Question about Rome.

[lim]

Question about Rome. Is this coin worth $1,500? And is it possible to invest money in such coins as an investment?

[Julius Germanicus]

No

[kirispupis]

I'm not the best one to comment on the value of this particular coin, but in general ancient coins tend to make lousy investments.

• It's very common at auction to pay the same or even less for an exact coin that someone else paid twenty years ago. 
• Prices fluctuate on individual types as hoards are found and snatched up
• Different types of ancients become popular/unpopular on the whims of the collectors and public
• Buyers' and sellers' fees have to be surmounted

My advice is to just buy the coins that interest you, pay what you feel is fair, and let your heirs worry about the value.

[lim]

I don't do Rome. Will they increase in price by any chance? Usually, all bronze is found in poor condition. And how much can such a coin cost?

Edited January 4 by lim

[Qcumbor]

3 minutes ago, lim said:

I don't do Rome. Will they increase in price by any chance? Usually, all bronze is found in poor condition.

See what has been answered just before you posted :

6 minutes ago, kirispupis said:

I'm not the best one to comment on the value of this particular coin, but in general ancient coins tend to make lousy investments.

• It's very common at auction to pay the same or even less for an exact coin that someone else paid twenty years ago. 
• Prices fluctuate on individual types as hoards are found and snatched up
• Different types of ancients become popular/unpopular on the whims of the collectors and public
• Buyers' and sellers' fees have to be surmounted

My advice is to just buy the coins that interest you, pay what you feel is fair, and let your heirs worry about the value.

🙂 Q

[lim]

How much can such a coin cost? Its market price?

[lim]

I wanted to include this coin in addition to the biblical theme from the time of Jesus. But I would not like to overpay too much. There were such coins in the province of Judea. As a small denomination.

Edited January 4 by lim

[Ancient Coin Hunter]

See what @kirispupis said and memorize it. Even if coins are to be considered as an alternative form of investment, returns after a sale due to fees and expenses plus a cut for the dealer or auctioneer tends to mean you won't get all your principal back. Hence they are not really a good investment when compared with another asset class.

[CPK]

27 minutes ago, lim said:

How much can such a coin cost? Its market price?

Assuming it's genuine and hasn't been tampered with - maybe around $400 - $500.

[lim]

It turns out that it is more profitable to collect Greece.

[Qcumbor]

13 minutes ago, lim said:

It turns out that it is more profitable to collect Greece.

I think it's more profitable to not collec coins. For the reasons stated above it's kind of a gamble, you're likely to loose more often than win

Q

[Heliodromus]

Coin collecting and making money from coins (investing or dealing) are really two separate things.

Collecting coins is about buying coins because you like/want them, and presumably paying retail (+ buyers premium) for them plus exorbitant postage, etc. When you sell you will be hit with fees/commission/etc, and even if you bought at a good price the coin will need to have appreciated quite a lot just to break even. Maybe you bought the coin at a good price, but the market has changed and value gone down anyway.

Investing/dealing in coins is not about buying coins you like, but rather about buying coins where you see sufficient profit potential, which would minimally mean paying wholesale rather than retail for it, buying in bulk where possible to minimize overhead, knowing the market and current pricing and demand trends, etc. etc.

One good thing about the hobby of collecting is that you will at least get some of your money back if/when you decide to sell, maybe you will make a profit, or maybe not, depending on what you bought, what you paid, how long you held it for, etc. At least it's better than other expensive hobbies like skiing or golf where the money spent is mostly gone.

 

Edited January 4 by Heliodromus

[lim]

On the one hand, I would like to collect an interesting collection. And on the other hand, to make the collection grow in value and be a safety cushion. In case of anything.

[lim]

Sometimes I buy coins from private traders. And often I get coins below the market. But when I look into numismatic shops, the prices there are anything.

Edited January 4 by lim

[-monolith-]

What your speaking of isn't an "investment" it's called "speculation". Few "speculators" have ever made a good profit; however prudent investors have. If you are looking to spend money to purchase ancient coins speculating to receive a large profit you will have to do a lot of research on past and present purchasing trends (what do people want and how much are they willing to spend on it). This is no different than what you would need to do for stocks, precious metals, art, etc.

[Hrefn]

I have many coins which I could easily sell for more than I paid for them.  But the gains are mainly illusory.

The apparent gains are secondary to two factors, which are themselves highly correlated.  The first is inflation, and the second is the increase in the dollar price of gold.  The present market price of any coin purchased several decades ago has likely increased as denominated in dollars.  This increase is because the dollar has lost value, so it takes more dollars to purchase the same goods.  The best that can be said of such an “investment” is that it has served as an inflation hedge for savings.   

About fifty years ago, one could buy an excellent Armenian silver tram of Hetoum and Zabel for about $15.  An equivalent coin today might command $100 at retail.  If the longterm holder sells, he has a nominal profit of $85.  But is it a real profit?

Using 1972 as our original date of purchase, till today, an inflation calculator states that $15 in 1972 is the equivalent of $113 today.  So our collector has lost purchasing power, making the coin an imperfect inflation hedge.  Definitely better than putting the $15 dollars in a jar and retrieving it 50 years later;  but a losing investment overall.  

The situation is even less favorable if the collector is in a political jurisdiction which taxes capital gains.  That $85 in profit may be an illusion, but the Government will still demand a share of it, perhaps 30%, or about $25.  This leaves our collector with $75 in hand, a sum which has 1/3rd less purchasing power than the original investment in 1972.  This despite a six-fold increase in the selling price of the coin.  All this presumes the collector incurred no expenses storing the coin for 50 years, and was able to sell without postage costs, auction commissions, credit card fees, etc.   

In addition, there is the opportunity cost.  Buying a coin for $15 means that money cannot be put to another use.  Had our collector put the $15 in the stock market, or even a savings account paying an interest rate above the rate of inflation, the money would likely have grown to a greater sum than the coin’s present price.  (Granted, there are adverse tax consequences to both those alternatives, also.)

Gold coins are a bit different, because the price of bullion is only roughly correlated with the inflation rate.  Collector coins which are bought at a price which is not too far above their bullion value, even up to twice their value as bullion, may benefit substantially from increases in the gold price.  These gains are also, as a practical matter, mainly imaginary, for the same reason the “profits” from inflation are imaginary.  In reality, the dollar is just becoming less valuable.  The dollar’s downward trend may follow a more erratic course when charted against gold, but the same fundamental process is operating.  

All of this assumes no catastrophic changes in the political and economic realm.  Coins proved to be a much better “investment” than Czarist Russian bonds, or in any of the other currencies which have gone to zero, ditto many of the securities which were denominated in those currencies.  But again, coins are better at preserving value than making money.  At best they represent savings, not investments.

[lim]

I also understand that treasures affect the price. When the treasure is sold, the price drops significantly. Then it rises sharply after a few years. I have some coins for example. Their price has increased 3-4 times in 3 years.

[John Conduitt]

1 hour ago, lim said:

On the one hand, I would like to collect an interesting collection. And on the other hand, to make the collection grow in value and be a safety cushion. In case of anything.

If by 'safety cushion' you mean you can get all of your money back if things don't work out financially, yes you can. But you almost certainly won't outstrip inflation.

There is also the problem of liquidity. Ancient coins are not liquid. To get the best price, you need to sell them all individually, which is a lot of effort. You might also need to offer a coin for sale for several years. If you want a quick sale, your price quickly goes down, and you lose money. So if you suddenly needed to sell all your coins, you can easily lose half your money.

Edited January 4 by John Conduitt

[lim]

There are some coins that everyone needs and always fly away like pies. You can even call this type of coin super liquid.

[lim]

But the trouble is that when we create a collection, we can't fill it with just these coins. Then the collection will fail. Usually, any collection contains 10% of super-liquid coins, 40% of walkers, 30% of coins are rare for an amateur, and everything else is primitive of medium quality that no one needs.

[Ryro]

1 hour ago, lim said:

On the one hand, I would like to collect an interesting collection. And on the other hand, to make the collection grow in value and be a safety cushion. In case of anything.

Then you'll want to stop collecting ancient coins and collect modern key date coins. 

[lim]

I've collected colonial exotics before. Islands. And there was also a coin that literally everyone was looking for. The prison token of the Andaman Islands. Well, I never found it and decided to leave this topic.

[lim]

Then I collected ancient books from the 15th and 16th centuries. The topic of how to invest is profitable, but costly. And then he began to deal with antique coins. Besides antique coins, I collect medieval coins. Gold coins of England and France of the 16th and 15th centuries.

Edited January 4 by lim

[wuntbedruv]

I would advise firstly developing your knowledge about coins before buying anything (whether that be through research or reading) and also question whether coins are really for you if you're looking for something from a purely investment perspective. I would not generally advise people that coins are a "good" investment from a financial point of view for the reasons many have outlined above, perhaps the only exception to this would be in buying gold bullion at spot price when the market drops as a hedge. 

[lim]

From antiquity, I was attracted by the theme of Alexander the Great and the biblical theme. I'm collecting these coins now. It's for the soul, so to speak.

Edited January 4 by lim