(Source: The COIN COLLECTOR
BY W. CAREW HAZLITT)
The estimation of ancient coins of different countries
and periods depends on such a variety of considerations
and circumstances that it is almost impossible and
useless to attempt to form, for the instruction of the
younger school of collectors, a scale or standard for
judging either the merits or commercial worth of any
class of currency. The interest with which this pursuit
inspires those engaged in it is singularly diversified.
Some are governed by topographical, some by chronological,
and others by internal lines and limits; and
the prevailing motive has, of course, a tendency to
render others of secondary weight and influence. One
man collects the coins of a particular country or epoch,
and does not study their preservation ; another looks
exclusively to the state of his acquisitions, and disregards
the places of origin, treating each item on its
own individual merits as a curiosity or work of art.
The choice of metals is a further contribution to the
wide diversity of taste and fashion in these matters;
there are collectors of gold only, of silver only, and of
copper only. Then there are such as will buy a small
coin and will not entertain the notion of a larger one,
30 and vice versa. It must be evident that the coexistence
of so many numismatic faiths or tenets unavoidably
operates on the market, and sways it in different directions
from time to time. A call for a given series,
type, country, on the part of a small knot of amateurs
suffices to inflate for the moment the quotations. These
vicissitudes and fluctuations are incessant ; and to them
have to be added the surprises and perils which equally
beset the buyer and seller in the shape of periodical
finds of rare coins, with the result that the balance is
at once disturbed, and prior investments depreciated
for a longer or shorter period, according to the circumstances.
The serious and sometimes puzzling fluctuations
in the prices of coins are susceptible of the general
explanation that the market is governed for the time
being by a very small body of collectors, often buyers
on the same lines. We see that it is now the Greek
series, now the Roman, now the English, which is in
the ascendant. An influential amateur is in the field
for one or the other, and he gains followers ; and the
set makes a new tariff”, which lasts till they are tired of
their amusement, or have no further desiderata. In
many of these cases prices current are adapted to the
circumstances ; there is an artificial inflation ; the climax
is reached at last, and the bubble bursts. The loss is
to the last holders at high quotations. The foregoing
criticism applies only to hobby-riders, not to the man
who has a genuine feeling for the pursuit, and acquires
coins, not because they are dear or cheap, but because
he likes them. The Carfrae and Ashburnham sales
have recently reawakened the interest in Greek coins,
and the Richardson cabinet of English ones went a
little tamely ; this was partly because several collectors
of such things are dead or have withdrawn, and partly
because the sale was merely a portion of the property,
and that of a living person. The vast and varied
numismatic treasures of the continent of Europe are
still, in the main, a terra incognita to English and
American collectors. Some say they may have their
turn, and they will be found almost incapable of
exhaustion.
The formation of priced lists of coins in Numismatic
Manuals is, on the grounds above stated, shown therefore
to be at best of very slight utility, and more
often a source of error and trouble. It may gratify a
possessor to read in a book or in a newspaper that some
specimen which he acquired for a very moderate sum
has realised a much larger one ; but the price is a
feature which is well known to rely on—(1) the condition
; (2) the type ; (3) the prior owner. Which of
these factors is the most influential, it might be presumptuous
to attempt to decide. Even condition is a
relative term. The auctioneer tells you that a piece
is ” fine for the coin” and this is apt to be most true
when a coin has been struck on impure material by an
unskilful moneyer, or when, as in so many of the colonial
coins of all countries, siege-pieces, or currency of
troubled and insecure reigns, the flan is too small for
the die. At any rate, condition has of late commanded
more general respect in England, France, and the United States ;
and when one reflects that a private cabinet can be little more
than a selection of specimens, it would appear to be very
possible to reject examples which are undesirable on this
account, if the object is simply to bring together a
representative assemblage of productions agreeable to the
eye and the taste.
Taking the type as a leading inducement, there are
all the gradations from an absolutely different die
to infinitesimal minut’uv of detail in one or another
respect, constituting a variety. The prior ownership
or provenance is a third agency, which impairs the trustworthiness
of prices, and necessitates caution in forming
estimates from coins surrounded by a sort of atmospheric
nimbus of the value of normal specimens. It is, to some
extent, with coins as it is with books.
The safest branch of early numismatics of every part
of the world to cultivate in a practical sense as a collector
is probably the copper and billon money ; for,
as the preservation becomes more generally a question
in the choice of coins, it will be more and more
apparent that productions in these two metals are
the most difficult to procure in fine state, and if
they occur in trouvailles, are almost always irremediably
damaged by corrosion. On the contrary,
through the extension of railway enterprise and other
causes, early money in the more precious metals
may be expected to arise as the fruit of excavations,
as it has already done in Affghanistan, Asia
Minor, Greece, Turkey, Italy, France, England, and
other parts of Europe and Asia, revolutionising prices
as well as knowledge. The British Museum Annual
Reports of acquisitions during the twelvemonth will
give a good idea of the temerity of presuming either
finality of information or uniqueness of examples.
Altogether, in the absence of a special line of study,
where the outlay by right should not be excessive, the
soundest counsel to tender to a new enterer on the
numismatic field seems to be to obey two cardinal principles
: (1) to buy the best quality; (2) to refrain from
over-buying. The real art in these cases (it is equally
so in other departments) is to hold one’s hand ; it is
always easy enough to acquire to satiety ; and it is not
a whit more difficult to realise at a heavy sacrifice.
The completion of a scheme of this kind usually extends
over years ; it is wise not to be in a hurry ; profit by
accidental opportunities and intervals of depression;
and rejoice if, in the long-run, the harvest is not too
ample. If the hammer can scatter in not more than
three days the work of a lifetime, it is well ; and if the
standard is high and uniform, and the owner has shed
an odour on his property, there is no reason for fear.
It is the man who buys too much and not too well for
whom his friends ought to offer up their prayers. It is
highly necessary that the English or English-speaking
collector of foreign coins should protect himself against
two classes of danger : the want of conversance of
English dealers, on the one hand, with the market value
of a large proportion of the items belonging to the
series, from the infrequeney of their occurrence among
us ; and, on the other, the not unknown habit of the
Continental houses of marking their property for an
English or American meridian. But personal experience
and judgment are the best safeguards in respect
alike to this branch of the pursuit and to others, as the
Greek, Roman, and British, where examples, especially
those of higher value, rest on their individual merits,
and dearness or the reverse are merely relative terms.
Another very essential point to be held in view is, that
it is a real disadvantage to a private cabinet to be
too complete, as in sales abundance cloys ; and it is
always better to wait opportunities of securing desiderata
at reasonable prices than to jump at the first
offer.
The permanent and exclusive loyalty, not to a class
or country, which may be very well, but to a more or
less obscure series, is very apt to prove dangerous, inasmuch
as there is the inherent accumulation of a body
of virtual duplicates even where scarcely two articles
are absolutely the same.
In the foregoing remarks there has been a prima
facie presumption that the dedication of an appreciable
amount of property to this purpose has not taken place
without some ulterior regard to reimbursement, since,
even where one does not engage in a pursuit with an
eye to profit, one may very possibly and very reasonably
do so with the expectation that a fair proportion, if
not the whole, of the outlay will return. This can
only be the experience when judgment and taste are
combined.
With coins it is as with books and every other species
of similar property. The quotation of auction prices
can by no means be affirmed to be without its degree of
utility ; but it is a class of information which, in the
hands of a tyro (they are not invariably young), is
exceedingly apt to be fallacious and misleading. A
dealer asks over £\Q for a tetradrachm of Perseus of
Macedon ; you judge it to be dear; he shews you
another, which will cost you a guinea. It is the same
coin—with a difference. In the same manner M. Fontaine,
the great Paris bookseller, lays down side by side
two copies of an edition of a certain old book ; one is
to be bought for 100 francs, the other for 5000. Then,
at a sale, the biddings are regulated not merely by the
items themselves, but by the atmosphere; not by the
state of business in the city, but by the presence in the
market of two, or say three, buyers whose cabinets lack
certain rarities, or perhaps by a competition between a
private individual and the British Museum ; or it may
happen (who knows ?) that the commissions for the
lushest figures have crossed over from the Continent
;
that MM. Rollin and Feuardent of Paris, M. Serrure,
or some other continental firm, have instructions to
secure this or that against all cornel’s. That is the sort
of agency which is behind prices and the fluctuations in
prices ; and for the bulk of a collection under the
hammer there is no question that the character of the
owner is a most potential influence. It is almost less
what you have to sell than who you are that are selling
and it is immense odds in your favour if you are a dead
hero. Fortune smiles upon the posthumous. The
36 auctioneer and the company, if they are not unanimous
on any other point, agree in loving a departed celebrity ;
for if there were one or two tiresome traits in his generally
faultless character, these are things of the past;
he can play no more tricks.
Although the question of prices may be a moot one,
and the uncertainty attending the product of any given
coin under the hammer is, from an infinite variety of
causes, as great as it is inexplicable, it has been thought
best, on the whole, to attempt to meet the case to a
certain extent, and in a section which we call Tlie Coin
Market, we have essayed to reduce to an intelligible
form some statistics bearing on this topic, with a few
particulars, which may be of interest and use, of a
cognate character.
