Leu Numismatik

[NewStyleKing]

As anyone clocked the huge amount of seemingly hoard(s) contents for sale on Leu?  Lots of Danubian stuff, ATG's tetradrachms, countermarked Aspendos wrestlers, Aspendos Nike tetradrachms, more Tigranes II tets, but NewStyles barely represented. Large lots of "from before 2005 and "from a European collection", but what kind of collection it could be defeats me...more like the collection of an unrestrained Kleptomaniac!

Not much 5* stuff though which disappoints

I guess Switzerland is not too hot on provenance issues!

 

Anything take anyone's fancy?

[ajax]

🍿 I am grabbing my 🍿 and wait for the usual reactions from dealers, their collaborators and dealer apologists

[David Atherton]

1 hour ago, NewStyleKing said:

As anyone clocked the huge amount of seemingly hoard(s) contents for sale on Leu?  Lots of Danubian stuff, ATG's tetradrachms, countermarked Aspendos wrestlers, Aspendos Nike tetradrachms, more Tigranes II tets, but NewStyles barely represented. Large lots of "from before 2005 and "from a European collection", but what kind of collection it could be defeats me...more like the collection of an unrestrained Kleptomaniac!

Not much 5* stuff though which disappoints

I guess Switzerland is not too hot on provenance issues!

 

Anything take anyone's fancy?

Maybe they are Ex Baron Dominique de Chambrier collection? 😁

[Deinomenid]

There’s a recent Aspendos hoard currently being dispersed. They are popping up all over but admittedly not with the vast numbers seen here at Leu! Almost a garage sale. (Car boot sale.)

[NewStyleKing]

Aspendos was a great producer of coins.

[Curtis JJ]

I mean, they list plenty of coins without giving any provenance at all, why do they even bother giving "European collection before 2005" (date of Swiss antiquities law) to just some of them? If anything they're highlighting the ones that are definitely not pre-2005. At least if they remain mute there's plausible deniability and they're not making any false claims. Here they're making an affirmative claim about the history of the object which can possibly be shown false (unlike the export documents which are just "to the best of my knowledge not recently looted/stolen").

Edited February 6 by Curtis JJ

[Curtisimo]

Why so easily dismiss the possibility that many of these coins are indeed from pre-2005 collections or that Leu was at least told that they were? Imagine the conclusions we would draw about the Harptree hoard or poorly documented parts of the Dattari collection if the consignors hadn’t passed on a lot of information to the auction house / dealers.

I’ve had pretty great success with finding provenances for my Leu wins. Over the last two years I found a pre-WWII and a ~50 year old provenance from my Leu wins that had vaguely described boiler plate provenances.

[DonnaML]

47 minutes ago, Curtisimo said:

Why so easily dismiss the possibility that many of these coins are indeed from pre-2005 collections or that Leu was at least told that they were? Imagine the conclusions we would draw about the Harptree hoard or poorly documented parts of the Dattari collection if the consignors hadn’t passed on a lot of information to the auction house / dealers.

I’ve had pretty great success with finding provenances for my Leu wins. Over the last two years I found a pre-WWII and a ~50 year old provenance from my Leu wins that had vaguely described boiler plate provenances.

Anything's possible, but I just looked at the auction, and it seems to me that the 30+ Aspendos staters with countermarks and/or test punches, the majority described as being struck from worn obverse dies, and all described as being from a pre-2005 European collection, look way too similar for me to draw any conclusion other than that they're all from a single hoard. If that hoard was really found before 2005 and in a collection "formed" before then, I'd be curious to know if any expert in this field was aware of that fact. If not, then Leu is asking the world to believe that a single European collector has held this hoard in complete secrecy for at least 30 years. Does that truly seem plausible? It's rather telling, I think, that only two Aspendos staters in the auction -- neither of them with countermarks and/or test punches, and both in noticeably better condition than most of the others -- are described with a more specific provenance, one to a 2022 CNG auction (Lot 802), and the other from "the collection of Robert. P. Ball, Spink USA 382, 15 January 2023, 462, privately acquired from Dr. F. Sternberg in 1966" (Lot 780).  

[Curtis JJ]

58 minutes ago, Curtisimo said:

Why so easily dismiss the possibility that many of these coins are indeed from pre-2005 collections or that Leu was at least told that they were? Imagine the conclusions we would draw about the Harptree hoard or poorly documented parts of the Dattari collection if the consignors hadn’t passed on a lot of information to the auction house / dealers.

I’ve had pretty great success with finding provenances for my Leu wins. Over the last two years I found a pre-WWII and a ~50 year old provenance from my Leu wins that had vaguely described boiler plate provenances.

It's not impossible that sometimes it could be based on good faith information from a consignor. But, aside from being an old  euphemism and inside joke in the auction industry ("old Swiss collection"), it's the rest of the contextual information. It's often obvious that they've applied the label to hoard coins (groups of identical coins in the same state of conservation with the same surfaces). They use the same phrase over and over every auction. Never 2004 or 2003 or 2007, always 2005, which suggests it's not based on any recorded information or biographical reconstruction but by a desire to meet the exact requirements of the Swiss antiquities law.

On occasion, for due diligence, I've tried to find prior records for anything among the groups of "European Collection before 2005" coins, and have rarely found any pre-2005 indication of those coins being above ground. (But sometimes other very recent records.)

[Deinomenid]

1 hour ago, Curtisimo said:

Why so easily dismiss the possibility that many of these coins are indeed from pre-2005 collections

I'm  not dismissing anything, especially about the other types. I do "know" though that an Aspendos hoard is currently being dispersed and the Leu selection of Aspendos coins coming up  now  is  curious in that context. I have a number of  Leu coins with  great  provenance but that doesn't mean  they do or don't sell coins where there may  be a slight doubt. There are a couple of  previously really very rare types of Aspendos coins that suddenly are  offered by multiple sources (without provenance) and where prices have as a result fallen  ~75%. 

There's  no automatic link at all  but a fighting chance of a connection. As for  claims  of 2005  or whatnot,  I'm not sure,  just cynical. Maybe the approach Triton  took last month where an amazing Abdera unrecorded (and also 2 vanishly rare) coins suddenly appeared as  if  from  nowhere without comment is the better one!

Edited February 6 by Deinomenid
typo

[Curtisimo]

44 minutes ago, DonnaML said:

Anything's possible, but I just looked at the auction, and it seems to me that the 30+ Aspendos staters with countermarks and/or test punches, the majority described as being struck from worn obverse dies, and all described as being from a pre-2005 European collection,

28 minutes ago, Deinomenid said:

I do "know" though that an Aspendos hoard is currently being dispersed and the Leu selection of Aspendos coins coming up  now  is  curious in that context.

It’s very reasonable to speculate about this, particularly since the Roma situation confirmed that deceptive or false information on provenance can and is given at auctions. However, I think it is important to remember that it is only speculation unless buttressed with concrete data. I think in a lot of cases people who are interested in this subject are too pessimistic about the prevalence of fake provenance (for reasons I outline below). The knowledge of an Aspendos hoard being currently dispersed is interesting though and you may be into something there.

I don’t think anyone can seriously question the value that I place on provenance for my collection and that I have put my money where my mouth is and invested heavily in both time and money into my research library. I have well over 3000 catalogs from the 19th century to the 1990s. My research has impressed on me just the shear volume of coins that have been sloshing around the market for decades… and centuries. I think it is likely a large percentage of coins sold without provenance have been ping-ponging around the market for a long time and have just never been documented.

53 minutes ago, Curtis JJ said:

But, aside from being an old  euphemism and inside joke in the auction industry ("old Swiss collection"), it's the rest of the contextual information. It's often obvious that they've applied the label to hoard coins (groups of identical coins in the same state of conservation with the same surfaces). They use the same phrase over and over every auction. Never 2004 or 2003 or 2007, always 2005, which suggests it's not based on any recorded information or biographical reconstruction but by a desire to meet the exact requirements of the Swiss antiquities law.

I genuinely think it is unlikely that Leu is making up a boilerplate “collection formed before 2005” and applying it to consignments that they think are suspect. This would make no logical sense. As you pointed out they could simply sell it without saying anything. By making something up they are opening themselves up to potential fraud allegations for no reason at all. I mean, have you ever seen the “2005” provenance demand a premium?

The only explanation that makes sense is that some auction houses ask their consigners who want to remain anonymous if they know when the collection was formed and then follow up with “do you know if it was formed before 2005.” If the consigner says “yes” in writing then they have themselves covered if a coin gets caught up in customs. There is also a ton of listings in Leu and elsewhere that say things like “collection formed in the 1970s” or whenever.

The consignor may be lying but auction houses are aware of what happened to Roma and it would be strange for them to go out of their way to lie when the risk/reward dynamic is so lopsided.

… more response to come.

[Curtis JJ]

Here's an example. In 2020 (Web Auctions 11 & 13) Leu sold 5 AR Drachms of the Koson types (2 made repeat appearances in 2021) described as "From a European collection, formed before 2005."

It's only slightly possible, since all known specimens of the Koson Silver coinage were found in a single hoard in 2004, and the first specimens were publicly sold in December 2004 and January 2005. (Which Romania claims are all its stolen property; they've gotten some back; H.J. Berk Ltd. went to court and won their case.) This would would have to have been the first collector to buy them. Not impossible, but raises questions.

Add to that, at least one of those coins had appeared at a German auction 4 months earlier, where it hammered at 520 EUR on three bids. Even if it was unpaid, that would be a quick turnaround for the collector to get it back and then send it to the other firm.

https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=6938187

 

It's certainly possible that Leu is relying on consignor information to come up with "Collection formed before 2005." In all probability, that is what is going on. And, in many cases, of course, the info is true and there's lots of old history behind the coin. But in cases like this, it's hard to believe that they genuinely believe it's true. That's why people view it through the lens of "don't ask, don't tell" or "plausible deniability."

Edited February 6 by Curtis JJ

[Kaleun96]

24 minutes ago, Curtisimo said:

The only explanation that makes sense is that some auction houses ask their consigners who want to remain anonymous if they know when the collection was formed and then follow up with “do you know if it was formed before 2005.” If the consigner says “yes” in writing then they have themselves covered if a coin gets caught up in customs

I think there's likely some truth to that and in my experience consignment terms from other auction houses ask similar questions of the consignor. That being said, I don't think it covers Leu all that well legally. They do have some responsibility to do due diligence and if they're receiving a consignment of 30 coins of a similar type, condition, and appearance, I don't think they would get away with arguing that (a) they didn't suspect the coins may be from a hoard, and (b) that more probable than not the hoard was discovered post-2005.

Even worse than the Aspendos staters in this upcoming sale are the Alexander the Great tetradrachms. I think I counted nearly 40 examples representing 10 types from the range Price 2990 to 2999 (i.e. closely related types from the same mint). Even without including the context of the other ~150 ATG tetradrachms, this kind of sample doesn't strike you as your typical collector's consignment, even if that collector happened to not only focus on ATG tetradrachms but ones of that specific mint and period. Who needs four examples per type? Many of them probably of the same die pairings too.

[DonnaML]

35 minutes ago, Curtisimo said:

 I think it is likely a large percentage of coins sold without provenance have been ping-ponging around the market for a long time and have just never been documented.

I'm sure that's true, especially for lower-value coins that would never have been illustrated in auction catalogs or fixed-price lists before the inclusion in catalogs of photos of every coin became the standard practice -- when, 20 or 25 years ago? And even though Ebay listings have always been accompanied by photos, those disappear very quickly unless people save them.

But how many different ancient coins have been sold in the last 20 years? Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? No matter how many of them really have been ping-ponging around the market for a long time during and before that period, that still leaves many thousands that appeared on the European and North American markets for the very first time in the 1990s or later, after the fall of the Iron Curtain. With new ones, and new hoards, being dug up all the time in countries in Europe and elsewhere, where there's no incentive for the finders to report their finds. 

Edited February 6 by DonnaML

[Curtis JJ]

22 minutes ago, DonnaML said:

And even though Ebay listings have always been accompanied by photos, those disappear very quickly unless people save them.

By the way -- in case anyone doesn't know about it -- for years now Ras Suarez has been doing the great work of archiving eBay ancient coin sales (since maybe 2012 or so). And including many other dealers and scanning some print auction catalogs that can't be found elsewhere.

Used to be called COINVAC, then changed to Coryssa a few years ago. One of the great unsung contributions to ancient coin provenance research:

https://www.coryssa.org/index.php

Over 3 million records at present, which is comparable to ACSearch. Takes a little bit of practice getting used to, and become efficient at searching, but I've found quite a few lost provenances in there. (Mainly for coins I knew had appeared on eBay but not when or from whom. A few that were total "cold" cases.)

Whatever the limitations, I'm amazed that he's been doing all that himself all this time.

Edited February 6 by Curtis JJ

[Hrefn]

“My research has impressed on me just the sheer volume of coins that have been sloshing around the market for decades… and centuries.”  @Curtisimo, I would like to hear your impressions of the number and types of coins which have been in the market over time.  (Perhaps in some future thread, if you are so inclined.). There has been some curiosity expressed on this forum as to the number of various types of coins to be found, and about the number of collectors who specialize in various niches of the coin collecting universe.  My own completely anecdotal impression is that there are many fewer collectors than one might first suspect, at least when thinking of collectors of Ancients and Medieval coins.   If there are few collectors, would that not make the coins appear more common as they cycle through the market?

To illustrate, suppose there are 25,000 avid collectors of Carolingian deniers.  Numerous types of these coins have survived to the present in numbers of 50 or less.  If a choice specimen comes on the market, it will promptly be bought and disappear into a collection.  The coin will appear scarce because hardly anyone gets to see one, and they are off the market before you can blink.

Now, suppose there are only 10 collectors of Carolingian deniers.  Coins will languish on the market.  They may be passed from auction to dealer to auction, may suffer the fate of being an unsold lot, the supply exceeds the demand so the coin type appears to be always available.  Everyone who wants one already has one.  

In both cases, the number of coins is the same.  If there’s many collectors, the coins appear scarce;  if there are few, the coins appear more common.  The coins are on the market longer and more frequently because no one wants them.  This again raises the question of how many collectors are there?  Is the number greater or less than at various times in the past?  

We live in an age when most newly discovered coins are not immediately melted for bullion.  Somehow, legally or illegally, the coins make their way to the numismatic marketplace, to join the great slosh (if you will.  It’s a vivid image).  All other things being equal, the increase in supply should lead to lower prices, and we see this with hoard coins.  But overall prices seem to rise.  So is the number of collectors growing, leading to more competition and higher prices?  I sure wish we knew the answers to some of these questions.  

[DonnaML]

35 minutes ago, Curtis JJ said:

By the way -- in case anyone doesn't know about it -- for years now Ras Suarez has been doing the great work of archiving eBay ancient coin sales (since maybe 2012 or so). And including many other dealers and scanning some print auction catalogs that can't be found elsewhere.

Used to be called COINVAC, then changed to Coryssa a few years ago. One of the great unsung contributions to ancient coin provenance research:

https://www.coryssa.org/index.php

Over 3 million records at present, which is comparable to ACSearch. Takes a little bit of practice getting used to, and become efficient at searching, but I've found quite a few lost provenances in there. (Mainly for coins I knew had appeared on eBay but not when or from whom. A few that were total "cold" cases.)

Whatever the limitations, I'm amazed that he's been doing all that himself all this time.

I'm somewhat familiar with Coryssa and should probably use it more. Maybe I'll try it with some of my Roman Republican coins for which I couldn't find anything on acsearch or in the RRDP. Even though a number of my Republican coins that look like they should have a pedigree don't seem to me to be the sort of Republican coin that gets offered much on Ebay anymore. An Ebay database going back to the 1990s that includes the old Sotheby Ebay auctions might be very useful, but I imagine it's too late for that.

Edited February 6 by DonnaML

[Curtisimo]

23 minutes ago, DonnaML said:

I'm sure that's true, especially for lower-value coins that would never have been illustrated in auction catalogs or fixed-price lists before the inclusion in catalogs of photos of every coin became the standard practice -- when, 20 or 25 years ago? And even though Ebay listings have always been accompanied by photos, those disappear very quickly unless people save them.

It’s not even ubiquitous today for all coins to be photographed in an auction. Really great coins from less “high value” areas get put into group lots without even full descriptions. See the huge lots from the pre-1960 Taeger collection last year. Factor in dealers buying whole collections from estate sales and selling them privately and there are still a huge amount of coins slipping through the documentation cracks even now. I do take your point though. A pre-2000 provenance for an LRB is almost as exciting as a pre-1970 provenance for a Greek tetradrachm.

29 minutes ago, DonnaML said:

But how many different ancient coins have been sold in the last 20 years? Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? No matter how many of them really have been ping-ponging around the market for a long time during and before that period, that still leaves many thousands that appeared on the European and North American markets for the very first time in the 1990s or later, after the fall of the Iron Curtain. With new ones, and new hoards, being dug up all the time in countries in Europe and elsewhere, where there's no incentive for the finders to report their finds.

The 90s were probably the heyday for new hoard finds due to metal detectors becoming available at a reasonable price. My guess is that most of the volume introduced to the market from this dynamic is long in the past. Locals know where the ancient settlements were and have picked them over many, many times with the help of metal detectors. The easy finds have mostly been found.

I would be shocked if new finds made up a majority of the market even in the 1990s, but certainly they don’t now. The largest generation that ever existed in North America and Europe has moved into retirement and many of the collectors of this generation are selling their coins back into the market.

[Curtisimo]

2 hours ago, Deinomenid said:

There are a couple of  previously really very rare types of Aspendos coins that suddenly are  offered by multiple sources (without provenance) and where prices have as a result fallen  ~75%.

This has me very interested.  Do you know when this hoard started to be dispersed? I looked on ACSearch from the beginning of 2023 and didn’t see that many of the Aspendos coins sold matched the condition and look of the Leu examples. The Leu examples are pleasantly toned like they have been stored for a while.

I’ll be honest when I first looked at the Leu offerings I figured they were part of a focused collection of Aspendos counterstamps. I had two of them on my “watch list” with a thought to research them further.

[Valentinian]

1 hour ago, Hrefn said:

 But overall prices seem to rise.

There are vast numbers of coins at auction every month (maybe 40,000 individual lots on biddr alone, some "large lots" of which have 50 or 100 low-grade coins each). Almost all those coins are actually sold (unlike fixed-price sites where coins may languish unsold for months or years). The overwhelming majority are not high-value coins (say, not over a thousand dollars) and many hammer at $20 or less. I have about 100 linear-feet of old sale catalogs, largely issued 1975-2000. It is easy to see what coins were offered at and sold for back then. Most would sell for about the same amount now in dollars and most Swiss auctions sold most of their coins then for more than they would sell for now. That's just a fact.

So, how can you have the impression that prices seem to have risen? There are major contributing factors.
1)  Since you started collecting your standards have risen, so the denarius you were pleased with then at $x is no longer of the quality that you would want, so you must spend $2x to get what you want. $x to $2x is not a price rise if the coin is a lot better.
2)  In the coin market some items sell remarkably high and they are usually items of top quality. If you are impressed by items that have gone high, you may (over)generalize and think items in general have gone up, when actually you are unintentionally selecting special cases. You are overlooking all the numerous coins that have gone lower. 
3)  Coins that have gone up and attain high prices get the publicity and interest. Coin publications are not likely to highlight cases where the price went down. Such cases are not unusual, but don't usually get a Numis Forums post or a note in Coin World. Beware of selection bias.
4)  The top 1% of earners are doing well and they tend to want top-quality coins. I don't deny that some very high-quality coins have sold for notably high prices. 
5)  Many collectors assert (lament) that prices have gone up. It is easy to join the club without paying attention to the actual data.

In contrast, how can you believe that prices have fallen? 

Anyone who collects Greek copper, Greek silver fractions, Roman provincial, or Byzantine copper coins knows prices have gone down. The supply side is very many times what it was. Look at a few old top-quality auctions of Byzantine copper (e.g. the Berk/England auction of 1989) and you will see virtually all the coins would cost less now (and they were outstanding for the series). 

Vast numbers of common late Roman coins are on the market at auctions. Many are in low grade and would not have been auctioned before the internet and auction platforms made it easy to offer low-value coins. Prices for them are lower than ever since the 1970s when there were "you-pick" boxes of unidentified coins at major coin shows. The really excellent late Roman coins ones sell now for much less than they auctioned for 30 years ago. The same holds for Greek copper, Roman provincial, and some other collecting areas. 

I, personally, bought several $100-$500 coins last year with auction pedigrees that I was able to determine the old PRs for.  Most I bought for less--some a lot less.  

It may be that the types you want in the condition you want cost more than you want to pay now. But, what about all the other coins? What about all the coins you bought in the past? Would they cost more now?  Sure, maybe some of them. But, by and large, coin prices have not gone up.

Edited February 6 by Valentinian

[Valentinian]

19 minutes ago, Curtisimo said:

The Leu examples are pleasantly toned like they have been stored for a while.

When a hoard comes to market there is often the presumption that it was found recently. But there are good reasons for hoards found long ago to come to market now. In the 1990's when the Iron Curtain came down many genuine coins of Bulgarian types came to market and their prices came down. It wasn't all, or even largely, recent hoards. The key was new access to markets.  If you found a coin hoard in a communist country you could give it to the state and barely receive thanks, or you could keep it hidden and wait for times to change. Times changed in the 1990s.

Consider a hoard from Turkey. If you declared it could  you keep it? Maybe it would serve you better to hide it away until you can figure out how to turn it into spending money. Maybe the alarmingly high inflation in Turkey wiped out your savings and you need money. Maybe you live where there was a huge earthquake and you were wiped out and need money. Time to get out that old hoard found years ago and figure out how to turn it into money. 

Maybe you are from Syria and lost almost everything in the war, but still know where that hoard found years ago is secreted. 

You get the point.

[Deinomenid]

23 minutes ago, Valentinian said:

5)  Many collectors assert (lament) that prices have gone up

6)  Money illusion is a  huge part too of why so many think prices in general are soaring, which is  ironic as we are talking about coins! People systematically look at their wealth or prices in nominal terms rather than real terms. It's been shown time and again how difficult it is to think in real terms when we  live  in a day-to-day nominally priced economy. Nominal growth in the economy is vast over even relatively short periods. Eg since 2000 nominal  US GDP  has tripled. If a coin hasn't doubled in stated $ value over a fairly short (not even geologically speaking 🙂) period of time it has been "poor".  I regularly  buy fairly decent Greek silver (and even electrum) at the same nominal price as 10 years ago.

46 minutes ago, Curtisimo said:

Do you know when this hoard started to be dispersed?

No, but I think very recently. The qualification is because  I assume - as often the case-  the highest quality stuff will have been  picked over first. For example this type, which was "unique" until recently and sold for ~2900 with fees is  popping  up quite a bit very recently including a few examples on the main coin seller sites and - while they've sold well/quickly - prices have collapsed. I may be wrong and  I am far from an expert on Aspendos but  I've heard similar tales from a few sellers. 

CNG coin, 2018

PAMPHYLIA, Aspendos. Circa 465-430 BC. AR Stater (21mm, 10.96 g). Warrior advancing right, holding shield and spear / Triskeles within incuse square. Unpublished in the standard references. VF. Exceptionally powerful and artistic warrior for series. Extremely rare.

[Hrefn]

@Valentinian, your points are well taken.  The coin market is not homogeneous.  Some coins are cheaper in nominal dollars than they were 30 years ago.  Many are cheaper in inflation-adjusted dollars compared with their price 30 years ago.  Since 1994 the US dollar has lost half its purchasing power.  So if I paid $50 for a coin in 1994, I might expect to pay $100 for a similar coin now.  It appears to have increased in price, but actually the dollar of 2024 is only half the dollar of 1994.  Every coin which hasn’t doubled in price over 30 years is actually cheaper now than it was in 1994.  

There may also be selection bias on my part.  I am more picky than I was 30 years ago, and that may be causing me to focus on higher value coins, which are naturally more expensive.  I think this is true.  But it does not explain the increase in market value of coins I have already purchased.  And it seems to me that the expensive coins I bought in the past have increased in price more than the common ones.  

I suspect one of the factors behind the perceived price increase is the gold price.  The dollar price of gold has increased fivefold since its 1994 high of $400/ Troy ounce.  That is enough to drive up the price of many coins which were trading close to their gold value.  Common Byzantine solidi would be a good example. 

[Sol_Invictus]

Very interesting discussion in this thread!

6 hours ago, Curtisimo said:

I would be shocked if new finds made up a majority of the market even in the 1990s, but certainly they don’t now. The largest generation that ever existed in North America and Europe has moved into retirement and many of the collectors of this generation are selling their coins back into the market.

I wonder if Noonans Mayfair might be a useful source of statistics on this issue? They make a point of highlighting “Detectorist Finds” in their auctions, including ones that aren’t large enough hoards to be reported to the PAS. If you focus just on British coins, where there is no incentive to obfuscate new finds, you might get a reasonably decent estimate for the ratio of new to recirculated British coins currently in the market. In their current auction, for example, Detectorist finds make up only a rather small fraction of all the pre-17th century British coins in the sale. However, they also have auctions where they sell a single large recently found hoard, and 100% of the coins in the auction are “detectorist finds.” So I guess a proper estimate would need to look back over a number of auctions from several years. Of course it’s also not clear how representative Noonans is of the overall market (do they sell more or fewer recent finds compared to other auction houses?), or how representative the British market is of coins sourced from other countries.

[mcwyler]

15 hours ago, Curtis JJ said:

By the way -- in case anyone doesn't know about it -- for years now Ras Suarez has been doing the great work of archiving eBay ancient coin sales (since maybe 2012 or so). And including many other dealers and scanning some print auction catalogs that can't be found elsewhere.

Used to be called COINVAC, then changed to Coryssa a few years ago. One of the great unsung contributions to ancient coin provenance research:

https://www.coryssa.org/index.php

Over 3 million records at present, which is comparable to ACSearch. Takes a little bit of practice getting used to, and become efficient at searching, but I've found quite a few lost provenances in there. (Mainly for coins I knew had appeared on eBay but not when or from whom. A few that were total "cold" cases.)

Whatever the limitations, I'm amazed that he's been doing all that himself all this time.

Thank you so much for that, I read this 10 minutes ago and have already successfully used the tool for a purchase from 8 years ago that I lost details of!