Someone went crazy on this coin!

[JayAg47]

I was looking at recent auctions on Chola coins and saw this one hammering for 800 Swiss francs?!! while this coin is fantastic looking with all the elements nicely centred, it's still not worth any more than 300-400 dollars at most. 

Why would someone pay nearly 1000 bucks for this coin? is it because of the provenance? can anyone tell me what's special about its previous owner? or just a bid war? or maybe because the auction house wrongly described it at as bronze and the buyer thought it was a rare issue? cuz I'm pretty sure this type was only minted in pure silver and an underweight debased issue alloyed with lead, but never with copper. 

If people are paying this much then probably I made a steal with my coin below for 100 bucks! 

[Sol_Invictus]

I was surprised by this as well, but do not know enough about this area to appreciate what subtleties might have made the coin especially rare/valuable. I did feel that in general the bids were rather aggressive for this collection, but then again, the collection had a lot of very nice looking coins! 

[arizonarobin]

That is baffling, but maybe there were just a couple bidders who very much wanted it. I have well overpaid for several coins in bidding wars. 😅

I aquired one of these in an old collection I bought, along with a coin of Rajendra Chola I and a tiny gold fanam with an elephant.

Here is mine:

[quant.geek]

That whole auction, especially the South Indian section was NUTS. The Chola fanam, which a better specimen was sold for about $120, went for about 900 and over 1000 CHF and that doesn't even include the buyer's fees, taxes and shipping 😬

Edited March 21, 2023 by quant.geek

[quant.geek]

This one went for 1200 CHF! Unbelievable.  This is a 120 USD coin...

 

 

I did, however, managed to grab most of the Vishnukundin coins in that auction, plus some other coins that were relatively low priced...

 

Edited March 22, 2023 by quant.geek

[DonnaML]

Leu certainly seems pleased with the overall results of the auction, judging from an email I received yesterday:

Leu Web Auction 25 - Review
Starting: 384,450 CHF | Hammer: 2,334,182 CHF | 100% sold
38,412 bids | 1,589 bidders from 74 countries

Our donation to the victims of the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria: 23,342 CHF

––

As already announced, we have donated 1% of the total hammer of Leu Web Auction 25 to the Swiss Red Cross – based on the impressive total hammer of 2,334,182 CHF, this comes down to a donation of 23,342 CHF.
 

I have no idea, of course, how this compares to the results of Leu's previous auctions.

 

I also received an email from Leu today acknowledging my payment for the two lots I won in the auction -- a payment I actually made by Wise transfer 6 days ago -- and informing me that shipment will be made "within the next 10 working days." A time-frame that's disappointing, but not surprising, given that it's similar to what Leu has informed me after previous auctions.

Edited March 22, 2023 by DonnaML

[Ed Snible]

4 hours ago, DonnaML said:

I have no idea, of course, how this compares to the results of Leu's previous auctions.

I probably deleted the reviews of auctions 20-23, but these results seem in line with the previous auctions.

Leu Web Auction 24 - Review
Starting: 529,125 CHF | Hammer: 2,803,292 CHF | 100% sold
45,514 bids | 1,864 bidders from 75 countries

Web Auction 19 - Review
Starting: 325,175 CHF | Hammer: 2,046,574 CHF | 100% sold
38,853 bids | 1,752 bidders from 75 countries

Web Auction 18 - Review
Starting: 430,425 CHF | Hammer: 2,395,185 CHF | 100% sold
44,127 bids | 1,751 bidders from 72 countries

Web Auction 17 - Review
Starting: 345,725 CHF | Hammer: 1,783,573 CHF | 100% sold
36,590 bids | 1,534 bidders from 66 countries

Web Auction 16 - Review
Starting: 613,075 CHF | Hammer: 2,849,721 CHF | 100% sold
46,860 bids | 1,694 bidders from 73 countries