I saw a couple of coins on CNG and have not bought from them before. Is it a good place to buy ancients coins? Looking at a couple on their site. There is a 20% buyers fee but if you take that into account.
I’ve never bought from them but please take the 20% fee and add it to your bid so you don’t overpay. Best wishes.
Before using any auction site for the first time you should read their auction terms. In addition to the buyers fee there may be an extra charge for certain payment methods, and what the delivery methods are with the charges. These can vary depending on the venue of the auction as they are an international company.
I've made a few purchases from them. They often have plate / published coins or coins with unique lineages. The 20% buyers premium is fairly common these days. I remember the good-old-days of 8%-10% buyer premiums.
Never bought from CNG - you must be new. The only problem with them is that every collector on the planet is registered.. Bargains are few and far between. Service and the coins themselves are OK - they seem to like them cleaner than I like, try finding one with a natural patina!
Of course I agree it's a good place, but also agree lots of competition. I believe it's the largest ancient coin auctioneer in the world. Bargains can be had, just rare. However, a fantastic place to learn
I haven't bought anything from them since about 1997, but they are a reputable and pretty safe auction house.
I've won 3 coins from CNG. They are a very reputable, very well known auction house for ancient coins. They also auction medieval coins, and modern coins. They seem to be pretty good at weeding out fake ancient coins. They have always been pleasant to work with. I wish they accepted PayPal, but that's okay. They are a US company, and I live in the US, therefore I trust them with my credit card information. The 3 coins I won from CNG, were relatively expensive coins, for me, because I'm a bottom feeder, usually. 1 coin cost $396 including shipping, which was a reasonable price for that coin. 1 coin cost $180 including shipping, which was a low price for that coin. 1 coin cost $171 including shipping, which was a very low price for that coin. Therefore, sometimes their coins hammer for relatively low prices. However, many of their coins seem to hammer for relatively high prices. But, because I'm a bottom feeder, my perception of "low prices" and "high prices" is incomplete, because I usually don't even look at expensive coins, especially in the last couple of years.
I predominantly collect NGC certified coins. I've previously thought that I'd be slick and buy coins through CNG that I'd send in for certification myself...... and 5 out of 6 of them came back in "Tooled" body bags . So if you are overly concerned about that kind of thing, then you may want to keep that in mind. I have a core list of coins that I want for my collection, and I don't buy those examples through CNG. However, they do tend to offer a much wider variety of coins (especially provincials) that simply do not show up in slabbed auctions. When some obscure group of coins pop at CNG (Fulvia, Gaius/Lucius Caesars, Agrippina Minor, Claudia Octavia, Poppaea, Domitia, Zenobia, Laelianus, etc as examples) then I'll buy those rare peripheral coins because they fill a lot of holes in the story that would otherwise be blank for me. (I put them in fake slabs so they still store nicely with the rest of the collection) Tooling aside, I've had no issues with CNG. While a bit ridiculous, their shipping rates are in line with the rest of the industry, and they tend to ship fairly quickly. As for the buyer's fees, the advice given previously is sound. For a 20% buyers fee, determine the "Max" that what you want to pay for the coin, then calculate your maximum "Bid" like this: Max*5 = Bid t 6
