Ridiculous eBay listing of the day

[Heliodromus]

https://www.ebay.com/itm/330-340-AD-Constantine-I-Billon-Nummus-Romulus-Remus-She-Wolf-NGC-Ancients-Coin/363302408488

$1 coins in $20 slabs asking $44.95 each, free shipping. More than 10 available.

Roughly speaking they'll need to sell at least half of them just to break even on the slabbing cost (1 sale pays for 2 slabs).

Seems like NGC is the only one going to make any money from this.

[Victor]

I really dislike the practice of slabbing these low grade ancients...that coin is a borderline cull and not even worth the price of the slab.

[Severus]

What's sad is that this is actually one of the better ads of this type... the price is "only" $45, not hundreds of $$, the description of the ad is technically accurate and truthful -- even disclosing that the photos are stock -- and he's got 12,000 positive feedbacks with almost no negatives, so his customers are presumably satisfied with his products and service. I mean, at an average $45/coin, that represents over $500,000 of merchandise. Sad as it is, there is evidently a market for "I want to own an ancient coin but I don't know anything about them and don't want to learn, I just think owning an ancient coin is cool!!" and sellers like this are just responding to it.

I also question why NGC continues to slab coins like this. When NGC "relaunched" their ancients service it seemed like their goal was to create a "serious" service, what with hiring David Vagi and such, but it seems like most of the slabbed coins out there are coins like this and it really waters down what I think they want their brand to be.

[Victor]

if this coin really was an argenteus, the price would be great, but...

[Victor]

only $350

that's the best and worst thing about eBay...anybody can sell on it.

[Victor]

only $350

that's the best and worst thing about eBay...anybody can sell on it.

 he lowered it to $200

[Victor]

a cheap reproduction for $1000; but he does say-- "DON'T KNOW FOR SURE,COULD BE FAKE,I'M NOT EXPERT." 

[Victor]

$625 seems overly optimistic; but it does come with a spiffy COA!

[Gavin]

Surprised to see that absurd pricing from Lucernae. They strike me as legit sellers, not “high-rating, low price” poachers.

[Victor]

He's all over the place with his pricing. Sometimes he seems to think something is rarer than it actually is, like the coin below; which he describes as a rarer type with Hercules holding club over shoulder, when it is clearly Hercules leaning on club. He is only asking $250, which is a bargain compared to the Constantine II BEATA above.

[Heliodromus]

He's a good person, but I don't understand this pricing model.

I used to buy tons of stuff from Lucernae in the good old days of 10-15 years ago, and back then he used low minimum auctions. Maybe eBay was more active back then and these type of auctions were less of a liability for the seller than they are today.

Even now, his pricing is a mix of what seem like crazy prices such as this BEATA, and more reasonable ones such as this Licinius VO-TIS I bought from him a month or so ago for $114. It's got a beautiful dark glossy green patina.

Presumably when the occasional coin does sell at "crazy" prices it makes up for all the lost opportunity of the ones that don't sell, even though I find this hard to believe. Maybe his supply is more limited nowadays so this pricing strategy works better than a volume one?

A number of his recent listings have interesing before/after cleaning photos included - very skilled cleaning.

[Victor]

this seller has a "barb" (though they don't know what it is) listed, and yes it is a nice example; but probably not worth GBP 450.00

the auction description--

"Bronze Antoninianus coins of the emperor Victorinus (268-270AD) are not generally rare however the coin for sale is not normal, find another one like it. According to RIC there are rare examples from an engraver who made the portrait image of Victorinus more artistic. No examples of such an image are given.
Victorinus coins of his normal portrait are shown for comparison. The portrait on the Victorinus coin for sale and photographed on cm/mm graph paper is totally different to the normal portrait and is therefore unlikely to be a forgery copy. It shows a more artistic image and is therefore considered likely to be one of those minted as such using dies from the engraver referred by RIC. It is believed to be very rare."

[Heliodromus]

Is a price crazy if a customer is willing to pay it ?!

These NGC-slabbed Epfig hoard coins continue to get bid up to stratospheric prices. Here's a selection from April 15th.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Victor]

Yes, the hoard provenance combined with a pretty NGC slab is the perfect combination to inflate prices. I think a lot of the higher prices is from newer collectors or the casual collector that has a little of everything from ancient to modern. I am always a little surprised by how little some of the collectors on some boards seem to know about their coins before they buy them.

As I was responding I got this email about an Epfig example from Heritage that I was seriously outbid on-- $504

[Heliodromus]

I guess too much money, and not enough sense. Why would someone not do a little price research before bidding ?

It's crossed my mind whether it might be money-laundering, but then "cheap" LRBs would seem an inefficient vehicle!