23 million coin collection is the record-breaking sale of Vatera 2025

Collectors’ items and antiques continue to be the most popular items at Vaterán, and the turnover of numismatic items is also outstanding. Last year, a collection worth 23 million forints was the most expensive item sold in the category: the collection included all Hungarian forint coins issued between 1946 and 2023, from small, uncirculated denominations to large commemorative coins.

The second most expensive item sold was a 50-forint interest-bearing voucher from the 1848-49 War of Independence, a true rarity in monetary history, for which its new owner paid over 5 million forints. The most expensive transactions also included a collection of gold commemorative coins worth nearly 3.5 million forints, immortalizing members of the Árpád dynasty, an unopened 25,000-krona banknote from the era of hyperinflation, which sold for more than 2 million forints, and the same amount was paid to a buyer for one of the very first gold forints, introduced by Charles Robert in the 14th century.

You can now easily buy high-value coins online

Last year, nearly 150,000 items of Hungarian and foreign paper and metal money found their way to Vatera, supplemented by tens of thousands of other coins, ancient currency, copies, mintages and gold coins. Eight out of ten numismatic items were sold at auction, and the remaining portion was sold at a fixed price.

– says Péter Molnár, also at Vateraactively present Founder of the Procopius Numismatics Coin Shop, co-author of the Hungarian Coin Catalog.

In the case of Procopius Numismatics, the shop is a center for personal expert advice and acquisitions, which in many cases is visited in person by sellers who want to have their coins and banknotes inspected. The online space, such as Vatera’s platform, allows reaching potential new customers living in any part of the country, as it is no longer uncommon for collector’s items to reach the buyer via a well-known, reliable courier service that also ensures package tracking.

At Procopius Numizmatika, well-identifiable, well-known Hungarian coins and banknotes are the most popular, but according to Péter Molnár, quality and rarity are increasingly emphasized in the entire domestic numismatic market. This is also supported by Vatera’s trends, as in 2025, foreign coins found the most buyers on Vatera, with nearly 74 thousand transactions, which is twice the number of transactions for Hungarian coins, and items sold for over one million forints included Romanian gold twenty-lei and Swiss twenty-franc gold coins.

A total of three times as many items were sold for Hungarian and foreign coins than for domestic and foreign-issued paper banknotes. Among Hungarian coins, coins from after 1990 were the most popular on the platform, but crowns from the era of Franz Joseph, minted between 1892 and 1921, are also popular. Of the paper money, the best-selling items were those printed between 1957 and 1996, although many pieces from the 1997-2013 period were also sold.

Vatera registered several hundred successful transactions of gold coins last year, but this category is also special, as the average transaction value was nearly 250 thousand forints, compared to the average of tens of thousands for “traditional” (non-precious metal) coins and banknotes.

These online tools can help amateur numismatic collectors

Collecting old banknotes and coins is also gaining popularity among millennials and Generation Z users, as is well illustrated by the fact that a few months ago in Budapest,