I hope he will be able to host auctions again soon. As to your question I have been participating in his auction for years and I have always sent an email asking him for the next acceptable bid.
I will miss hi auctions terribly. Make me wish I would have grabbed that coin of OOG III from one of his past auctions.
My past experience says that I did better when I sent and honest highest bid the first time and then stuck with it allowing someone else to pay more than the coin was worth to me. This time I bid on several coins and won none so my old experience are suffering from Covid and may not apply but when you bid low and then raise it every time you are outbid, the other bidder ups you by a bit and you up it another bit etc., etc. If you bid your top from the start, the other guy is told that to bid he has to go over that high number and is less likely to place a bid on that lot so you might get it for less than playing the little bit over and over game. This would seem a bad time to get out of the selling game if and only if you have coins for sale. Several people here have seen Frank at coin shows like Baltimore. He is buying coins to sell at auction. Now there are no shows so he will only have new material if people like us send it to him for him to buy and resell. I have several coins I would like to sell but they are not the sort of thing that people like Frank and bigger (CNG, etc.) want to sell. His note reads to me as that his next sale may not have as many great coins like the ones he sold from his personal coins. Will he have a sale offering things like I have to sell or will he skip having a sale at all until the shows open up and he can buy stock? Selling great coins is not hard but buying them at a level that you can resell is not easy. Buying cheap coins that no one will want is easy. Many show dealers offered coins they had taken on consignment so they did not have cash tied up in them. Houses like CNG sell from consignments and coins they own. Will consignments dry up or will enough of us older guys die and have all our coins, including the ones we would never sell, sent to Frank or CNG. Do you want the coin I want to sell or are you waiting for the ones I won't sell. Multiply this by a thousand collectors and I can see how it might be hard to be a professional reseller of old collection material. When you are in business that is getting harder and you are getting older, retirement looks better. I have heard of a couple dealers I liked that are retiring. This hobby is changing. Did those on the East Coast get the word that the June Baltimore show was cancelled? It is not even time for the March show yet but that one was cancelled a couple months ago. Will there be one in November? Will many of you send nice coins to Frank to sell? Will more you move to another hobby? Time will tell.
I will sorely miss Frank's auctions if he stops but I understand if it's tough to get auction items. I did bid on 5 items and just got the Sabina and Galeria Valeria which I'm happy about. I really appreciated Frank telling me when I was outbid (SOB comment was funny).
Frank always emails you when you are bidding on a coin and you were outbid. You don't need to send him a note, he will send you an email stating if your bids are OK or if you were outbid
I bid on two and according to Frank's email yesterday and the link @DonnaML sent, I apparently won the two. But let's not count the chickens before the eggs hatched - Fingers crossed I have not received his invoice yet. Did anyone receive an invoice?
I really like that there isn’t an auction premium and shipping fees so I am willing to pay more than I normally would at Frank’s. He also brings the bid down so those ridiculous numbers were not the hammers. I also see why people send back coins it’s hard to tell what you are getting - but I’ve been pleasantly surprised each time. I bid on a Dozen in January, upped two on Saturday (lost both of those so one of you S.O.B.’s paid the Shogun tax to Frank...), and ended up winning one. I have yet to find comparable coins to some I bought from a Frank - not just on price but rarity.
Why not take advantage and find out if a Frank would sell your coins, clearly we could use supply. When the market changes we will be happy Frank was kept in business (interested is a better word) to provide liquidity when it is tougher to sell than now. Plus those coins you don’t want can find an owner that does want them as I’m sure what you’ve identified to trim is not common. I will tell you that people like me will stop buying when we can go out at night And start traveling again. I won’t cut bait and run as I don’t need to financially but I will likely pare my collection back (To keep life organized) and at the very least stop discovering a random new interest. I may not know how to take a picture or identify a surface issue on a coin but I know how the psychology of a market works. Astra inclinant, sed non obligant.
I was wondering as well. I first bought from Frank this past December and I got the invoice the day after the auction concluded and before sending the coin, which I paid for right away. But this time around I haven’t gotten an invoice as of yet. Maybe he trusts me enough now to send the coin first
I've always received the coin with the invoice. He is so great to deal with.. I hope he can keep the auction going. I wasn't even close this time around - but I had little expectation due to the market right now.
He sent me an invoice before the coin the first time I bought anything at one of his auctions. Beginning with the second time, he has sent me the coins before the invoices! He must be the only coin dealer who still sends coins out before being paid.
Several European auction houses do this as well. An automated email letting you know that that you've been out bid.
I have a genuine curiosity: nobody seems to have a problem with revealing bids. How is that different of what was discussed in this topic: https://www.cointalk.com/threads/cng-revealing-all-proxy-bids.359919/
I do hope that Frank can continue and can make it through the shortage of material on the market which, among other factors, is driving up prices. He has been a pleasure to deal with and sent my coins with an invoice the first time around. I was surprised he was so trustworthy, but he does publish a somewhat funny list of "deadbeats" on his website.
I hope this is not true. I bid on 6 items but was strongly interested in 2 ancients. I bid multiple times on these 2 and was blown out of the water. Although I am not interested in the investment side of collecting it does make me wonder how much my current collection is worth.
Frank is probably suffering from lack of reasonable/good quality coins. You just have to browse Ebay, to see that trash is offered at ridiculous prices! Now is the time to sell!
Maybe worth thinking about. I got a letter in the mail from CNG (Mike Gasvoda) offering to buy my collection. I suppose other folks who are registered with CNG got the same letter. They are willing to send a numismatist out to assess the collection and make an offer.