A good looking catalog going off tonight. Especially curious to lot# 21694 goes for 1928 Hawiian .50 ms65
Whats everyone think of HA compared to ebay? I noticed a buyers fee on the items of like 30 dollars. Is the buyers fee basically the equivalent of the ebay sellers fee? Also, how does shipping work?
It’s like apples and oranges. eBay represents multiple sellers with degrees of honesty that range from total crook to reliable. Heritage is generally honest, but it’s the highest priced seller of all. It’s a great place to sell, but last resort place to buy given the high buyers’ fees, high shipping costs, huge number of “insane bidders” and maximization of state sales taxes. You had better be well armed to combat the crooked sellers on eBay and the snipers who swoop in to outbid you from nowhere. I REFUSE to bid on eBay for that reason. Life is too short to spend it with perpetual disappointment. I know people who have cherry-picked stuff from eBay, but I’ve been sniped enough to never go there again.
Pretty much totally different. HA's buyers fee is 20% plus shipping. If you pay with a credit card or Paypal, whatever your CC charge is (hammer + 20% plus S&H) will get charged a 2.5% premium. HA has a minimum buyer's fee of $29 no matter how little the coin hammers for. Read HA's Ts & Cs. It's available on-line at their website. Now, having said all that, I have done a good bit of business with HA and they are very professional and have decent customer service. They actually have real human beings answering their phones, if you can believe that. But HA is no flea market.
Put my first bid in with them on a Carson city morgan. Will see how it goes. Thanks for all the info everyone.
If you want to spend an interesting few minutes or maybe hours, find a Heritage auction with coins that interest you and sign up for the live auction. You can see and bid in real time. It's about as close as you can get to being in the room. As long as you're registered with HA, signing up for a live auction costs nothing and comes with no obligations.
You can watch the auctions in real-time and learn alot. Heritage is pricey...but so is driving around to lots of dealers, coin shows, collectors, etc...which is how it was done 30-40 years ago.
