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Hoard of coins from Norman Conquest is Britain's most valuable treasure find

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Re: Hoard of coins from Norman Conquest is Britain's most valuable treasure find

#41

Post by euroderf »

smolder wrote: post #36
nlh wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Professional coin nerd here) You’d be surprised! It’s all about supply and demand. You can get very common Ancient Greek coins from 300 BC (eg ~2300 years old) for $50 these days. For example: https://coins.ha.com/itm/ancients/greek/ancients-phoenicia-s... Of course you can also get rare ones for $thousands or $millions. All about who cares and how many there are.

Yes, exactly. Relative to roman coins there are much rarer limited run coins or accidents that have a lot of value now. But there are also rare-ish coins that no one cares about, like things minted specifically for collectability, say some hypothetical, commemorative Princess Diana coin that got made and marketed to rip people off who bought into the idea it would gain value.

The Franklin Mint had a huge business in this kind of stuff.

Re: Hoard of coins from Norman Conquest is Britain's most valuable treasure find

#42

Post by kombookcha »

Loughla wrote: post #18
nlh wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Professional coin nerd here) You’d be surprised! It’s all about supply and demand. You can get very common Ancient Greek coins from 300 BC (eg ~2300 years old) for $50 these days. For example: https://coins.ha.com/itm/ancients/greek/ancients-phoenicia-s... Of course you can also get rare ones for $thousands or $millions. All about who cares and how many there are.

If I was looking for one of those coins as a gift for a friend who is very into ancient Greece, where would I go? Bearing in mind that I know nothing about ancient Greece and coins in equal parts.

If you want to be sure it's legit, try the site vcoins - they have a good selection of shops specializing in ancient greek coinage, and they have a good reputation for vetting.

Is there any particular city state / public person your friend is fond of? I'd plug that in their search bar and see what comes up.

Re: Hoard of coins from Norman Conquest is Britain's most valuable treasure find

#43

Post by vijayr02 »

radicalbyte wrote: post #39
kleton wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prices in Ancient Greece in Athens in the 5th century BC 1 loaf of bread 1 obolos The standard rate for a prostitute 3 oboloi 6 oboloi are 1 drahma, about 4 drahmai to the shekel. That coin is 1/16 shekel, so about 1.5 loaves

Either bread was expensive or hookers cheap.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect

> the tendency for wages in jobs that have experienced little or no increase in labor productivity to rise in response to rising wages in other jobs that did experience high productivity growth. In turn, these sectors of the economy become more expensive over time, because their input costs increase while productivity does not. Typically, this affects services more than manufactured goods, and in particular health, education, arts and culture.

Re: Hoard of coins from Norman Conquest is Britain's most valuable treasure find

#44

Post by ekianjo »

nlh wrote: post #5
kadushka wrote: post #2

A thousand year old coin for $1000? That seems rather cheap.

(Professional coin nerd here) You’d be surprised! It’s all about supply and demand. You can get very common Ancient Greek coins from 300 BC (eg ~2300 years old) for $50 these days. For example: https://coins.ha.com/itm/ancients/greek/ancients-phoenicia-s... Of course you can also get rare ones for $thousands or $millions. All about who cares and how many there are.

How do you know if these coins are legit?

Re: Hoard of coins from Norman Conquest is Britain's most valuable treasure find

#45

Post by cladopa »

kadushka wrote: post #2

A thousand year old coin for $1000? That seems rather cheap.

Supply and demand. In Europe or Asia it is very normal to find Gold or Silver coins, because they are Noble or semiNoble materials and do not degrade, or do it very little. For archeologists is not very valuable.

What is really precious for History is finding materials that usually degrade like cloth or wood or iron things from thousands of years ago.

An archeologist that finds a gold coin is like: Meh. if he finds wood from +2000 years, it will change her life. You will see her celebrating like an Athlete winning the olympics.

Re: Hoard of coins from Norman Conquest is Britain's most valuable treasure find

#46

Post by eru »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #24
freeqaz wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's have to be deflation for them to be worth more. The only thing here that would be the equivalent would be the value of the silver. I'm _guessing_ that the silver is worth like 1% of the valuation (from looking at the photos). Doesn't seem like it's 2500 kilos of silver (~$1100 per kg at current prices)!

Have you done any comparative economics? That is where you take what it "cost" in terms of money for goods or services at a given time and compare that to the cost of the same (or equivalent) goods and services in the present time. Some things like property ownership won't work because the rules changed so much between then and now but meals? Etc? might work.

It depends a lot on the basket you are choosing.

Picking the 'BigMac index' might be fun, ie you try to price a Big Mac. (Since the Big Mac doesn't contain any tomatoes, you could probably have made a reasonable Big Mac clone in the Middle Ages.)

It gets ridiculous, if you go by the price of eg the amount of computation a human can do in a year. Or 'ice cubes in the height of summer'.

Re: Hoard of coins from Norman Conquest is Britain's most valuable treasure find

#47

Post by eru »

leeoniya wrote: post #28
ChuckMcM wrote: post #4

One wonders if they are worth face value given inflation. It would be a fun exercise to figure out their value in pounds sterling and then calculate what that number would be in the present. That said, my kids and I buried 50 copper coins in a forest in the sierras, perhaps a thousand years from now the aliens visiting our dead planet will find them. :-(

> perhaps a thousand years from now the aliens visiting our dead planet will find them. :-( aliens will likely find us the same way we find dinosaurs but probably no one will find us. 1000 years from now things will be very different but i suspect humans will still exist. imo we as a species have very little chance of living 1M years, tho.

Change is perhaps accelerating, especially since the invention of agriculture, writing and more recently the Industrial Revolution.

Eg nowadays almost everyone has the 'modern overbite', ie the top front teeth extend in front of the bottom front teeth.

See eg https://nextnature.org/en/magazine/story/2013/did-forks-real...

The article explicitly blames forks, but people in Song China had a modern overbite long before Europeans invented forks. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overbite#Changing_human_dentit... and https://petermorwood.tumblr.com/post/181554755777/deadcatwit...

Re: Hoard of coins from Norman Conquest is Britain's most valuable treasure find

#48

Post by Cthulhu_ »

MaxHoppersGhost wrote: post #16
ChuckMcM wrote: post #4

One wonders if they are worth face value given inflation. It would be a fun exercise to figure out their value in pounds sterling and then calculate what that number would be in the present. That said, my kids and I buried 50 copper coins in a forest in the sierras, perhaps a thousand years from now the aliens visiting our dead planet will find them. :-(

Why would our planet be dead in 1000 years? And why did you decide to have children if you believe that?

That's a bit of a reach. Nihilism / pessimism about the far future doesn't mean people just give up their current life.

Re: Hoard of coins from Norman Conquest is Britain's most valuable treasure find

#49

Post by Cthulhu_ »

euroderf wrote: post #41
smolder wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, exactly. Relative to roman coins there are much rarer limited run coins or accidents that have a lot of value now. But there are also rare-ish coins that no one cares about, like things minted specifically for collectability, say some hypothetical, commemorative Princess Diana coin that got made and marketed to rip people off who bought into the idea it would gain value.

The Franklin Mint had a huge business in this kind of stuff.

I believe every country has a business like that nowadays, or a side-business from the official Mint that makes coins. And it's not even about whether it would appreciate in value tbh, they are a good medium for collecting and encoding important events or celebrating something.

Re: Hoard of coins from Norman Conquest is Britain's most valuable treasure find

#50

Post by Cthulhu_ »

ekianjo wrote: post #44
nlh wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Professional coin nerd here) You’d be surprised! It’s all about supply and demand. You can get very common Ancient Greek coins from 300 BC (eg ~2300 years old) for $50 these days. For example: https://coins.ha.com/itm/ancients/greek/ancients-phoenicia-s... Of course you can also get rare ones for $thousands or $millions. All about who cares and how many there are.

How do you know if these coins are legit?

I presume they would come with a certificate of authenticity from a respectable source. Also, it's not in the interest of an auction house to sell fake coins. I'd be much more skeptical if it was on ebay.
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