A tremendous amount of material being offered last night and tonight in Teletrade auctions. I was tempted to bid last night, but didn't find any great deals. My attitude is generally that the best coins are going to be fully priced at auction; there is often no way to tell Spectrum's coins from collectors coins, unless the coins are pedigreed--and there is usually a big difference in quality between them. I find Teletrade's auction site more user-friendly than Heritage in terms of checking out individual auction lots by type. On Heritage's Sunday and Tuesday auctions on the internet, I try to enter type, and I get all of those types in all upcoming auctions. Confusing.... One example tonight (not mine). http://www.teletrade.com/coins/lot.asp?auction=3256&lot=2780#n
It's not as hard as you think, you're just not completing the last step. Say you want to search upcoming auctions for a 1942 Walker. You're on the Bid/Buy tab to start. Select Walkers from the drop down box. Type 1942 in the Key Word box, and click on Go. That will open the results page. And yes it will have all of the 1942 Walkers in all of the upcoming auctions. That's what you're saying your problem is. Well, to sort that out all you have to do is click on the - Sort Results by - drop down arrow. Select - Time : Earliest - and you will see what you want to see. Yes it works differently than Teletrade does. But you can still get the same result. It only takes 3 simple steps.
Thanks, I did notice some of the search options but they are obstacles to bidding for some people. What I would like to see are much more interactive bidding options. Let's say you want to have all common date Morgan dollars selected as old holder MS64 below a certain price. That would help. What gets me is how many PQ and high end coins never get the kind of exposure to bidding as they should. If you are the consignor, you have to put in your reserve and run it several times until someone else sees how high-end it is.
Yeah, life would be nice if somebody else would always do all your work for you. It'd make things a lot easier - for you. A lot tougher for them though. That's part of the game Owle, you have to do your own homework and legwork. You have to first identify and sort out all old holders. Then you have to identify and and sort the better coins from that bunch. You also have to sort out the PQ and high end coins all by yourself. Problem is, not everybody can do that because they simply do not have the knowledge to do it. But that is exactly what gives some people the edge. You first put in the time and effort to study and learn these things. Then you put in the time and effort to study and seek out the better coins in upcoming auctions, that others may not so easily recognize as being such. And ya know what ? You should be glad, ecstatic even, that that is the way things are. For if somebody else did all of the work for you, they would also be doing it for everybody else. Then everybody would know the same thing. And all of those PQ and high end coins would end up costing a whole lot more than they do already. And that would kind of defeat the purpose of what you want wouldn't it ? Of course there is an easier way. You could pay somebody to do all of that work for you. You know, kind of like the folks who pay dealers a percentage to act as their agents in auctions. Or the folks who make arrangements with a dealer to seek out and find all of those gem coins for them and their collections. And then buy just from that dealer. But nobody does that stuff for free, not even me. Yeah, when people ask me for my help, my help is free. But I limit it to giving opinions on specific coins and explaining why this coin is nicer than that coin. I could do all of the things that you want Heritage to do for you. But that's work, hard work. And I'm retired
It goes to division of labor and the grading services and computers and auction companies with online images have made life a lot more efficient. Remember when all you got was the catalog and many lots did not have a picture? You had to order on faith or based on the description of the cataloguer. YOu got the coin, you did not like the coin...you sent it back with all the pesky shipping fees involved. Somehow I think we are better off with faster and more efficient systems, but we are still in the dark ages compared to where we could be! You have a computer program that gives you the advantages of the big boys at Heritage, Spectrum and Rarcoa--you could never compete otherwise. From the looks of things, there were some nice coins in the Teletrade/Spectrum auction and I bid accordingly, plus there were the "walking wounded" coins that you needed to see a digital image of to figure out whether it was worth bidding on. Would you pay Bluesheet prices for substandard material if you could make a couple of bucks? I'll bet you would if you have working capital. Another thing they were offering was a "layaway" plan. To me this is bogus and many companies do this. You make a commitment to buy stuff you bid on, you have say 90 days to pay with less or no interest. You are still on the hook and you do not get to see the coins until you pay. I can not see any incentive to do this with the buyer unless it is a great deal. "Rent to own" is worse of course. You can end up paying many times more for the furniture, etc..
I searched these two auctions well in advance and "tracked" about 40 items that can only be described as high-end desirable additions to what I collect. I did this not so much to buy or bid - they were way out of budget - but to see their hammer prices. I thought that might suggest the state of the market currently and suggest trends. I was rather surprised therefore, when the actual "prices realized" posted the following day; NOT ONE was actually sold. No bidder was willing to outbid the owner's reserve. The lots were obviously consigned by several sellers so their lack of selling was doubly surprising. I'll leave it to other CT'ers to suggest the reasons for this. I'm quite curious! Don
Big auction companies have a lot of material to sell and they are not going to sell without reserve, they are not suckers. So the nice material, CAC'd etc., will have a good market at the right time. I think the results were less than impressive, there are a limited number of wealthy bidders and dealers out there willing to pay PQ prices. Some items went a little cheap, $10 Indians hammered around $800 for MS63 pieces which was real cheap, I must have missed those. They are worth that plus the 15% all day long. Plus some $20s sold cheap and you have the consignor fee plus the buyer's premium. But the parent company, Spectrum, can bid on any of the coins they auction, so it gives them a big edge where they pay no premiums.
They had some real nice stuff in the classic commem section but nothing I needed could be had without breaking my budget.
