Peter Weiss’ life changed forever
the day he met Alexander the Great. He was poking around a Baltimore coin show
in 1986 on a break from studying for a med school test. He had collected U.S.
coins as a child, but found the examples at this show bland in their similarity
to each other. Then he passed Victor England’s booth. The ancient-coin dealer
showed Weiss a 2,000-year-old Alexander the Great tetradrachm stamped with the
legendary general’s image. About as large as a U.S. half-dollar, the coin was in
beautiful condition. The price tag for this connection to one of the most famous
figures from ancient Greece? A mere $400.
 |  | WEISS BOUGHT this Athens dekadrachm last January for $575,000, a
record at public auction for an ancient Greek coin. (Photographs courtesy Peter Weiss.) |
"I said, ‘It can’t be real,’" Weiss recalls. England explained
that after amassing huge quantities of silver, the conquering general minted
vast numbers of coins to pay his mercenaries. Many of these ancient freelance
payouts survive. Suddenly an exciting world of far-flung adventure and military
glory came alive, and Weiss’ worries about his exam dropped away. "I bought one.
[I was] owning a coin from the greatest general in history," he says.
That purchase touched off a passion. Today Weiss is one of a
few hundred high-end collectors of ancient Greek coins. Unlike collectors of
American coins, who tend to be U.S.-based, these collectors hail from the U.S.,
Europe, Japan, Russia and, increasingly, China. They enjoy gossiping about coins
over dinner after auctions in Zurich, and congregating every January for the New
York International Numismatic Convention.
And there has been a lot to gossip about recently. Six-figure
prices for top-quality ancient Greek coins, once as rare as an undiscovered
horde, are becoming the new norm. Following declines in the 1980s and lackluster
results in the 1990s, values of the coins have soared in recent years. Last
January, Weiss spent $575,000 for a very rare Athens dekadrachm circa 467–465
BC, a world-record sum at a public auction for an ancient Greek coin. In May, a
silver stater from ancient Crete sold at a Zurich auction for 133,975 Swiss
francs, or about $111,000 at current exchange rates—nearly six times its selling
price in a Zurich auction in October 1999.
VALUE
JUDGMENT
After years of lackluster sales, the market for ancient Greek
coins is thriving. The hobby has a storied history as a favored pastime of the
affluent and powerful. Collectors— a relatively small group of international enthusiasts—are drawn by the chance to connect to and learn about ancient culture. But they need to be increasingly careful about their purchases, as governments—now serious about routing out looters—are putting a new focus on
provenance. |
"This is a combination of a 30 percent erosion of the dollar
over the last three years and a huge amount of excess capital in the market,"
says England, director of U.S. operations for Lancaster, Pa.–based Classical
Numismatic Group. "People are not seeing good returns on CDs, or they find the
stock market to be a bit flaky at the moment, and they want to put [disposable
income] into material."
Exchange Greats
By working with a reputable dealer, it is possible to jump in
as an investor and make a 20 percent return on a coin in just a few months in
such a hot market. Long-term collectors, however, are often far more interested
in a coin’s mysterious history than its market value. The top tier of ancient
Greek coin collectors is a clubby group of enthusiasts with a scholarly bent.
For many ancient Greek coins, the exact date of creation, mint and sometimes
even the image depicted are open to educated interpretation. Devoted fans
immerse themselves in the history of the ancient Greek city-states, argue over
minutia about individual mints and marvel at the slightest alteration in the
goddess Athena’s hairstyle over the course of several centuries.
"My way of collecting is to go deep into each area and try to
learn as much as possible; this is really the joy, in my opinion," says the
collector known as BCD. (A Greek national, he prefers to use this alias because
he says the national government frowns on collectors.)
After collecting coins for 40 years, BCD began selling his
collection in a series of high-profile auctions in 2001. The sales have set
collectors salivating—and yielded millions. The January 2006 Classical
Numismatic Group auction of his coins from Boiotia alone earned $5.7 million. In
total, however, BCD says he expects to finish only slightly above breakeven.
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