Leu Web Auction 26 - Special Offer!

[Julius Germanicus]

Dear friends of the Roman Bronze Coinage,

as some of you might know, I have decided to part with (most of) my collection of Sestertii after reaching my goal of completing the Imperial Portrait Gallery. Sigh...

The first batch (20 coins) will be sold at Leu´s forthcoming Web Auction on July 11. I travelled from Hamburg to Munich to deliver the goods to the nice Mr. Gunzenreiner and his team in person, but should have chosen any other means of transportation than an overnight bus which is something you do not want to experience if you are over 30 years old to 2 meters tall. A sleepless night in any case...

So here is the offer: If anyone of you should win one of the following coins, please send me a private message and I will gladly mail you a copy of the respective detailed illustrated certificate of authenticity by the great David R. Sear, who has inspected these coins and has been a trusted and helpful advisor to me for the past decade. Each includes an exact description of the individual coin and comprehensive information on the historical background to the issue and the precise significance of the particular variety.

 

Macrinus, lot 4586:

Maximinus Thrax, lot 4636:

Paulina, lot 4639:

Maximus, lot 4646:

Pupienus, lot 4656:

Postumus, lot 4770:

Manlia Scantilla, lot 4537:

Herennius Etruscus, lot 4737:

Elagabalus, lot 4598:

Crispina, lot 4530:

Septimius Severus, lot 4548:

Commodus, lot 4520:

Julia Mammaea, lot 4623:

Philipp II, lot 4723:

Otho, lot 2417:

Didia Clara, lot 4538:

If you have any questions (or are missing a Sestertius of any specific rare Emperor for your collection), feel free to ask, as I am preparing the next batch for sale now.

But I will choose an easier option than to spend a night in a bus this time 🙂

Greetings from sunny Germany, J.G.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Ocatarinetabellatchitchix]

What a fantastic collection Jens. It is sad you have to let it go, but on the other hand, a new huge budget for LEGO projects !

[Al Kowsky]

J.G., Best wishes for a successful auction 😊! I'm surprised you aren't keeping your avatar coin, that handsome Macrinus sestertius 😒.

[Ancient Coin Hunter]

I am thoroughly impressed but saddened that such a collection of bright orichalcum sestertii is leaving your hands. Surely it is one of, if not the premiere - collections of brass-appearing coins in existence in this world. Wishing you the best of luck in the auction and that your pecuniary goals in this event are met, which I am sure they will be!!!

Edited June 14, 2023 by Ancient Coin Hunter

[Severus Alexander]

Good luck, and I hope to hear about your next collecting project!

[Qcumbor]

A great collection that will please many other collectors/caretakers.

Best of luck for the coins that will be auctioned

Q

[Julius Germanicus]

On 6/14/2023 at 10:46 PM, Ancient Coin Hunter said:

I am thoroughly impressed but saddened that such a collection of bright orichalcum sestertii is leaving your hands. Surely it is one of, if not the premiere - collections of brass-appearing coins in existence in this world. Wishing you the best of luck in the auction and that your pecuniary goals in this event are met, which I am sure they will be!!!

Thank you for the undeserved accolades ☺️.

Every end is a new beginning and I am in the process of creating a hard cover catalogue book of my Sestertius collection für myself (including the writeups I did for most coins back in the Cointalk days and those by David Sear in his certificates plus maybe biographies and some die studies where appropriate) to remember and cherish my brassy friends for the decades to come...

[DonnaML]

I'm sure you'll do very well; these are amazing. I love the Macrinus pedigree, "from the collection of Prince Christian August von Waldeck-Pyrmont (1744-1798)." That sounds way more impressive than the mere Baron de Chambrier to me!

Edited June 18, 2023 by DonnaML

[Julius Germanicus]

On 6/18/2023 at 5:55 AM, DonnaML said:

I'm sure you'll do very well; these are amazing. I love the Macrinus pedigree, "from the collection of Prince Christian August von Waldeck-Pyrmont (1744-1798)." That sounds way more impressive than the mere Baron de Chambrier to me!

Dear Donna, I received news from Leu yesterday that they still hope the Sestertii will eventually arrive with you. I keep my fingers crossed. Would be such a shame!

Edited September 1, 2023 by Julius Germanicus

[Julius Germanicus]

After receiving my revenue von Leu today I noticed that a couple of my Sestertii have been bought by resellers and are on offer on V-Coins and MA-Shops now 🤔. Is this a regular practice?

My ex-Manlia Scantilla is now advertised for 1.100 Euros, about three times the 380 Swiss Francs that it was auctioned for 🥵.

My Herennius Etruscus was actually bought by Tom Vossen, the seller from whom I had originally purchased it from back in 2016. I still think it is one of the finest of it´s kind style-wise and he may have remembered it 😏.

Finding your former coins at new homes online is like meeting old friends. I wonder where my Macrinus is at now and am happy that Postumus, my second best entry, ended up with a forum colleague (and hopefully Commodus and Crispina, too).

 

 

[Salomons Cat]

46 minutes ago, Julius Germanicus said:

After receiving my revenue von Leu today I noticed that a couple of my Sestertii have been bought by resellers and are on offer on V-Coins and MA-Shops now 🤔. Is this a regular practice?

Yep, it is. But the prices vary a lot. Many vcoins sellers add 10-20% to the auction price (including fees), others multiply the auction price x2.5 and leave the coin in their vcoin shop for a few years, until someone buys it for that price.

Edited September 1, 2023 by Salomons Cat

[Prieure de Sion]

1 hour ago, Julius Germanicus said:

After receiving my revenue von Leu today I noticed that a couple of my Sestertii have been bought by resellers and are on offer on V-Coins and MA-Shops now 🤔. Is this a regular practice?

Heretical counter-question, where else should the traders (among others) get their coins from? 😄 

 

As a dealer, you could buy from private collectors. It also happens from time to time that a private collector offers to buy a coin from a dealer. But that is rather rare. 

Private sellers often want to make money out of the entire collection. And then they often think of well-known auction houses to which they can hand over the coin collection and thus get rid of the collection in one fell swoop.

So where do you get the coins as a dealer? From auction houses, of course. Even auction houses often buy coins at other auctions of other auction houses. 

But that is also perfectly normal. In many areas where goods are traded. Because entrepreneurially, coins are commodities (for the businesses). Cars are also bought and sold among themselves.

And it is also - from my point of view - perfectly ok, as long as the customer is not "ripped off". 

I have a lot of customers, even a lot, who want to spend their precious time with the coins. These customers say quite clearly - I don't want to look through auctions all the time, I don't want to compare auctions all the time, I don't want to take the time to participate in the auction, I don't want to have anything to do with payment and shipping and customs. Here is a list of my favourites that interest me. I know what my customers are interested in - I buy it at auctions - I take care of payment, import, research etc - and for this service I charge a premium, my profit.

This is completely legitimate for my customers - they know exactly that I have the coins from an auction. 

[red_spork]

5 hours ago, Julius Germanicus said:

My ex-Manlia Scantilla is now advertised for 1.100 Euros, about three times the 380 Swiss Francs that it was auctioned for 🥵.

 

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.

[John Conduitt]

5 hours ago, Prieure de Sion said:

Heretical counter-question, where else should the traders (among others) get their coins from? 😄 

As a dealer, you could buy from private collectors. It also happens from time to time that a private collector offers to buy a coin from a dealer. But that is rather rare. 

Private sellers often want to make money out of the entire collection. And then they often think of well-known auction houses to which they can hand over the coin collection and thus get rid of the collection in one fell swoop.

So where do you get the coins as a dealer? From auction houses, of course. Even auction houses often buy coins at other auctions of other auction houses. 

But that is also perfectly normal. In many areas where goods are traded. Because entrepreneurially, coins are commodities (for the businesses). Cars are also bought and sold among themselves.

And it is also - from my point of view - perfectly ok, as long as the customer is not "ripped off". 

I have a lot of customers, even a lot, who want to spend their precious time with the coins. These customers say quite clearly - I don't want to look through auctions all the time, I don't want to compare auctions all the time, I don't want to take the time to participate in the auction, I don't want to have anything to do with payment and shipping and customs. Here is a list of my favourites that interest me. I know what my customers are interested in - I buy it at auctions - I take care of payment, import, research etc - and for this service I charge a premium, my profit.

This is completely legitimate for my customers - they know exactly that I have the coins from an auction. 

Dealers must get most of them from somewhere other than auctions, otherwise I'd know all their stock before they listed it and have already passed on it all 🤣

I've seen coins flipped by dealers many times, sometimes with a fair markup (which is already a lot more than you could've bought it a few hours before), but sometimes I can't imagine who's buying them. Group lots are the worst. One that annoyed me recently was a sale of C17 tokens at Noonans, where they sold them all in lots of 4. I wanted several tokens but could only afford 2, since to buy those I had to buy 8. Within hours, dealers were listing the tokens on eBay and their websites, each individual token priced at the cost of the entire lot! So all these tokens I wanted were available again but at vastly more expense. And wouldn't you know it, they sold a load of them right away.

[DonnaML]

8 hours ago, Julius Germanicus said:

Dear Donna, I received news from Leu yesterday that they still hope the Sestertii will eventually arrive with you. I keep my fingers crossed. Would be such a shame!

Thanks, @Julius Germanicus, but I'm trying to be realistic, and I can't think of any good reason to be optimistic. It's now three weeks since the package vanished on the way from the local post office branch to my building -- a distance of 0.7 miles, or just over 1 kilometer. If it hasn't been found yet, I don't see how it will ever be found. Beyond searching in the post office building and in the truck, where are they supposed to look?  Either it fell off the truck, or it was misdelivered to someone who kept it, or someone working for the post office stole it.  On Sep 10 it will be exactly one month since the package disappeared, and I will request a refund. Maybe the coins aren't important enough monetarily for Leu to initiate a criminal investigation, but I'm surprised Leu hasn't at least put out some sort of alert to coin dealers of the kind one sees occasionally in the numismatic press. If they have, they certainly didn't tell me.

[Salomons Cat]

3 hours ago, John Conduitt said:

Group lots are the worst. One that annoyed me recently was a sale of C17 tokens at Noonans, where they sold them all in lots of 4. I wanted several tokens but could only afford 2, since to buy those I had to buy 8. Within hours, dealers were listing the tokens on eBay and their websites, each individual token priced at the cost of the entire lot! So all these tokens I wanted were available again but at vastly more expense. And wouldn't you know it, they sold a load of them right away.

I think that ebay is just the Wild West of coin trading. But I know this feeling as well. I have also missed coins in auctions and afterwards I saw them for much more in shops and I still felt like I wanted them… On the other hand, the dealers obviosly had a good eye in these cases, so they did their job very well? 

I find this more acceptable than some dealers like numiscorner or cgb who just regularly ask for a multiple of the regular market price. And sometimes, when I read their descriptions, I wonder how closely they even looked at certain coins… But even they are obviously able to easily sell their coins - so there seems to be no point in complaining about this 🤷‍♂️

Edited September 1, 2023 by Salomons Cat