EARLY WINTER AUCTION REVIEW

 

CNG, Heritage, Stacks, have finished their late fall early winter auctions just as the economy has dropped into a state of near paralysis because of the unprecedented speed and steepness of the Fed Tightening regime.  

SO how has the affected ancient coins?

Top coins in top conditions continue to climb.  Everything else has softened - albeit from very high levels.  For example the coin above a very rare:

Claudius II (AD 268-270). AV medallion of 8 aurei (37mm, 39.09 gm, 12h). NGC Choice VF 4/5 - 2/5, Fine Style.

sold for $63,000.  A year ago it sold for $77,500.  Not a huge difference, but to the seller who only collected $52,000 that's quite a loss in one year.  But then the coin itself is not attractive.  Impressive, yes,  Attractive, no.  The coin is not easy on the eye.  The surfaces ar rough, the portrait uninspired and the reverse is standard.  But at 8 aurii the coins is really large and impressive.  Finally, Claudius II is an interesting character, but he's not a Julian, or even an emperor from a period that is relatively well appreciated in Roman history.   So the question is how badly does a buyer want to persue something that is impressive for the size and a relative rarity as opposed to buying something really beautiful and historically fascinating?

For example, in the same auction a really nice looking daric, clearly of wonderful late style with flowing robes and a well detailed face sold for $27,600

The grade was CHoice MS with a star, and the $27,600 was a record price for a type 3 daric - a coin which even at the price seems undervalued for such a fine style of a type that is generally quite poorly engraved.

Certain coins are hot at certain times, and chasing up the price while the economy is hot is not always rewarded when the economy cools.  Buying great beauty, especially when underappreciated though seems to insulate you from market drops.

At the same time, gold medals, of historical value and fine style engraving continued to rise through the economic malaise.  

THis proclamation medallion of Ferdinand VII of Spain in MS 62 is a very interesting artifact, finely engraved and with fascinating Napoleonic connotations and is quite rare.  The last nice one of these hammered couple of years ago at $18,000.  I was the seller, and it seemed like a very good price at the time.  Yesterday it made $38,400 at heritage.  So rarity, beauty, and historical import seems to be sailing on through the downturn, at least for now.

The items that suffered most - not surprisingly - were the most readily available types in middling grades.  THough coins that had a most pleasing eye appeal sometimes made surprisingly high prices 

For example this hekte with a really lovely engraving of a ram's head in CHoice AU with a star made $10,400.  It is a fairly common coin even at this grade.  But the engraving is really unusually lovely.  And it was rewarded with a very high price.

Draw your own conclusions.