Coin Price Frustration

Hello fellow collectors. It has been some time since I have posted here, but I have been thinking on something that many of you have probably thought of. I just wanted to get the general idea or thoughts on the topic of coin prices. Many like myself enter auctions or auction like states which we see as usual bidding behavior, but for years I have always questioned why.

I have always wondered if guide books that are calculated on the average sales of auctions and other sales then why is it sometimes higher than it should be. I have always started my bids low, but then I noticed a growing amount of collectors starting higher. So I guess my biggest question is why do collectors willingly throw big or relatively big numbers at auctions rather than start as low as possible? For you personally, is it a matter of getting the item faster or is it out of respect for the seller?
Personally, I want the best price I can get, but I know that is almost impossible these days with inflation and most collectors just jumping at estimated prices. Please don't use this post as a way of attacking me, but this is just for opinion and information collection.

Please let me know your thoughts or your reasons for how you bid on items.

 

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If you start low, then you have to watch it all the time. For me, that's too much work. As with the post above, I'll research and pick a reasonable price, put in that as my max bid, and forget it. So I'm one of those people who throws out the big number. I bid because I want the coin, not because I'm in it for profit and looking for a "score." I don't understand your comment about "getting it faster" - if it's an auction, there is no faster.

 

I don't use a sniper app (I hate apps). I always bid my max but only when there is 13 seconds left. I usually win about 1/3 of the time. Except for lumber tokens. That's more like "good luck pal."

 

What's a lumber token?
like this?

 

Before I had kids I would spend hours a night looking at auctions on eBay and trying to win things with low bids. Now I have a lot less time and I'm more likely to find a reasonably priced "buy it now" and just pay a little more to get the process over with and move on with my life. I've noticed that on eBay even though auctions will often end lower than buy it nows, a lot of buyers still seem to prefer the buy it now and I think it's for the same reason as me. They don't want to spend days and weeks looking for the perfect auction to get lucky on. They just want the item. EBay also seems to want most of its sellers to use buy it now because they want to compete with regular ecommerce sites like Amazon.

 

Lumber companies paid employees with tokens that they used to buy overpriced stuff in the company store. Steve Hayden just finished auctioning a single collection of 10,000 of them.

Lumber Camps didn't just cut and mill lumber they also produce Naval Stores, such as pitch. In their hey day, when wooden ships constantly used a lot of pitch to seal out water leaks, it wasn't unusual for someone to be born into a Lumber Camp and work there until they died of old age.

 

I am more line @KBBPLL ….. I don’t have time in my life to track and follow a bid. I set my price and forget it. Just last week I set what I presumed to be relatively weak bids on three coins I wasn’t as familiar with as I I wanted to be and I did win one of them. I would be the guy that got in a heated bidding war if I followed these things.

 

I am a buy it in person sight seen fellow, EXCEPT: If Ms. Sperber/Mr. Feld/JA/Deplorable Dan informs me it is OK @ price asked, then I'm in. I will add one other person from the Past that I would place in the category of the persons I already named, and that is Saint Guru.

I am certain I have met other such talented persons of equal integrity and self- respect and honesty, but I did not have any actual buy-sell interaction with them.

I am not a internet coin buyer. I simply never understood the internet auction game or the sniping stuff. In particular, I consider the internet bid sniping methodology a useless and talent-wasting and lazy process, that does not do any buyer justice.

My opinion of course, and my opinion usually makes the villagers turn out at midnight with pitch forks and torches.

So be it. I can live (or maybe not) with that. "....so let it be written; let it be done...".

 

I always thought you were Cecil B Demille.

 

I can only speak for myself, and this only pertains to auctions on Great Collections, but I have changed some of my bidding in the last few years.
I think the number of dealers/flippers etc. that are participating has increased in recent years. For that reason I prefer to get the coin I am bidding on at a competitive price level as fast as possible. Otherwise, the last day of the auction you will sometimes see the number of trackers double. I figure the less eyes on the prize the better. James

 

My strategy is to map out the lots I want and then watch them. For most lots, most of the action is at the very end unless someone has made a "nuclear bid" public. I might throw in a $1 bid to get started, or I might leave it the "watching" area.

Of late I have been using the Heritage proxy bid system where you place a secret bid that is executed at the time of the sale. I got burned on that recently when my proxy bid matched someone else's. We were tied. He got the lot because he placed his bid first.

At any rate, I don't significant execute live bids way ahead of time. There is always the hope than an interested party might get distracted a forget to bid later. There no use in telling them well in advance that they are losing.

 

If it's a coin that I think I must have I'll bid a generous max right away. If it's a lesser coin that I think would be nice to have then I'll bid a less generous max; not a low ball number but fair. I usually leave them and hope I win when the dust settles. However, once in a while for that special coin, I'll log in a few minutes before the lot closes and actively up my bid if my max was exceeded. I don't use a snipe app so if I lose I lose. There's an eBay seller, whom I won't name here, that pissed me off so I won't bid in any of there auctions anymore. I've had several coins I bid on where I was the high bidder, only to lose to an in house bidder that won with the number I had placed as my high bid. IMO, the in house bidder should have had to place a bid higher than my max since I had already bid that number before him/her.

 

Simple answer... Want VS Need.
Someone wants an item more than you do, bids more
I have been trying to get ONE MORE American Silver Eagle for a coin club meeting raffle.
I have bid on no less than 100 coins and so far still don't have that one more that I want/need.
My range is wide and I'll have to dig a little deeper to get it done...Some I have been outbid on by a few cents, Others have been double my bid price.

 

That sounds super sketchy like the seller is ending the auction because their number wasn't realized.
Sounds like an eBay infraction if you care to pursue it and eBay cares.

 

If you are a busy person and feel you won’t get back to the auction you put in a higher than normal bid in the hopes of winning.
Anything that says “guide” is just that, a guide. But prices are different in different parts of the country. I see this in the antique business all the time. It’s the same with coins.

 

I seek-out and prefer live auctions with $1 / 1 euro starting bids. 95% of the time I get the coins I want at or below the prices I want to pay. I prefer this method over timed auctions or auctions where coins start off at higher prices.

 

I have not looked into the proxy bid on HA but I will read up on it. I'm not sure if it really matters. If someone set a higher regular max bid early, you still get beat, you just don't know it until the last second. I've been outbid at the very end but I wouldn't have bid more anyway, so "set it and forget it" prevents me from succumbing to the urge to win at any cost. I've never felt the urge to try proxy bidding or all this sniping stuff because I frequently win auctions with my one max bid anyway. People just in it for profit aren't willing to pay market value.