Ancient help for modern collector...

Rickc300

Link...

What is this? It is being sold as a AR Ceprusia and the seller wants $95 for it. I know the value is what a buyer will pay, but I don't want to buy a $20 coin for a hundred bucks with shipping... Does it look legite? Any and all help is appreciated. I am out of my league when it comes to ancients. I think it is a VF as far as grade and I am assuming it is really an ancient and not a modern copy... I like the looks and being struck off center apeals to me even more. I want to pull the trigger and buy it but I really have no clue as to value and if it is real. Any thoughts? Anything outside of the German states and modern coinage I have no clue...
Thanks for your very valuable help to someone wanting to enter into ancients...
Rick
Link...

Edited to fix the link...

lordmarcovan

<< <i>It is being sold as a AR Ceprusia >>



Gesundheit!

Now, you should take my ID with a big rock of salt, since I am a little green on ancients myself, but that looks like a denarius of the Roman Republic, to me, say around the first century BC. The "P. CREPVS" would be a moneyer's name.

It looks legit. I bought some Roman Republican denarii at the 2003 and/or 2004 FUN show for something around 30 bucks apiece, but I suspect that would be a pretty darn good deal for Republican silver these days, and the pieces I bought then were pretty low grade. The best of them would have been similar to the grade of the piece in your picture. I don't know if I would call yours VF or not. Perhaps, by American standards, but the tighter British standards are often used on ancient coins.

Whether or not $95 is a fair price for it, I can't really tell you. I have some older Sear catalogs at home but I am at work. Besides, you'll likely get a more informed answer from one of the more informed members, anyway. You needn't worry about shelling out a hundred bucks for a $20 coin, because I would pay considerably more than $20 for that coin. However, I dunno whether or not it is a $100 coin. A lot of those Republican pieces are. Maybe a few are worth less than that, but some are worth considerably more than that, too.

lordmarcovan

Bingo!!!

And more, including some auction results

lordmarcovan

After reading some of those auction results and comparing them with pictures of the coins sold, I think my original gut instinct has been validated. That coin is definitely worth more than 20 bucks, but it would need to be a somewhat better example to be worth a hundred.

Still, it's a cool piece.

CIVITAS

Like Rob said, definitely more than $20.00. If someone's selling these at $20.00 each, let me know and I'll buy a truckload.

If I had a coin like that I'd probably be charging in the $60-$75 range for it. Of course it seems every time I want to stock some more ancients, they cost more than the last time I bought the same coins, so I may be out of touch with the current market, but I doubt it.

lordmarcovan

$65 was the number in my head, but I wanted to keep my newbie mouth shut until I heard what a true expert had to say.

Funny how another one just popped up, right here on the forum, in an ID thread! I would try to talk Don out of his. It is far sharper looking.

CIVITAS

<< <i>$65 was the number in my head, but I wanted to keep my newbie mouth shut until I heard what a true expert had to say.
>>



And maybe someday you will, but for now you'll have to settle for my opinion.

lordmarcovan

You're the closest thing we've got, in this neck o' the woods. That's good enough for me!

Rickc300

Thanks everyone for your responses... I like the one Don Has much better, and have decided to wait and find a nicer one like his before purchasing one for myself though I really like the off center strike a lot of the one I was looking at though (could this be the earliest mint error ever)? LOL...

My computer went down and I just got a new fan today and am catching up on the posts. Living in the middle of no where really stinks if you really want something on a weekend.
Rick