Would you pay $150 plus shipping for these?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...em=120181514675

1764-CM pyatak is not particularly scarce, is it?

Yup, its scarce. But its cleaned, polished, a big scratch. As a bonus, it does come with some other free coins!
I was looking at that, but i agree, would have been a fun "bargain" coin, but not worth 150.

Reasonably scarce. See my article published in the JRNS (Winter 2005/06):

http://www.russiannumismaticsociety.org/Fr...ossible-III.pdf

Steve

Maybe this is just a hot market at work?

I thought Russian coin prices had reached silly high levels in 2001 and believed (at that time) that they would surely decline from such "impossible" amounts.

Now those same "crazy" 2001 prices look remarkably cheap, so I've become more cautious than I once was when expressing my opinions on prices.

That said, while these coins are decent examples of their type, none of them seem to be in especially choice condition, so my guess is that the buyer is a date/mintmark/variety collector rather than a type collector.

Thanks for the link to this excellent article, Steve ... I found it in one of the back issues of the JRNS which I recently ordered. Maybe making this PDF file publicly available through this forum will serve as an incentive for new subscribers/members of RNS? I hope so, anyway! It's certainly well worth the few dollars' yearly fee.

I well remember the August 2000 Renaissance sale at Philadelphia where I bought
a fair number of pieces but afterwards thought that I had gotten too carried away with
the bidding. With the continuing rise in prices my views have, to say the least, changed.

RWJ

What about proof Nicholas II (or other) roubles Bob? In the 2000 Hesselgesser sale, I thought $3000+ was outrageous for the proofs. Now it seems, the sky's the limit for any nice proof Russian banco silver. Slabbed 66 or (G-d forbid 67) proof roubles can go for $20,000! Oh well, a PF65 Gothic Crown (rainbow toning) went for $36,000 on a $6,000 estimate, and a relatively common Y322 China YSK "High Hat" republic dollar went for $9,000 on a $750 estimate! And what about the Moneti I Medalii auctions? I can't believe those prices (oh, that's right - they're in roubles).

Hi Marv,

Most of these prices are being pushed sky-high by wealthy Russians who are buying up everything and bringing it back to Russia, especially high-end stuff such as proofs. Since it is illegal to export anything older than 1945 or so from Russia, but still legal to import them, there is a West-->East drain on the market. Many desirable coins are drying up on the market over here, making them even more expensive.

Still, auction houses seem to keep their estimates low in order to attract more bidders. Also, they seem to show some lack of awareness of the current market and often use older auction PRs and outdated references such as KM as guidelines. As a result, the estimates are usually ridiculously low. Where they are aware of the trend, it sometimes leads to funny mistakes. The recent Hess-Divo sale in Zuerich is a good example. They auctioned off a spectacular Russian Imperial collection by a Japanese school teacher who had been collecting since the early 1980's. The estimates for most of the post-1800 roubles were fixed at CHF 500 (which is about $500 if you include the 15% buyers' fee) regardless of rarity (grade was almost always from good XF to UNC). Proof coins were more, but I don't remember exactly since I don't collect them. Most of the commemorative coins' estimates were set at $1,000 or a little more (Gangut rouble in UNC for $1500 ) But -- this is really funny -- they had the estimate for a 1913 Romanov rouble in XF-AU set at $1,000! In the auction, they all started to laugh when that lot came around. They started at a revised estimate of CHF 200 and went down from there. It eventually sold for CHF 80, if i remember correctly.

That was a very exciting auction -- actually the first I ever attended in person (I live in Zurich). I wanted to bid on a lot of eight 50 kopek pieces including some rare dates, but the opening bid was already too high for me since there were also several write-in bids for that lot. So I just sat back and watched the action.

As to Russian prices, they are always much higher than here in the West because there is not much good material available. Over the years between 1917 and the present, or at least up until prices for Russian coins started to rise, anyone who could get out of Russia with items of value -- including rare coins -- did so.