Baldwin's St.James - shambolic, unprofessional bunch

I think the dealer is the middle man and drives the price higher and as people have pointed out, they can be bypassed. That's the lesson here. Problem is you might not win the auction because you are bidding against dealers who, contrary to what has been said here...will bid higher to get a coin and will sell it for higher if they must and know the coin will sell...dealers know collectors and know they will often go high for the right coin.

It is a free market and dealers have the right to deal but everyone knows they do put extra layers of cost onto a coin...often many layers as a coin changes hands for an ever higher price.

 

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Ancient coins are luxury goods. The government does not need to make sure you can afford them.

 

If you say that way then many things are luxury goods. You don't need a car you can walk . you don't need a house you can live in shelter . So why government regulate prices or house and cars?

 

Ultimately the market is gonna come to a price on those as well. The house I purchased where I live now cost about 3x what a similar house would cost in the area I grew up. I don't blame the government for that, nor do I expect them to fix it.

 

I would blame government for ineffectiveness if I cant afford a house or car and I am sure many will. That would widen up the gap between poor and rich and could cause lots of social unrest, revolts etc. at the end of the day if governments cant/dont regulate the prices people will pay the price for their ineffective governments.

 

I don't think they do...

 

Nobody KNOWS that. Perhaps there would had been ANOTHER person who would have ALWAYS outbid your bids, because THEY could afford it, and because THEY wanted it MORE than you.

How can you restrict or tell a person that they cannot bid or buy the coin, no matter what they bid, and how many coins they bought?

I NEVER regret a missed purchase.

I ALWAYS am happy with what I purchased.

Because, it was the price I AGREED to. THAT is the market price.

BTW, As long as the transactions / auctions are LEGAL and NOT FRAUDULENT, it has NOTHING to do with Governments, rather it has EVERYTHING to do with Market Dynamics / Economics 101.

 

No. It’s Capitalism.

 

Who would consign their coins to an auction house that regulated bidding to guarantee low selling prices?
Does it really need to be explained that the answer is no one?
Consigners want anyone and everyone to bid.
Or the government regulating ancient coin prices? What if 10,000 collectors all want the same coin? Like an EID MAR denarius, who gets it?

This is a wacky thread.

 

My recollection is that dealer was bidding mostly as an agent on behalf of customers. The dealer might have bought a few coins for stock, but most were commission bids.

 

I mean for this specific coin I do know, because CNG published the bidder paddles and the entire time it was me and paddle 2725. I had the coin when it first opened and it was at basically the last second that 2725 bid, and then I bid against him/her up to $2,000, they submitted $2,250, I bowed out, and they won. It was as black and white as you can imagine. If it was another collector or someone bidding on behalf of one, I am happy for them! But sad for myself haha

Editing to say I’ve never once said I would want to limit how many coins someone buys, I don’t know where that’s coming from. All I’ve said is in an ideal world, coin flippers would be banned from auctions, so that individual hobbyists wouldn’t be out-priced on coins by businesses. If an individual hobbyist wants to buy every coin in an auction, good for them! I hope to achieve that level of wealth some day.

 

It was stated earlier in the thread that someone had placed 132 opening bids in an Auction. You did not state that.

Curious: what if you had bid $2500? Many times I place a max bid, sometimes far exceeding the “estimated price”, if I really want it. If I want something, I bid hard to win, not back and forth bids, as that encourages someone to bid again as a follow up. Human Nature of “tit for tat”.

How would you define a Dealer? As a Collector, I have never sold, nor traded any of my coins. I have a few thousand coins in my collection. If I sold ONE coin for a profit on eBay, am I a Dealer? 10 Coins? 100 Coins? 1000 coins? Is it a percentage of coins that I own?

What is a coin flipper? Many folks, very active on CT, are only Collectors. Yet, they buy a coin, and later sell it for seed money for a better version of that coin. I have personally bought several coins from friends, wanting to upgrade their coin that I bought from them. Is that a flipper? How do we determine that and exclude them from Auctions? Would they care, since they can buy and sell through other avenues for their collections? And, why would we have to exclude them from Auctions? Would we have to exclude them from OTHER avenues of selling and buying, because they are flipping?

I understand many of the major bidders In Auctions are actually individuals, and not businesses.

Personally, I feel ANYONE bidding in Auctions create Market Efficiency. The Hammered Price, plus Loading, becomes the Market Price at that time. It does not matter who bought it, what matters is the price purchased on the market, AND that a Buyer purchased it.

 

Nicely argued Brian.

 

Another reason it's not fraud to "overcharge" for an ancient coin, as long as it's described correctly and no material information about it is omitted from the description, is that information on prices of comparable coins (both historic and current) is more easily available to buyers than ever before -- it's literally at their fingertips. Accordingly, you don't really have the problem of unequal access to the relevant facts that might lead to a finding of unconscionability. This is not like selling some poor old lady a shoddily-made refrigerator on an installment plan, with the information about total costs including interest expressed in legalese and buried in the fine print in 5-point font, if it's disclosed at all.

I've also been wondering, throughout this thread, about where you think dealers are supposed to acquire the coins you buy from them if you bar them from buying at auctions.

 

I vehemently disagree with this assertion.

Ancient coins are NOT essential items. To make a comparison with the price gouging of such essentials is ridiculous.

Pinko punks be damned. Pardon my French.

 

I think Andrew McCabe has shown the endless possibilities and advantages of strict governmental regulation of the coin market

But on a serious note. I do wonder something, as there seems to be a contradiction in some of the more passionate comments in this topic. If one argues from the perspective of 'its just the market doing its thing', then what about one of the more general ideas behind free markets is that it should lead to lower prices for consumers? Has the apparent larger influx of new costumers (as I understand from some of the replies) led to lower coins prices? AncientJoe remarks correctly there are no data to substantiate this.
But in some instances a free market has flaws and a large influx of cash from one or a few sources leads to exclusivity. Isn't this what is going on with the CNG auctions? But is this a bad thing per se? In some cases yes, in some cases no. The coin market is huge, too large to become absolutely exclusive I think. There is enough supply and I think there's the consideration that the coin market is not just one market, but consists of several niches and different markets. Some areas have become exclusive, due to the large influx of capital coming from one source, maybe a few sources. You cannot deny this, but you can think differently about the impact.

 

Edicts on Maximum Prices have historically not worked out well...

 

Pinko? I haven't heard that word since before I was born.

 

Right. Just imagine. People would hoard the coins they have instead of selling them, and the supply would quickly dwindle. Instead of bread riots, we'd have ancient coin riots. And a black market, with shady characters in alleys opening their coats to show hundreds of coins in 2x2 flips pinned to the inside. What a nightmare!