The Evolving Ancient Coin Market  (Read 2422 times)

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Offline Joe Sermarini

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The Evolving Ancient Coin Market
« on: August 21, 2014, 10:05:17 pm »
With his permission, I have added an interesting Moneta-L post by Robert Kokotailo of Calgary Coins to NumisWiki. Please take a look:  https://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=The Evolving Ancient Coin Market
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Offline Molinari

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Re: The Evolving Ancient Coin Market
« Reply #1 on: August 23, 2014, 08:03:05 am »
Nice article but I think he understates the amount of coins still to be unearthed.  There's a lot of unexplored land out there.

Offline paparoupa

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Re: The Evolving Ancient Coin Market
« Reply #2 on: August 24, 2014, 02:13:58 pm »
I full agree with the article. I would add that the hammer prices have sky-rocketed the last 5 years; I pressume reasons include the opening of the market to asian collectors; or investment funds buying coins...

Offline Joe Sermarini

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Re: The Evolving Ancient Coin Market
« Reply #3 on: August 24, 2014, 04:26:16 pm »
...I pressume reasons include the opening of the market to asian collectors; or investment funds buying coins...

I don't think the market in Asia or purchases by investment funds are even the least bit significant. While Forum has some customers in Asia, it is a small market and not growing rapidly (maybe someday). I don't think investment funds are investing in ancient coins at all. I do not believe price increase are due to an increase in demand, not even a little bit. Every ancient coin dealer I know had been complaining about business being down since 2008. We still face a U.S. economy where many people lost their imaginary real estate riches. The crowds at coins shows, have been shrinking. FORVM will not have a table at NYINC in 2015. Sales last winter were 10% of what they once were. EBay used to be a huge market for ancient coins, but is now hardly a market at all. I am quite sure the prices increase are entirely or nearly entirely due to decreases in supply.
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Offline Andrew McCabe

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Re: The Evolving Ancient Coin Market
« Reply #4 on: August 24, 2014, 04:52:03 pm »
I agree with Joe and with the cited post by Robert K. Symptomatic of the decrease in (new) supply is that my own collection shows increasing proportions of old-collection coins. My upgrades are FROM 1990s moderate condition Balkan finds TO better coins probably found in the 19th century and seen in 1900s auctions. Of course the latter are increasingly scarce, as each year a proportion of old provenance coins go missing, through loss, being melted down, or placed in museums. What's left is hardly enough to sustain a coin show such as NYINC. The mirror image of Joe's issue in sales is my issue in finding coins at retail. For that reason, when a complete collection is offered for sale, such as JD, RBW, Student-Mentor, I go wild, and send my noisier children to the pawn shop to raise money for coins. The children will still be there when I go to retrieve them, but the old collection coins won't.

Today I found another old provenance for a coin, Henry Platt Hall, Spink 1950, lot 455. I'd acquired the catalogue because I also owned lot 461 from the same sale. I'd actually been considering selling lot 455. I won't now. In addition to Platt Hall, it was also owned by RBW and by a well-known Italian collector, Fallani, whose collection is cited often by Crawford. Not in the best condition but this provenance sure adds some lustre:
[BROKEN IMAGE LINK REMOVED BY ADMIN]

I suspect that when I go to sell my own collection in time, there will either be a great deal of interest given that it is primarily composed of old provenance coins, or no interest at all as the difficulties assembling collections from what's now available on the market means many will have given up the struggle. However I'm optimistic, recognising that there's nothing that motivates a collector more than difficulty. So there should still be some interest.

Offline Andrew McCabe

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Re: The Evolving Ancient Coin Market
« Reply #5 on: August 24, 2014, 05:25:47 pm »
More on that old provenance discovered today: the Platt Hall catalogue goes one further and puts it back two more decades to Glendining July 1929, so the chain becomes:

Ahala collection
ex RBW collection
ex Fallani (Vecchi 3, 1996)
ex Henry Platt Hall collection (Spink, July 1950), lot 455, bought for a client by Spink who paid £2 and 18 shillings.
ex Glendining July 1929 lot 531

The same catalogue deepens the provenance of my RRC 56/1
https://www.flickr.com/photos/ahala_rome/11258741335
back to Hamburger, October 1932, wheren it sold for £11 and 18 shillings. In Platt Hall, July 1950, it went for £9 and 10 shillings and was bought by Charles Hersh, who cites it n the Numismatic Chronicle 1953 p53 coin 62d as overstrike evidence for the dupondius. The relative pricing is interesting: my corn ear quadrans was worth one quarter a 56/1 dupondius. That would make it a multi-thousand dollar coin if the same ratios applied (they don't...)

My copy of Platt Hall was evidently printed after the sale and lists all the purchasers, as well as the prices realised on the same page as the lots, so not in a PRL. Hence the text must have been edited and reprinted afterwards. There's also number opposite each lot ranging from 1 to 10 or more (edit: this refers to the number of coins in a lot. So 1 is the best number). There's a nice essay by L.Forrer of Spink at front. Bound in light tan calf leather with red and gold highlights.

I've now got to track down two further catalogues: Hamburger, October 1932 and Glendining, July 1929. I'll have lots of time to do so, after all there's little chance of my adding much more to my collection.

 

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