Kaleun96

None of those actually. I mean attributes that are part of the coin itself, not external factors. So things like toning, style, centering, subtle differences in flaws, location of wear, flan size and shape, etc. These things all matter much more to me than the actual grade given. And before someone says "centering, flaws, and wear are all factors considered by NGC", what I'm talking about here is the actual rendering of those attributes. For example, let's say two Alexander the Great tetradrachms are identical in every respect except on one the portrait of Herakles is a bit too close to the right-side of the flan, and on the other coin Herakles is a bit too close to the left-side. Even if no detail is left off the coin, I'd much rather a portrait have space in front of the face than behind the head. Similarly, two coins could have similar flan cracks, test cuts, or cleaning marks but I'm going to be looking at where those flaws are present in relation to what I value most in the coin and how it affects its general appearance. Naturally neither NGC, nor auction houses, can fully capture those subtleties in a grade and that's ok, it just means I personally don't have a need for the grades given when I have a perfectly good photo of the coin. The first part of your reply about physical descriptions of a coin are, to me, a different matter to grade. These are actually useful and I tend to find that auction houses are better on the whole because they have more room to describe the issues. NGC is limited to a small slip of paper so all brushing simply becomes "brushed", all graffiti becomes "graffiti", all test cuts become "test cut", all bent flans become "bent" etc. Then you end up with coins with the same descriptor and surface score yet with different levels of brushing, for example: compare this coin to this one. Die wear, die rust, flan flaws etc don't affect the surface score (only strike), but corrosion does, so how does the Philetairos tetradrachm get the same score when it seemingly has worse brushing in addition to corrosive products, roughness, and pitting? I could find dozens of examples like this so you wonder what the value of the score is. NGC is better at noticing brushing in general though, if it's very minor auction houses will often ignore it. Though usually because you can't even see it without a loupe.

Agree with the others saying grading is outdated in the era of high quality photos. I use my eyes, the actual grade given has no impact on whether I'd buy a coin or not. Comments that mention flaws or other details are still useful as it's not always possible to see from photos but some issues like scratches/brushing still go unmentioned a lot of the time, by both NGC and auction houses. There's so much that goes into how attractive a coin is compared to another of its type beyond the grade, strike, and surface but it can be easy to get caught up in the grades when starting out. So I think it's better that auction houses use relatively broad grades and rarely go above EF - it makes you focus more on the coin than the grade. Before long you don't even need the grade because you can use your eyes to compare similar coins rather than rely on their NGC grade and scores - where you might otherwise end up wondering how two AU 5/5 5/5 coins of the same type could sell for such different amounts.

On the topic of police reports, I wonder if the consignor ever felt the need to get one. Assuming the package was insured (either by FedEx or perhaps even by CNG if it was a collection being consigned to them), would you still bother with a police report? Might even be the case that the case is still pending within FedEx and until a decision is made, the consignor may hold off on filing a police report. So I could potentially see why there may not be a police report yet. Though I'm sure there's some documentation of the claim with FedEx including photos of the coins prior to shipping so at the very least you would think that could be made public with the necessary personal info redacted.

Good for you. That's not what this is about.

You're missing the point entirely. The phrase, on its own, is fine. It's no better or worse than "from a collection formed between 1960 and 1990" that other auction houses use. However, take that phrase and use it on 7,000 lots that clearly did not come from one consignor, nor come from dozens of family collections that have been sitting in mahogany cabinets for decades. Next, consider that many of these coins have been harshly cleaned, are sold in large quantities of the same type, and generally have hoard-like characteristics. Lastly, keep in mind that Swiss law requires these coins to have been inside Europe prior to 2005. Now, what is your conclusion? Do you still think Leu is just super lucky and stumbling across all these consignors who know their coins are pre-2005 yet have zero sales history or more precise dating? Edit: I'll add that I'm making no judgements here about buying coins from Leu with these provenances. I just don't think those provenances are fooling anyone.

I do think this is plausible, though I know consignors who have not had this stock provenance added to their lots. However, it is the scale in which they use this phrase that makes this hard to believe. Leu is likely not getting this many more consignors with pre-2005 provenances than other European auction houses. We also know other European auction houses don't shy away from adding provenances like "from a collection formed between 1960 and 1990". If the consignor said "these came from.my grandfather's collection, the auction house would likely use it if they believe it to be likely. Also, other countries like Austria have similar laws yet you don't see auction houses there slapping that phrase onto all of their lots. Even when the consignment contract requires the consignor to state their coins meet the requirements of the law you don't see this. Plus, how many of these do you think have been sitting in someone's grandfather's collection for 20+ years?

I'm also not saying whether their provenances are true or not, only that it is very suspicious and I don't think anyone should take these provenances at face value. I think it would be naive to believe they have so many consignors who wish to make less money by not declaring their pre-2005 sales history for absolutely no reason. In my opinion, either the majority of the 7,000 coins have no verifiable pre-2005 provenance or the actual provenance is worse than no provenance. What makes the Leu "stock phrase", as you put it, more laughable than Roma's or others is the scale of it. Roma isn't selling 7,000 coins with "from the collection of a gentleman". Often they name the country and don't include a date, and I don't doubt the country is accurate. If Roma included "from the collection of a Gentleman formed in Europe prior to 2005" and had that for half the coins in their auction, then yeah I'd likewise be saying it'd be naive to put any faith in that provenance date.

The consignor doesn't need to identify themselves. They can provide sales history like everyone else. If no sales history they can use a vague procenance if they don't wish to be identified by name. This is all quite common. Think of all the vague provenances we usually see, e.g. from a German dealer or the collection of a gentleman etc. Now think how many of those also include the claim that the consignor had the coin prior to 2005. If auction houses are going to the trouble of adding vague provenances, I bet they would also include the fact that the coin had been in that collection for over 20 years if that was the case, yet few do at the rates Leu does. Maybe it's a difference in standards and other auction houses won't give a date if not verifiable, or the abundance of pre-2005 provenances at Leu relative to virtually every other auction house is indicative of something else going on. So if you believe all of these coins from Leu are pre-2005, then either Leu is somehow attracting very different consignors to everyone else or every other auction house is also getting this many pre-2005 coins and just decide not to include that part for whatever reason. A third option is one I mentioned earlier, where the coins are pre-2005 but of unethical or illegal origin.

Probably because they have no actual proof the coins were in Europe prior to 2005 or they do have proof but it would only make things worse (e.g. 1980s/90s hoard illegally removed from country of origin, imported into Europe, and stored). I don't think anyone can seriously believe they have consignors providing thousands and thousands of coins with proof of pre-2005 provenance that none of them want to use.

Would it help though? Say they were sold at Auction House X in 2022, does that make the claim more or less likely to be true? It might help a bit if they were recently sold at auction and we'd then assume they were stolen on their way to the buyer but apart from that I don't think it'd be of much help. Given Mike's comment in the Facebook group, it sounds like CNG might know more about it as I assume the "we" he uses means CNG. Perhaps it was a client of theirs or someone asked them to step in on their behalf? I doubt someone working at CNG would throw around accusations like this for fun so there's surely some truth to the story.

Well for starters you can only use CC or PayPal for invoices less than £2,500. But the more important aspect is that Roma has twice in the past month sent out emails declaring their bank account details have changed following an auction. Which is a little concerning in normal circumstances, more so when the director has pled guilty to 10 felonies including fraud. I know you're determined to be their protector on this forum for whatever reason but I think you know as well as the rest of us that it is somewhat odd that Roma is changing their banking details out of the blue at the last minute so often. At the very least it is relevant information to us as buyers - if I win a lot in their next auction I will hold off payment for a few days to see if this happens again.

Not that I've noticed at least. It's easy to miss because they've recorded this under a new case number so it has a new entry in the IAPPS system. Technically it's the third entry, the original can be found here and is now mostly empty, the second can be found here and has similar details to the third but different appearance dates etc, and the third is the one I linked above. So if a journalist "subscribed" to the original case, they wouldn't have gotten notifications when the second entry appeared. Another collector alerted me to the second one a few months ago, and then again to the third one today with the guilty plea. Unless the journalists checked occasionally, I don't think they'd have any idea that the case had been updated and they could have easily just checked the first or second entries without finding the third. I note the third case number has an SCI prefix, which from some brief googling may refer to a "superior court information". This link seems to suggest it's an alternative to a grand jury indictment and filed with the cooperation of the defendant. Does that mean Beale was never indicted by a grand jury, or just that this new "indictment" supersedes the original? It sounds like the former. Given Beale has plead guilty to all the original charges, I can only imagine he got some promises from the prosecutors to ask for a reduced sentence.

Richard Beale appears to have pled guilty to 10 counts. I imagine he struck a plea deal with the DA. Next scheduled appearance is March 2024. https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/webcrim_attorney/Detail?which=charge&docketNumber=m52H5JZ5W7KM2NEWgvSc5jT9i2eREBcJf_PLUS_ZwWAFKwfI=&countyId=K4i18rFVPQh5HTQ/kUoO3Q==&docketId=3gbtRNdkovun89tcAxf0dg==&docketDseq=T/O1YN_PLUS_BG65HkOeqEnpAkw==&defendantName=Beale,+Richard&court=New+York+Supreme+Criminal+Court&courtType=U&recordType=U&recordNum=

Weird, because I've bought raw coins at auction, not had them slabbed, and later resold them for substantial profit. Based on your reasoning, I've proven that not slabbing coins performs just as well as slabbing coins!! 😉 I suspect the actual answer is it depends. Mostly it depends on where you sell the coin but it also depends on the coin itself (hint: the grade it will be given by NGC). If you buy a raw coin and slab it to sell at CNG, on average I would suggest that the coin does not sell for more than it would have otherwise after taking into account the slabbing fees. At European auction houses, that's even more so the case. Now, if you repeat this at Stacks Bowers or Heritage Auctions then yeah it wouldn't surprise me if slabbing the coin brought a higher hammer. That's because these auction houses attract collectors who are used to slabbing and get caught up in slabbing grades and adjectives. But for the vast majority of the ancients market, slabbing likely doesn't pay off. There are perhaps some exceptions for certain types of coins and certain sales (e.g. feature auctions attracting more slab-obsessed types) but on the whole slabbing an average ancient coin isn't going to do you much. Slabbing a mint state Alexander the Great drachm and selling it at Heritage Auctions will probably payoff quite well, however. Just to come back to this but most ancients collectors do not prefer slabbed coins. About 95% of ancient coins at auction are sold unslabbed, likely closer to 99% when factoring in dollar-bin coins and the like. What are some reasons for slabbing an ancient coin with NGC versus buying a coin from a reputable dealer or auction house and using one of those slabs that allows you to take the coin out when you want? The grading NGC offers is not beneficial in my view, the authenticity check is often no better than what a reputable dealer or auction house can provide and NGC provides no guarantee of authenticity, the case is a standardised size but you can buy knock-offs of the same dimensions, the sealing may help stabilise toning and prevent bronze disease but you can control this yourself without a slab, the information on an NGC slab is borderline useless in most cases, the online look-up is no better than having a record of your coin's sale history in acsearch or similar, the extra protection the plastic offers is negligible compared to any other plastic case, etc. I'm not saying you should or shouldn't slab your coins but for me, I'd get the same benefit for a fraction of the cost and time by simply buying one of those cheap coin cases, while also retaining the benefit of being able to handle my coin when I want.

If the average is about 60% with not too much variation, then the super low weight of the CNG example is definitely very concerning. Would be great if there was a frequency table of weights for his tetradrachms.

I don't think anyone could fault you for asking if the weight recorded is accurate or if it was a typo. I wouldn't jump to speculating that it's fake until you get the answer to that question, though it doesn't seem like the normal typo (i.e. dropped or transposed digit). I've emailed CNG a few times about mistaken attributions or similar and they've always been very courteous and appreciative. I noticed acsearch has two light-ish weight examples as well: Leu Numismatik - 9.99g: https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=6364693 CNG - 10.71g: https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=3305952 Those two share the same rev die I think but not the same rev die as the first one you linked. Even if we were to assume the silver content varied within this type, it's hard to imagine it could vary by so much. I don't know what the main base metal is in these billon tetradrachms but it'd have to be iron or similar to be able to have the weight vary so much given the density of silver relative to iron and other base metals like copper.

It's not a matter of what software to use, it's a matter of picking a photo editing software and learning how to use it. Any photo editing software worth its salt should allow you to copy multiple images into a blank canvas, arrange those images respective to one another, and save the output. It's one of the most basic requirements of a photo editing software. So there's not really any "best" software for this, hence the variety of responses. My advice is to pick one piece of software, whether paid or free, whether a desktop app or online, and learn how to use it. I wouldn't waste too much time trying multiple different photo editing apps for this, they should all be about as easy as one another. MS Paint certainly works. GIMP is a good alternative to Photoshop if you don't want to pay for Photoshop but both can be intimidating if you're not familiar with them. I use Photoshop myself when doing my high quality photos but otherwise I use https://pixlr.com/ because it's free, easy to use, and web-based so you can use it anywhere. No offence to John but please don't use Word. You can sort of do it in Word but it's the wrong tool for the job and has virtually no functionality for this kind of thing. One nice thing about Pixlr is that you can easily set the file size when saving the image in case you have to upload the image somewhere that has a file size limit.

Not sure if this helps but I once bought a Napoleonic medal from an Italian auction house and they said they still needed to apply for an export permit for it.

Sounds exactly like something Elsen would do. I remember they held an auction early-mid December once and didn't ship until end of January for the same reason.

Thanks! Yeah this kind of thing has rapidly grown over the past 10 years or so and now we're at a place where even people with a cellphone could probably achieve quite decent results. Would be great to work with a museum or similar on digitising some of their collection this way. The current limitation is the time it takes to shoot all the photos. I'm working on something that will attempt to automate this part based on a few measurements of the coin's geometry but it may be a few months before I get around to finishing it.

Not much, about 85g. Would be nice if it were heavier in a way. Perhaps I'll do another print and make it solid at some point.

Seems possible in this day and age of NFTs, though they seem to have passed their peak phase at least for now. One concern I think is whether people could use the models to make forgeries. I don't think a regular FDM 3D printer, like the one I used, would be suited for this but it's possible resin SLA printers could print a mould in fine enough detail. The forger might just have to go through a few steps of going between negative and positive copies to end up with something in the right material before casting a coin or perhaps even a die.

Thanks! And yeah that's exactly the issue I had been dealing with when I first tried this last year. I've tried using blu-tac etc to hold a coin up before but you always risk the coin shifting slightly, and it does tend to shift ever so slightly, which makes alignment harder. Instead I decided to support it at both ends, which also allows me to photograph it horizontally, as my normal camera setup has the camera mounted vertically to shoot a coin laying flat. See some pics below of my little half-3D printed / half SmallRig camera parts contraption I made to rotate the coin. As you guessed, I had to do two passes of the coin, each with the coin held at different points. The first pass I did 36 positions, so one focus stack every 10 degrees. Each focus stack was between 5-16 pictures depending on the angle of the coin. For the second set, which was mainly to get photos of the previously covered edges where it was held for the first stack, I just did 18 photos at 20 degree increments. Then Metashape takes care of the rest!

Last year I briefly dabbled in using photogrammetry to create 3D models of my coins but couldn't quite get results I was happy with. Recently, another collector has been sharing his results on reddit and with some help from him I managed to create a model of one of my Athenian tetradrachms. You can view the 3D model here: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/athens-owl-tetradrachm-d5e9a7d0f89c4be697d99446222b1368 It's best viewed from a desktop computer as you can then hold down the alt key while dragging with your mouse to change the angle of the light and see the coin illuminated from a different perspective. It may also take a little bit to load all the textures depending on your internet connection. Due to the need to use cross-polarised light to be able to create accurate models without any "baked in" reflections, the appearance of silver coins is never quite right so it does look a fair bit different here to how it would in the hand but it's just the trade-off you have to live with when doing photogrammetry. For fun, I also 3D printed the model at 5x life-size and gave it a quick coat of Old Cabinet Toning™️😁

Provenance and rarity can have *something* to do with value, they just aren't the only things that influence value. They may not always have the same effect on value either, as is evident by coins coming from important collections vs those coming from a random collector. Both rarity and provenance affect the supply side of the equation too. You can have low supply and low demand (as you demonstrate in your examples), low supply and high demand (Eid Mar), high supply and low demand, and high supply and high demand (Caesar elephant denarii, Athenian tetradrachms etc). If provenance had nothing to do with demand (and supply), then we wouldn't see crazy prices for coins with very old or very interesting provenances. The important bit to remember is that not all provenances are equal.