Greek Gold Coin Report

Gold-Stater: Greek Gold Coin Report

It's auction time. From now though May all the major auction houses have their spring auctions. And this spring there are precious few fine Greek gold coins being offered. Above is pictured a very rare gold stater of the Parthian Satrap Andragoras, who is proclaiming his dominion over Parthia now that Alexander the Great has died. This is one of the very few true rarities in top condition of the season. The estimate is at 90,000 Swiss Francs (100,000 US dollars). As per ususual Numismatic Ars Classica, and Nomos, both of Switzerland have the most interesting quality selection. The above NAC stater is matched in rarity and preservation by a Stater of Seleukos I, which has an unfortunately-off centered reverse.

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Nomos offers the above rarity, an electrum stater from Ionia/Lydia estimated at 200,000 swiss francs. They also have a rare Boetian hemidrachm for 90,000:

along with a very nice lampsakos stater, and pergamon stater.

Gemini has a nice run of walwel trites, (as do NAC and Nomos) which come from a recent horde out of Turkey. I've pictured these in several past posts. There's very little (shockingly) in the CNG, (or the Peus, the Rauch, Nomisma etc.)

There are of course the usual run of Alexander staters, multiples and fractions, Philip staters, a very few nice Carthaginian pieces, and few other Lampsakos staters, as well as some nice Hektes.

But no very high quality Syracuse, Tarentine, Celtic, Kyzikos, or Persian gold! (though a few interesting pieces of decent quality from some of these.)

And no EF medieval gold coins in any of these auctions!

To say that there is shockingly little on the market is an understatement.

What is going on?

The obvious answer is that collector/investors are well aware of the extreme competitive devaluation of all paper currencies that is going on. With Quantitative Easing in full force in the United States, Great Britain, and Japan, and a full fledged solvency crisis in much of Europe, the world is being flooded with paper money. All commodities are booming. But there is what can almost be called a hyper-inflation hitting areas of true commodity rarity like Greek Gold.

So few collector/investors are selling.

Because as more collector/investors become aware of this area, it is fast becoming evident how little exists on the market. And with few new hordes excepting those from Turkey, and with the new stringent export/import laws covering "national treasure" the market is tighter than ever.

I've always though that Ancient Gold is a leading indicator for bullion. It attracts exactly the same type of investor but to a much tighter market. It will be interesting to see what happens to the bullion price in the coming months.