Had a good day at the local auction, won four items and am pretty happy with the price. Picked up 1983 DDR PCGS MS63 for a great price. I am actually going to sell it to finance some other coins, just could not pass it up. I also picked up 17 franklin mint sterling silver rounds, I think 0.8 oz a piece that I paid $7 each for!!! Went straight from the auction to the coin store and sold them for their silver and got $12 each, nice quick $85 profit Which brings me to my comments on the auction. This was the first auction I have been too. There were around 75 lots, mostly morgan dollars. These things were selling like crazy, espcially the ones with high grades from American Numismatic investments. I have never heard of this grading firm, can anyone comment on them? It just blew me away, these morgans, graded and not, seemed to be selling for far more then you could pick them up on ebay for, but the raw silver bullion, which is easy to sell, and the 1983 ddr in a PCGS slab sold for under spot price and well under ebay/HA price respectively. I even saw an AU 1942 walker sell for $14 , I almost asked the guy if he wanted another because I would sell him mine for that price Is this other's experience at auctions, some crazy prices on the morgans but some huge bargins as well?
Sounds like you had a great day! Congratz on the finds. the 42 walker ranges from roughly $12 - $28 (AU50 - AU58)..so it may not have been that bad of a price.. -Shrek
Some crazy things will happen at auctions, depends on the crowd that is there, maybe you had a crowd full of people who wanted Morgan dollars, and were willing to pay high prices. Bargains can be had as well, depends on what kind of crowd you have there as well.
It sounds like there must have been a lot of suckers buying these. ANI is another of the Third World/Self Slab genre that consistently overgrades and slabs problem coins. I hope you didn't buy any of them. Chris
People tend to go nuts at an auction. My first (and only) live auction was at DuMochelles gallery in Detroit. I went early, surveyed the pieces, and determined my bidding prices. I didn't win a single piece. I priced the coins fairly, but most of my bids were short by 50-200%!!! If you can find a smaller auction, with people who don't care about coins, I imagine you could do quite well. This auction was well-attended, plus had phone and internet bidders, which I'm sure had a lot to do with the prices they were bringing. If I were selling a large collection, I'd probably consider an auction house such as this, given the prices they were dragging.
Thanks for the comment on tha ani grading service, I did not buy any of them because I knew enough to not trust it. But you know how that goes, a little bit of knowledge can be very dangerous I did the same thing, found all the coins and worked out my max price for each coin, which was about 50% higher then I thought it was worth retail. Then I just say all the coins sell for many multiples of my max price
Great to hear you enjoyed your first go round. Auctions can be strange. I was at an estate auction once that had few coins and no coin collectors. However people were bidding over 50 dollars for common junk Morgan dollars. Nuts.
Everyone has sattelite tv and has passed the shopping net work selling Morgans or ASE,S. The Morgan is one of the few coins that everyone (minus educated coin collectors) in the U.S.A associates with (its worth alot)and are willing to pay for one.:crying:
You make a good point. Guess whenever I saw something on TV saying they would only have an item in stock for the next five mintues call now. And it comes with easy 5 term payment plan, I tuned out.
I always bring my morgans to auctions. Sometiems i buy them at around 15-16 and sometimes people go crazy and buy them for 25-30. Then i target them right away and sell them my morgans for 25. Usually always junkers. I never sell anyhting over VF at an auction
I went to one auction that had coins. I got $500 out of the bank, and was going to bid up to $800 on a set of Indian cents. it did have an 1877, but it was AG to G, and most of the coins were worn or damaged. The set started at $1000 and sold for almost $3000. WAY over the value. Everything went too high for me. All I got was a jar of circ. Jeff. nickels at a little over face.
I go to the local consinment auction occaisionally when they have coiins and have bought a few things reasonable, but most go pretty high. I do recall an estate auction years ago that advertised coins (nothing specified) along with all the household things. I looked all over the place and never saw any coins. Finally I asked someone working the auction and they said the auctioneer had them in his pocket. This was before the auction started. So I asked him and he pulled out a baggie with some buffalos and some indian heads and 2 walkers. Everthing was common except all of the indians were in the 60's and 70's. Anyway when they sold them they said 20 buffalos so much each x 20. then walkers so much each x2. The indina heads so much each x 20 or so. I ended up paying 1.25 each and if I recall selling them ranging from $6 or so up to about $30 each. This was about 20 years ago so the 1.25 was too high for commoms. I also remember paying $130 for a 73 Brown Ike at an auction and that was a good price at that time (ugg). Auctions are fun, but I like an estate auction that also has some coins instead of just a coin auction. Lack
There is a reason you would never catch me dead at an auction. Lots of fake, problem, and just generally ugly coins bringing stupid money... not to mention the fact that they sell it as is with no returns... so even if you get a counterfeit coin your out of luck. I had a customer bring me 24 gold coins that he had bought over the years from a local "well respected" auction house. The coins were still in their original sealed holders from the auction. I concluded that 19 of the 24 coins were counterfeit. The owner thought I was trying to rip him off by claiming that his coins were fake. I offered to send them to NGC and they agreed that 19 of the 24 gold coins bought at the auction house were indeed counterfeit. But he was SOL. I'll stay away thanks.
