Category
Ancient Coin Auctions
Ancient coins reach our block through the same door as everything else: estates, long-held collections, and consignors who bought carefully decades ago. Roman imperial gold, republican silver, Greek issues, and certified ancients appear across our weekly sales, and when a genuinely good piece surfaces the bidding reflects it. A Roman gold aureus of Maximianus Hercules, struck between 286 and 305 AD, brought $17,000 in our July sale, and an anonymous Roman gold sixty asses of the period after 211 BC brought $14,500 on the same catalog.
Those are published figures on a closed catalog, not estimates. Every price on this page links back to the sale it came from, which is the point of running a coin auction with the results left visible afterward.
Ancient highlights from recent sales
Prices realized
July 23rd - 26th Portland Professional Coin Auction
| Lot | Description | Price realized |
|---|---|---|
| Lot 332191 | 286-305 AD Maximianus Hercules Roman Gold Aureus, Gem BU | $17,000 |
| Lot 332198g | Roman Anonymous Gold 60 Asses, after c.211 BC, NGC | $14,500 |
What Sells in Our Ancient Coin Auctions
Roman material leads, because it survives in the greatest numbers and has the deepest collector base. Imperial gold aurei and solidi sit at the top, followed by silver denarii and antoniniani, and the bronze that lets a new collector own a genuine two-thousand-year-old coin for the price of a dinner. Republican silver carries its own following, and the anonymous gold issues of the period after the Second Punic War are scarce enough that a single example can lead a session.
Greek coinage appears less often but draws hard bidding when it does: silver tetradrachms and drachms from the city states and the Hellenistic kingdoms, where the artistry of the die engraver drives value as much as the metal. Byzantine gold, provincial bronze, and the occasional Judaean or Persian issue round out what an estate consignment typically brings us.
Authenticity Is the Whole Game
Ancient coins are the one area of numismatics where a beginner can lose real money to a convincing fake, because there is no mint record to check a coin against and the market has been forging Romans for centuries. That is why certification matters more here than anywhere else in the catalog. NGC Ancients encapsulates and grades ancient coins, recording strike and surface separately from the overall grade, and a certified ancient removes the question that keeps most cautious buyers out of the series entirely.
Provenance carries similar weight. A coin with a documented history in an old collection or a named sale is easier to trust and easier to resell, and for material that may be subject to cultural property rules it is often required. We catalog what we can establish and we say plainly when a piece is uncertified. If you are new to the series, the honest advice is to start with certified coins, buy the grade rather than the story, and read how coin grading works before you bid.
Buying and Selling Ancients at Auction
Buyers: study the photographs closely, because centering, strike, and surface matter more on a hammered ancient than on any milled coin. Check what comparable pieces have brought in our auction results, set a ceiling with the buyer's premium already inside it, and register free for any upcoming sale. The how to bid guide covers absentee and live webcast bidding.
Sellers: ancients are frequently the least understood part of an inherited collection, and a general coin shop will often price a tray of Romans as a lot rather than lot by lot. An auction reaches the specialists who care about the emperor, the mint, and the reverse type. Start on the consignment page. If the collection also holds foreign milled coinage see world coin auctions, and if it holds American material see rare coin auctions.