red_spork

This seems like an extremely generous offer to me. Likely more than they would have been offered by any dealer who knew what it was and believed it was authentic given the auction estimate. It seems like these are rare enough that no one really knew what it would sell for at auction.

After reading the article it seems to me even other auction houses thought it was basically worthless. The dealer went through a good bit of time and probably expense authenticating it. He obviously knew he was taking a large risk that it was worthless, did all the legwork and realistically probably spent his whole life, as many specialists here do, learning everything that it took to properly authenticate and market this piece that the prior owners seemingly knew next to nothing about. Now, perhaps there's some more information not in the article but just based on what's in the article I don't really think he did anything wrong. Plenty of us here watch the various sales venues for misidentified or under-attributed coins with an eye towards finding underpriced coins, in some cases massively underpriced(I've seen a few cases as much as 100x or so). I don't particularly see a difference. Sometimes they're sold by dealers, other times they're sold by private collectors, in both cases they didn't take the time or didn't have the knowledge to understand what they had but none of us is under any obligation to share valuable information with sellers.

This does happen occasionally. Whether or not more of Roma's packages have this happen than any other dealer's is hard to say but I've had coins show up inspected and taped back up as well, not from Roma

A practice that I've noticed becoming much more common in recent years is that certain(in some cases previously well respected dealers) ask outrageous multiples of either their recent price paid at auction or what the coin would likely achieve at auction and then will accept massive "discounts". It used to just be something that a certain eBay seller whose name is usually the punchline of jokes around here was known for but it's spread to at least a few Vcoins and MA-Shops dealers now as well. I recently bought a coin from a Vcoins dealer, after a bit of back and forth, at 38% of the asking price. Normally I'd be embarrassed to send such a deal as that just seems like wasting a dealer's time but if a dealer wants to waste buyers' time with fake prices I figured I'd waste his time with a lowball offer just to see what happened and was surprised at how little I had to come up to get it accepted. I honestly felt kinda scummy about the entire transaction and supporting those practices but I got the coin I wanted and the dealer got a sell at a price he was happy with so I guess everyone's happy.

They lost a recent coin of mine it seems. USPS pointing finger at NY customs, NY customs saying it's not there and left customs already. No tracking updates since 10 July.

For one, Credit Card or Paypal costs noticeably more. It varies depending on the exact amount and currency and whatnot but Wise often works out to 1% versus 3% or even more sometimes for other payment methods not to mention most auction houses tack on additional fees for paypal or CC too and it all adds up. I'd be pissed and especially if I bought a coin at the higher end of the price I'd be willing to pay for it and then had unexpected fees tacked on I might not pay the invoice, personally.

Very interesting. I did not know about this particular dolphin rider. I've only got one, a type shared a few other times in this thread(including by @DonnaML whose excellent example shares an obverse die with mine): Roman Republic AR Denarius(18mm, 3.72 g, 5h). 74 B.C., Rome mint. Laureate head of Neptune right, trident over shoulder; control-mark XXXIIII to upper left. Border of dots/Winged boy(perhaps Palaemon or Cupid) on dolphin speeding right. Below, L•LVCRETI TRIO. Border of dots. Crawford 390/2 Privately purchased from a friend 2 August 2023, ex CNG 100, 7 October 2015, lot 1803, ex R.H. Collection

This is a great example of this type, much nicer than the lesser example of the type I owned years ago. I sold my "quaestor" bronzes but I still have this nice example of the type that seemed to follow them and is often overstruck on the "quaestor" bronzes, as is this example (see 9-12 obverse for the back of Romas helmet): Macedon under Roman Rule. Uncertain official(traditionally, D. Junius Silanus), Æ25 (9.96g), 167-165 BC. Facing mask of Silenos, wearing ivy wreath / MAKE/ΔONΩN in two lines, D above; all within oak wreath. MacKay, "Bronze Coinage In Macedonia, 168-166 BC," ANSMN 14 (1968), pl.III, 10; SNG Copenhagen 1324. Overstruck on a quaestor bronze of Gaius Publilius or Lucius Fulcinnius as evidenced by the Roma obverse undertype remnants at 9-12 o clock obverse Privately purchased from NeroNumi via Vcoins, 10 June 2022, ex Gorny & Mosch Giessener Münzhandlung Auction 220, 11 March 2014, 1249

If they frame it as a "buyers protection fee" and then charge 9% that makes me wonder how many fakes they think are sold on their platform and how much refunding they expect to have to do.

Roman Republic AR Denarius(18mm, 3.72 g, 5h). 74 B.C., Rome mint. Laureate head of Neptune right, trident over shoulder; control-mark XXXIIII to upper left. Border of dots/Winged boy(perhaps Palaemon or Cupid) on dolphin speeding right. Below, L•LVCRETI TRIO. Border of dots. Crawford 390/2 Privately purchased from a friend 2 August 2023, ex CNG 100, 7 October 2015, lot 1803, ex R.H. Collection

I have a very good idea of what I paid and a rough idea of the value if I were to sell the coins in my collection today at the kind of auctions I normally attend. but as has been pointed out, auctions are highly variable, as evidenced by many of the coins in my collection that were bought for less than they'd previously sold for or in some cases quite a bit more than they'd previously sold for. One thing I have no idea of that will severely affect things is who will be in the market when I go to sell. For instance this victoriatus is exceedingly rare, a single die variety of the Q victoriatus with a Q on the shield and only the second die known of the thousands of dies cut for victoriati with a letter on the shield(the other one known only in a single example). I have no idea how many collectors care but in my experience, having collected victoriati for quite a while now, I could see this coin go anywhere from $500-$5000 depending on who is at the auction. I know several collectors who care but on any given day any one of them may be on a buying hiatus and any of them could decide tomorrow they're bored collecting coins and will no longer be buying. Alternatively a hoard could pop up tomorrow with 20 examples of this die and variety and satiate most of the collectors who care about owning the type. As a specialist I've got a lotta coins like this, maybe as much as a fifth of my collection. I have no idea what they'd hammer for and I hope I don't have to find out any time soon.

Here's another one. This one seems to be scraping eBay listings but has absolutely nothing to do with the actual owners of the coins. I spotted this today because I bought the coin below directly from the owner who is a friend. I was pretty shocked to find his pictures and his coin listed here. I will not be linking the store as Id rather not help them show up better in search results but people should always be skeptical of where they're buying coins.

Had this on my vcoins watch list for a while. Price was a little high but it looked like it should have a provenance and price would be fair if it was pre-1970. Finally found one earlier this week and quickly made the choice to send the dealer an offer and buy it: Roman Imperatorial period AR denarius(3.86g, 18mm), P. Clodius M.f. Turrinus, moneyer, 42 B.C., Rome mint. Laureate bust of Apollo right; lyre behind / Diana Lucifera standing facing with bow and quiver over shoulder, holding lighted torch in each hand; P•CLODIVS M•F• across fields. Crawford 494/23; Sydenham 1117; HCRI 184; Banti Claudia 23/17(this coin). Ex Münzhandlung Ritter GMBH, 17 July 2023, ex Jacques Schulman, Amsterdam, 233, 28-31 March 1960, lot 1126 This was an upgrade for me from this which I will be selling:

Everyone here will probably be shocked that I picked up yet another prow bronze yesterday. This type is the first struck(as opposed to cast, i.e. aes grave) sextans of the Roman Republic. Fairly large at 30mm & 25g Roman republic Æ Sextans(30mm, 25.00g, 3h), anonymous "semilibral" series. 217-215 BC, Rome mint. Head of Mercury right, wearing winged petasos; above ••; border of dots / Prow right; above, ROMA; below, ••. McCabe Group AA; Crawford 38/5

This type has always been a favorite for me. Interesting history, great devices, several really well engraved dies. What's not to love?

A couple rare bronzes of the Sardinian Praetors of 210 and 209 BC that I picked up recently: Roman Republic Æ Quadrans. Publius Manlius Vulso, Praetor of Sardinia, 210 BC. Sardinian mint. Head of Hercules right; above, ••• / Prow right; above, ROMA; (MA) vertical to right; ••• below. Crawford 64/5 Roman Republic Æ Semis(14.05 grams, 27 mm). Caius Aurunculeius Cotta, Praetor of Sardinia, 209 BC. Sardinian mint. Head of Saturn right; behind, S / Prow right; above, S; before AVR monogram; below, ROMA. Crawford 65/3

Really great denarius Steve. A truly amazing example of this scarcer type.

Thanks Steve! I am very happy with it and was shocked to find an example at all, let alone one in decent condition after several years of looking.

Over in the "airview" slab thread I detailed the process of cracking open one of NGCs new airview slabs so it's time that I discuss the coin I cracked out of that slab. I spotted this tiny silver sestertius on vcoins last week and one small detail instantly told me I needed to buy it and that was the "spike" on the back of the helmet. Why? That spike is a unique feature on just one series of coins that includes denarii, quinarii and sestertii: Crawford 68 from Sicily. A tiny fraction of the denarii and quinarii of this series bear a corn-ear mintmark on the reverse and really only a handful (on the order of 10) of coins are known in each denomination with the mintmark, though the non mintmarked denarii and quinarii are at best, scarce. The sestertii only come without the mintmark and like the mintmarked larger denominations are known in only about 10 examples. On top of the overall rarity of the type, as a Roman Republic collector the sestertius denomination in general is a difficult denomination to collect because only a single issue for this denomination, the very large Rome mint Crawford 44/7, is common. All others are so rare that the number of the common 44/7s that one sees on the market in a year generally exceeds all other types of sestertii combined, so for me it's exciting to be able to add any new sestertius but especially one from Sicily, an important theater of the Second Punic War that I have at least one example of most other denominations for from quadrigatus down through semuncia. Roman Republic AR Sestertius(12.7mm, 1.12g, 11h), Anonymous(Uninscribed sibling of Corn-ear series), 211-208 B.C., Sicilian mint. Helmeted head of Roma right with "spike" on rear of helmet; behind, IIS / The Dioscuri galloping right; below, ROMA in linear frame. Crawford 68/3; Russo RBW 284; Sydenham - Ex Greco Roman Ancient Coins, Vcoins, 25 May 2023, ex Stack's May 2023 World Collectors Choice Online Auction, lot 71065 Formerly slabbed by NGC Ancients, 6626721-001, Choice XF And for comparison a couple of types discussed in the text above are illustrated below both from my collection: First a rare Crawford 68/1a denarius with corn-ear mintmark. For an idea of rarity, when I picked this up in 2020, to my knowledge it was the first example to have appeared on the market in a decade. Note the prominent spike on the back of the helmet, a feature it has in common with my new sestertius: Roman Republic AR Denarius(4.35g, 11h), Corn-ear series, 211-208 B.C., Sicilian mint. Helmeted head of Roma right with "spike" on rear of helmet; behind, X / The Dioscuri galloping right; below, corn-ear(wheat ear); ROMA in linear frame. Crawford 68/1a And a common Rome mint Crawford 44/7 sestertius in uncommonly good condition. Crawford 44 comprises several small subgroups so there are many styles in addition to this one: Roman Republic AR Sestertius(12.75 mm, 1.14 g, 2h). Anonymous, first anonymous denarius coinage series. Circa 211 B.C. Rome mint. Helmeted head of Roma right; behind, IIS. Border of dots / Dioscuri galloping right; in linear frame, ROMA. Line border. Crawford 44/7; Sydenham 142; RSC 4; Russo RBW 176-177. Purchased from Apollo Numismatics(Merrill Gibson) via VCoins, 1/1/2016 As always, feel free to share anything relevant

I'd be buying the whole lot at the dealer's asking price. He's presumably happy to get his asking price for the coins and move the whole lot and I have no duty to inform him. If he's worth building a relationship with I might tell him but that's less an ethics discussion and more a strategy discussion.

I would argue, especially as is the case with many specialists here, that even such an extreme example is not unjustifiable given the amount of effort that goes into coins as a hobby for many of us. I know many specialists who have put thousands of hours into learning everything there is to know about the series they collect, far more than any dealer has time to put towards a single series, and a lot of specialists cannot only correct identify coins, they can correctly describe those coins to potential purchasers as well, both of which are usually required to maximize return when you're cherrypicking rarities that a dealer(or sometimes an entire auction worth of customers) previously missed. I've never had a 1000x return on a coin but I have had a few coins that I bought relatively cheaply because they were a very rare type misattributed or in a few cases found a very worthwhile provenance for and sold in the 5-10x range and there are a few that I have no plans to sell but believe would probably reach 25x or more. I don't see anything wrong with that at all - I put in, as a conservative estimate, about 3500 hours over the past decade learning about coins and almost all of that learning about Roman Republic coins, talking to collectors, visiting public institutions to see their coins or libraries, tracking down and reading nearly every paper and reference work in my area of interest, watching the major auctions, etc. If I put the same amount of time towards a side business and made a million dollars doing it, few would question it. That's a very roundabout way of saying I really see no problem with someone with expertise cherrypicking underpriced and/or misattributed coins and sometimes getting fabulous returns on them. If you've learned enough to do that you deserve whatever profits may come from it, it's honest work and especially in a situation where you're a buyer from someone who is offering up coins there is no way you're misrepresenting values or anything like that.

For what it's worth there were only 2 proper "RBW" catalogues: NAC 61 and 63. There was also a sort of mini RBW sale in CNG e-auction 364 which a small printed paper catalog was sent out to all buyers for after the auction, and some of RBW's gold coins were sold in Triton III as well but the rest of the collection was sold by several different dealers like Agora Auctions, Jencek, CNG, Amphora(David Hendin) via eBay and some private collector to collector sales for which there are no real catalogs for except what you can find on ACSearch and the auctioneers' websites. NAC did release a hardback book which contains the NAC 61 + 63 coins as well as RBW's gold coins from Triton III in a single volume and that's what you usually see cited as "RBW" in auction listings.

I've mostly stopped ever telling dealers about their attribution mistakes. Dealers make attribution errors in my favor just as often as they make ones not in my favor so encouraging them to look more closely at coins doesn't really help me and I pretty thoroughly check references before buying or bidding. I will usually tell other collectors should I spot an error but that's usually the extent of it. Fakes are a different story. I report almost all of those unless the dealer or auction house is a regular source of problematic coins.

Great coin expat! It also has an interesting little phenomenon going on that I've been trying to figure for years that you see on a lot of late Republican issues like this and that's the parallel scrapes at 3 o clock on the obverse. If you look closely at auctions you see a lot of coins like this and you can find even more if you search somewhere like ACSearch for scrapes. They always go over the fields and stop at the devices, mostly appear on the obverse and they're always parallel and about the same distance apart. They are on so many coins, and often toned just like the coin and often under the hoard/find patina on uncleaned coins so they have to be ancient but I've never seen an actual academic paper discussing them unfortunately. I suspect they're some sort of forgery detection measure, perhaps a special type of clamp that was able to measure the thickness of the not struck up portion of the flan and may have even served to scrape some of the plating off of fourees, but there may be more to them that I'm missing. Sorry for the detour but I always find it interesting when I see those little scrapes

Resurrecting this old thread because I recently picked up a coin in an airview holder, and you guys know I cracked it out. I think some of y'all will be surprised how its constructed like I was and maybe I can answer some of your questions: The coin in the holder: So at first glance looking at the holder I could tell that the white insert seemed to be two pieces with a void between them. I incorrectly assumed this was something similar to the cardboard and mylar window flips we're all familiar with: I started cracking the slab by whacking it with a hammer. Bad idea. The coin immediately jumped across the slab. It's got a crack in it and it's a tiny little sestertius which are often fragile so I didn't want to put any undue stress. I carefully tapped the slab a few times to recenter it, then went to my vise and started squeezing on the edges. After about 10 minutes I finally broke the seal well enough to pry the slab apart. I was surprised when I pulled the white insert apart to find a little sealed capsule inside of it: The inner capsule is a fairly rigid but bendable plastic and it's totally sealed around the edges there. I suspect it's the same material as saflips, just thicker. At any rate the only real way to remove the coin without putting any undue stress on it was to slowly cut around the edges of this capsule until I'd removed enough to pull it open and remove the coin. Another forum member I chatted with expressed concerns he had about cutting around larger coins and I kinda agree with him, I didn't like having to have a blade right up next to my coin and I had plenty of room to work with. What I found worked best was guitar fret cutters. They allow you to work slowly and only really cut the edge of the capsule. Highly recommend picking up a pair if you crack a lot of slabs. FWIW I will say these slabs look great. They are way more impressive than any slab with prongs and address a lot of my issues with slabs from a physical standpoint. They also allow really good photos to be taken as the below photo shows. There is a little glare from the material but no prongs and if you didn't know any better you wouldn't know the coin was slabbed in the photo. I don't know if there could be any ill effects from the coin being sealed between these two layers of material for years like that though, I'd be interested to see if there are any ill effects observed with a fragile coin in one of these things after a decade or more. This coin has probably been slabbed only a few months as I bought it from a dealer who bought it less than a month ago at an auction and the submission number indicates it's a pretty recent one. Will I be switching to keeping all of my coins in slabs? Obviously no but I'll give NGC credit that these things look great and will lead to a lot more slabbed coins with photos usable for academic publications and things(cause nothing looks worse than "prongs" on a black and white plate photo) which I think is awesome. Let me know if you have any more questions and I'll do my best to answer.