Price Trends Over The Last 5 Years

You know to do this carefully you would need a coin that trades like wheat or gold it is so plentiful and stable. Then you would need the same auction house. Like an Alexander the Great Drachm of better yet a Persian Silver Siglos as you have less mint issues that might make the study harder. So here you go, "siglos darios spear Achaemenid VF " CNG site search. (I intentionally left a space after the VF so VF+ would not be obtained. That was the hope anyway. And I chose Darios intentionally as there is another common one if I had picked Xerxes only etc.)

https://www.cNGCoins.com/Search.asp...10000&PAGE=1

It's hard not to notice the high prices many ancient coins are fetching these days
Supply seems quite plentiful enough and there is no shortage of options for the collector from online dealers and online auctions
Now I would expect that to depress the market prices
That certainly was the case when ebay became a huge source of "new" material 20 years ago
I still have a very nice Nero sestertius for which I paid the princely sum of $68 !
But then high quality struck fakes and castings made things difficult for everyone
Now today we even have legions of Facebook comedians teaming up with the ebay charlatans to make it treacherous for even the most careful shoppers
I believe the proliferation of quality fakes has helped create this situation
A few weeks ago while snooping around the feedback of a notoriously overpriced seller I saw a slabbed Nero As that for all the world looked to me like an ancient piece of moldy cheese
The selling price was $600 US !
I see coins at auction that have serious corrosion issues and many that look like they were 'cleaned' with a knife and fork and they are fetching big big money
It seems to me like the seller has become more important than the quality of the item sold
Buyers are wary and think that buying slabbed coins or being able to attach a well known name to a purchase makes the price a secondary consideration
For my part I try to avoid playing this game
If the coin is special I will make exceptions
But I refuse to pay high prices for inferior quality
This takes great patience but the rewards are still obtainable
Last week I spotted a Diocletian Lyons "invasion" follis that a seller had mistakenly attributed to London
I have been searching for decent ones for years ever since one of our former regulars (Ian) used to post them
It's in the "bath" at present
But it set me back all of 38€ with shipping and I can live with that !

As has been pointed out above, it is not just ancient coins, but rather a wide range of asset classes. With the value of cash gradually eroding (accelerating after 2009), bonds returning little to nothing, and recently with stocks being so overpriced, people want to flee sitting on specie, and buy virtually anything that will retain value. At first, we saw it with art / precious metals / high end watches, and now there is a seepage to other hobbies / alternative investments as people look for 'under-priced' or fairly priced assets.

This is a double edged sword - it drives up prices for collectors, and creates an asset bubble. On the other hand, it brings in fresh blood to the hobby who might stick around even after the music stops, and it means that it creates selling opportunities, flushing lots of material onto the market which may not have been otherwise available. Both as a dealer and a collector, its about deciding where you stand. I have been using the increased market velocity to do some profit-taking on the selling side, and re-invest at least a bit into buying quality material for my collection. This being said, it is virtually impossible these days to economically buy in decent stuff for resale.

Either way, in a sense, we are in this as a HOBBY, and so its about the pleasure we derive from collecting. For me, at least, that is a constant, and so impervious to market cycles.