It's so funny that I don't buy anymore!

[NewStyleKing]

The auctions etc are boring.  OK I might have a large collection of NewStyles but adding to it is now less and less likely.  The few NewStyles that appear in auctions tend to be batted back and forth over only a few years, obviously FRESH smuggled coins  are extinct. Nothing interesting has come up in the ordinary section. Tha last coin was from the Salton collection and that coin had been known  previous to 1961  and then pointlessly imprisoned  until the owners died.

There is no doubt that when I collected NewStyles  there were lots of hoards from? Eastern Europe and Turkey  fresh on ebay  and some leaking out  into good auction houses  but this has all stopped now.  Have the metal detectorists metal detected everywhere into extinction?  The one or two NewStyles that are lopped on to the end of a turgid boring array of OLD styles  are nothing to write home about, the latest G&M  being typical ( and I bought good hoard stuff from G&M at one time), only livened up by G&M's inability to date   one of the the coins and put them out of sequence ( Only 2 coins anyway). There is nothing to get the juices flowing. So much so that I am contemplating SELLING my collection. The prices are crazy and some of mine are great rarities EXCEPT no one actually likes NewStyles. If it was an off centre badly struck on a nasty flan Old Style that no one can say anything useful about it would attract more interest and get top prices!

I need feeding but fields are barren and the drought is about a decade now.......

 

Some pics..................of ebay hoard selections  of Fresh smuggled coins  about 10 years ago

[shanxi]

With provincial coins, this is common. There is a wave of coins from a region or city, you start to be interested, collect, and then suddenly nothing. 
But this is not a problem if you have several collecting areas.     Then just one area rests for some time. At some point it goes on.
 

[Al Kowsky]

1 hour ago, NewStyleKing said:

The auctions etc are boring.  OK I might have a large collection of NewStyles but adding to it is now less and less likely.  The few NewStyles that appear in auctions tend to be batted back and forth over only a few years, obviously FRESH smuggled coins  are extinct. Nothing interesting has come up in the ordinary section. Tha last coin was from the Salton collection and that coin had been known  previous to 1961  and then pointlessly imprisoned  until the owners died.

There is no doubt that when I collected NewStyles  there were lots of hoards from? Eastern Europe and Turkey  fresh on ebay  and some leaking out  into good auction houses  but this has all stopped now.  Have the metal detectorists metal detected everywhere into extinction?  The one or two NewStyles that are lopped on to the end of a turgid boring array of OLD styles  are nothing to write home about, the latest G&M  being typical ( and I bought good hoard stuff from G&M at one time), only livened up by G&M's inability to date   one of the the coins and put them out of sequence ( Only 2 coins anyway). There is nothing to get the juices flowing. So much so that I am contemplating SELLING my collection. The prices are crazy and some of mine are great rarities EXCEPT no one actually likes NewStyles. If it was an off centre badly struck on a nasty flan Old Style that no one can say anything useful about it would attract more interest and get top prices!

I need feeding but fields are barren and the drought is about a decade now.......

 

Some pics..................of ebay hoard selections  of Fresh smuggled coins  about 10 years ago

That's an impressive group of coins ☺️! I agree with shanxi's comment too 😉. Maybe it's time you expanded your horizon 🤔?

[ominus1]

...good tune...and i understand where you're comin' from....there's all other kinds of rabbit holes to go down in the big field o coins..anceint and otherwise 😄 

[kirispupis]

+1 what everyone else has said

I started by collecting coins representing individuals from the Philip II, Alexander III, and the Era of the Diadochi. 

I had ~100 people on that list, and I've whittled it down to 10. However, those remaining are extremely tough and I rarely see one at auction, or when it does it goes way over my budget.

So, I started other collections. The main one I'm after now is called The Kingdoms After Alexander, and consists of 30 coins (so far) that represent kingdoms that arose from the ashes of Alexander's empire, with rules of course stating the period, geography, and issues I'm after. Of those 30, I now have 25.

I also have other collections I'm working on. Had I kept my focus on the original collection and just waited around for something, I wouldn't have had all this fun.

Here's a recent pickup for that collection

Coel-Syria. Chalkis. Ptolemaios as Tetrarch, son of Mennaeus
85-40 BCE 20.79mm 4.49g
Obverse: Laureate head of Zeus right, with countermark of head right
Reverse: ΠΤΟΛΕΜΑΙΟΥ / ΤΕΤΡΑΡΧΗ, eagle flying right, holding wreath in beak; monogram above tail
HGC 9, 1441
Ex Marcel Burstein
Ex Colosseum Coin Exchange 31 (February 1988), lot 20
Ex Marc Breitsprecher

[robinjojo]

Nice new style owls!  I like the series and I think the dearth of new examples is based, at least in part, to the relatively smaller output of new style owls compared to the massive standardized owl produced in the 5th century.  Even intermediate owls, as crude and comparatively unattractive, generally, do not appear for sale as frequently as the standardized owls.  Also, the demand has always been, as long as I remember, for classical standardized owls. New styles and intermediate owls play second fiddle, so to speak.

Yes, there has been a drop in the frequency that new styles have appeared for sale either on the auction circuits or on retail venues such as MA Shops or Vcoins.    New style owls, for me, are the collimation of Athenian coinage that goes back to the archaic issues of the late 6th century BC, so I like them not only for their ascetics, but also for their historical context. 

Really choice new style owls have never been plentiful and they always command a premium.  My two nicer ones, from HJB, cost around $1,000 each (I'd pull out the tag for the actual prices, but I feel lazy right now).  Of course, that's HJB, where coins, as a rule of thumb, don't come cheap to say the least.

Currently there seems to be another influx of pharaonic owls hitting the market from a Syria hoard or hoards, as far as I can tell.  These imitations are very interesting coins, and compared to the crazy prices for standardized owls, especially slabbed coins, they are a relative value, with lots of interesting variations of style, as well as some interesting countermarks.  It seems that these coins bore much of the circulation for commerce following the fall of Athens in 404 BC.  The heavier earlier owls were squirreled away, now reemerging  as large to massive hoard from Turkey and other countries in the region.

[Spaniard]

@NewStyleKing...Yep, know where you are on this one....

I collect Kashmir bronzes and after a few years of picking up as many different ruler types as I could find  and afford, realised all I was seeing was the deluge of the 3 most common rulers such as Didda rani, Kalasa and Harsha....The rarer types do come up now and again but very few and far between...

It was then I decided to delve into other sectors of ancient coins and I'm so glad I did..This keeps me actively collecting and researching different cultures etc...But I'm still very passionate about my K collection and always pick up a few new additions each year, here's a selection...

[dougsmit]

5 minutes ago, Spaniard said:

I collect Kashmir bronzes

I don't collect them but happened upon a rather large box of them (1000?) at a show in Baltimore long ago and they were cheap enough that I picked out one or two that I saw as different. Some turned out to be duplicates often being off center in different ways so different parts of the legend were lost.  One of the bunch was obviously more different than the rest because it was smaller weighing only 3.2g.   I was hoping it was a fraction but believe it more likely was unofficial.  Opinion?  Later I added a few others but never got interested enough to pay five times the price of the first batch.  Overall, they seemed like well made coins and attractive for the low price.  I hope I have the ID's right.