CGB/CGF's ACTIVITIES

• Sell your coins and notes
• Buy coins and notes
• Purchase and sale of gold coins
• Organisation of Mail Bid Sales
• Numismatic publications
• Books and accessories
• Numismatic Bibliophily
• Study and declaration, purchase and sale of treasures
• Expertise and appraisal
• Picture database
• Advice to the media, conferences
• Advice and help for scriptwriters and props people
• Support for numismatic and cultural associations
• CGB/CGF's Numismatic Newsletter

Sell coins or banknotes to CGB/CGF
We make direct purchase of all coins or notes missing from our stock at any given moment.

To find out if we are interested and what price we are willing to pay : make an appointment by post, phone or e-mail and come to show us your coins or notes.
For the sale of notes, either bring these to CGB or contact cgb@cgb.fr or 33 (0)1 42 33 25 99, and you will be directed towards the available specialist.
For the sale of coins, either bring these to CGF or contact cgf@cgb.fr or 33 (0)1 40 26 42 97, and you will be directed towards the available specialist

Buy coins or notes from CGB/CGF
We have a very wide range of both coins and banknotes in our stock, which can be consulted principally in the sales areas of our internet site and in our latest sales catalogues.

For coins :

• Of the world, as well as on the current Mail Bid Sale.
• Of the colonies, as well as on the current Mail Bid Sale.
• Roman coins, as well as on the current Mail Bid Sale and the latest ROME catalogue, but you are also advised to check the archives , (as these very specialised catalogues are valid for a long period of time). Each month, you will find in addition a list of a hundred advantageously-priced Roman coins in the most recent Numismatic Newsletter, register here !
• €uro or euro strike errors , as well as on the current Mail Bid Sale.
• Modern French coins, as well as on the current Mail Bid Sale and the latest MODERN COINS catalogue
• Jetons : consult not only the latest JETONS catalogue but check up also on the old JETONS, as these very specialised catalogues are valid for a long period of time.
• Gallic coins : see the current Mail Bid sale and the Gallic shop, which will soon be available for consultation

For everything else, see the current Mail Bid sale . You are welcome to search our on-line archives using the Google search-engine ( advanced search , specify « search only in cgb.fr » and use a key word corresponding to your field of research.). In this way, you will have a clear idea of what we have had in the past, of the price fetched by the object and so of what we are liable to have for you in the future. To keep informed about sales to come, subscribe to the mailing list and to the Numismatic Newsletter.

For banknotes :

See the on-line shop Banknotes , where there are recto-verso images of usually more than 10 000 notes all available on-line, see the latest BILLETS catalogue to have been published and check that a Bank note Mail Bid Sale isn't taking place at present.

You can always ask us for further information or for availability, by phone or preferably by e-mail, which gives us more time to find what you're looking for. Choose to contact the specialist in the list of e-mails .

Purchase and sale of gold coins
We buy and sell (sealed packets by request) all gold coins listed on the stock-exchange. The deal can be immediate or at a specified price-limit. For further information please see our internet site on gold coins . For a precise, personalised and detailed reply, please bring your coins to show us at CGB or CGF

Organisation of Mail Bid Sales
For a large collection or for individual coins which seem to us particularly interesting, all or part can be included in our next Mail Bid Sales. The Mail Bid Sale allows a minimal difference between the amount paid by the buyer and the amount received by the seller. Because of the cost of producing and sending the catalogues, Bid-sales do not generally apply to coins worth less than 250 euros, but each case is judged individually, with account being taken of groups of coins. For further details, please bring your coins to show us, contact the specialist - and consult the rules and regulations of the last sale on-line on our internet site.

Numismatic publications
We are interested in editing any work on numismatics or susceptible to be of interest to numismatists. We are naturally only able to edit completed documents, that are in Word format, with digital JPEG photos, already formatted and ready to print... We are unable to edit paper manuscripts because the transfer of the text to a computer, the digitalisation of the pictures and the process of formatting the text cost more than a « normal » book is likely to fetch. If the author is prepared to bear these costs himself and if we have the time, then everything is possible. Once the document has been read by our committee, we talk to the author to ascertain what might be produced. For it's a fact that many numismatic subjects will only be of interest to a few hundred people.. It is not therefore possible to print them. We do however help these authors to produce a self-edited book at their own cost and we then make their work available in our bookshop service.

If the work could be of interest to a sufficient number of the public to be printed, we will undertake its publication, once we've charged the exact amount of cost incurred, from the inevitably necessary proof-reading, the also inevitably necessary formatting and the printing itself. Our bookshop service will then present this book to the public, through our website, in our shops, by mail-order through our catalogues and also to the public at large, through the network of the thousand main bookshops in France. Export sales as well as bookshop sales are carried out by the SODIS/SOFEDIS who are also responsible for distributing the works of many well-known editors. Send the CD-ROM of your book, by post to the specialist in this field and to the person in charge of the bookshop , and they will get in touch with you.

Bookshop and accessories
Our Bookshop offers a choice of six hundred recent works, both specialised in numismatics and on general history. You will find there all the available catalogues you need to value and better understand your collection and all the necessary accessories to view, arrange, classify and weigh your coins and notes. Be careful and seek our advice before making a purchase if you think the necessary book might cost more than the value of the coins you've got to classify... the bookshop isn't a lending library.

You will also find in the bookshop several hundred old and out-of-print works but that we often consider to be useful reference books or collector's books.

Numismatic Bibliophily
You will find works of numismatic bibliophily at prices indicated in our specialised bookshop and quite often in our Mail Bid Sales, consult the current Mail Bid Sale.

Study and declaration, purchase and sale of treasures
Hundreds of treasures are found every year in France or in Europe and those who find them don't usually have any idea what they should do, or not do, and of what is legally necessary for the treasure to actually belong to them. Nearly all those who make a discovery are ignorant, for example, of the fact that there are no taxes to pay, as long as the correct legal procedure is followed : the declaration.

We have declared, bought and sold about thirty treasures in the last few years : you can see some of them on-line on our site TRESORS .You will also find there the legal texts, the list of the regional head-offices of Archaeology , and basic advice.

Above all : don't separate anything, not even the pot or whatever sort of container it is in (the rule is to share the proceeds of the sale and never the coins, whose individual value you can't be certain of before they are sold) don't clean anything (you're only likely to do damage), bring the coins for us to see along with the container, the services we offer to help you make a declaration are completely free and without any obligation. But don't get too carried away : most treasures have been buried by ordinary people, peasants or the middle-class. they are not usually of any great financial value, but they are scientifically very important and should therefore be declared regardless of their financial value, the metal they're made of and their era. It is also possible to find treasures in the form of banknotes, one has been published by us, the Find of Roland.

Expertise and appraisal
Firstly , precise definitions of the words :
Expertise : establishment of the authenticity, the period and the classification of the object.

Appraisal : establishment of the financial value of the object.

There is usually a charge for these services but they can be delivered free of charge when they promise the outcome of a sale or when the reply is an immediate and unpleasant one.we won't make you pay to hear that the Roman sestertius bought during your last holiday in Tunisia is simply a crude fake produced for tourists and is of no value whatsoever.

Contact the specialist to make an appointment. It goes without saying that we are unable to give an expert opinion or make an appraisal if we don't have the coin or banknote to hand.

Picture database - Image Bank
We hold at your disposal a specialised database of pictures of coins and banknotes representing all the specimens we have had for sale over the last twelve years or so i.e. about a hundred thousand pictures.

These pictures are on sale at the price of 50 euros each (both obverse and reverse sides) for any single use whatsoever whether for a poster or for the size of a sixteenth of a page.

In practice it is simply a matter of carrying out a search on our site ( google advanced search and your key word only on the cgb.fr website). Choose the picture that best suits your needs amongst those presented. Copy this low-resolution picture and use it to create the internal model of the document.

When you have decided to use this photo, send an e-mail to mailto:prieur@cgb.fr with a copy to mailto:cgb@cgb.fr along with the URL address of the web-page where you found the photo on our site, mentioning the name of the person making the order and the address to which the bill is to be sent.

Normally the same day or the following day at the latest, you will receive the high-resolution version of the chosen picture either as an attached file in an e-mail or on a CD-ROM by post if the quantity of pictures exceeds the capacity of an e-mail.

For large or special orders we are always prepared to consider an appropriately-adapted price.

You can always contact us to seek advice : coins and banknotes are amongst the objects that reveal most about a given time and place , we will be able to help you. You are reminded that the law considers pictures as private property and that their author holds artistic rights over them. For this reason, our policy has always been to accept well-founded requests for non-commercial uses, whose objectives we are in keeping with, but to create all possible legal problems for those who use them unscrupulously. A picture belongs to the person who has taken it and is not linked to the ownership of the object; it doesn't "follow" the transfer of ownership of the object.

Advice to the media, conferences.
Our team includes several specialised speakers used to giving live broadcasts on radio or television and the many lectures given by them on national radio and television stations have proven their pedagogic abilities. These lectures are usually free of charge.

We can also organise conferences and presentations of the coinage of a certain town or region throughout the centuries. There is usually a charge for these presentations and conferences.

Contact Laurent Schmitt at the following address : mailto:schmitt@cgb.fr

Advice and help to scriptwriters and props people
Members of these two professions are often guilty of making a faux pas, because of their lack of general knowledge as concerns the areas of numismatics and history and we are able to provide services of proof-reading, comments and suggestions to scriptwriters, offer suggestions and objects to props people.

It is always unpleasant for the cultivated members of the public to hear about silver sestertii or to see Guy de Maupassant paying for his newspaper (which cost 10 centimes at that time) with a 1 000 franc note ( the equivalent at the time to 10 months of the minimum wage)

We are naturally able to provide or to rent out the accessories necessary for the reconstitution of the numismatic part of a historical scene.

Support for numismatic and cultural associations
CGB/CGF provides material, logistical and iconographic support as well as advice to associations whose aim is to spread numismatic and historical information

At present we are giving support to the following associations in their different activities :

Les Amis du Franc - La Collection Idéale - Les Amis de l'Euro
Ordonnances monétaires - Archives monétaires (APAM)

That's to say, about a hundred thousand pages of numismatic information on-line.

Contact us at the following address prieur@cgb.fr to discuss your plans and what we could do to help them along.

Bulletin Numismatique
In July 2004, we created the Numismatic newsletter a monthly newspaper consisting of about twenty pages, which is free in its on-line pdf version register here to receive it
The Numismatic Newsletter publishes information of seeming relevance to the numismatic community, in-depth articles, recent discoveries, the monthly list of numismatic shows, comments on recently published books, forums of the Amis du Franc and Amis de l'Euro, and offers the sale of coins from the important periods of French numismatics at prices to take advantage of. The articles are written by members of the cgb/cgf team or are received from readers and published after a preliminary reading by the selection panel.