I went to a local shop last night that has a pretty active bid board. For those of you who haven't seen one before, a bid board is typically a wall in a coin shop that has several pegs/hooks where coins (in flips or 2x2 holders affixed to bid cards) can be hung up for display. The shop I went to last night has approximately 500 coins hung on the wall each week (roughly 65 columns of coins, and about 8 rows in each column cover the length of the wall). Bidders can bid on any of the items simply by writing their bid number and their bid on the bid card at anytime during the week long auction. There is a set time each week that the bid board ends and whoever has the highest bid on the coin at that time is the winner. As you can imagine, most of the bidding activity occurs during the last hour or so of the bid board and sometimes down to the last second!! Anyways, last nights bid board was pretty busy, probably 25 bidders were there bidding during the last half hour or so of the auction. I like to look at all of the items on the board each week as there are always different items and some of them are pretty neat. This week there was a good mix of US coins, foreign coins and some currency too. I always try to keep an eye on junk 90% US silver coins that have bids below melt and can sometimes get them for under the melt value if I'm lucky. I also like to look for foreign silver coins that are going for under melt too and have been more lucky with those since not as many collectors know the current melt value of the foreign stuff. There weren't too many spectacular items on the bid board this week and most of the items I thought were neat were just overpriced as the consignors set their reserves (minimum bids) before the recent $10+ drop in silver prices. For example, there were plenty of silver dimes with $3 minimum bids, a few silver halves starting at $15 each and plenty of Morgan and Peace Dollars starting at $30. I would have bid on a couple of them if silver was still $42/oz, but at around $30/oz I wasn't as interested. That said, I still won a few items. I was able to win a couple of silver dimes for $2.25 each. One was a 1915 Barber in G, the other was a 1949 Roosevelt in XF. Also won a 1929 Standing Liberty Quarter that was in rough shape, cleaned and retoned, but with F details, for only $5.50. I got a pretty good deal on an 1895-S Barber Quarter. This one was pretty worn and probably in AG condition, but it's a little bit of a better date. I also needed it for a Dansco album of Barber Quarters I have so I was happy to get it for $7.50. Also won a set of three uncirculated 1981 SBA $1 coins (PDS) for only $3. I figured why not get some MS64-MS66 SBA dollars for face value There was a pretty neat golden toned 1952 Washington-Carver Commemorative Half in AU condition that started bidding at $10 and me and another bidder went back and forth until bidding it up to $13.50 where I was able to win it. Probably the best deal I got was a 1955 10 Pesos Mexican Silver coin (.8356 ASW) in AU condition for only $18 (over $25 in silver value). $18 was the minimum bid and was surprised no one outbid me. I didn't win them all though. I got outbid on a couple of coins that were neat including a 1907-S US-Philippines Peso in XF that started at only $12. I bid it up to $16 and ended up getting outbid. There were also a few BU 40% silver Ike Dollars that I had put bids of $8 on each but ended up losing them all. There was also a 1909 Indian Head Cent in VG condition that looked to be problem free that started at $1 and was only bid up to $1.50. I put a $1.75 bid on it during the last minute of bidding and thought I won it, but someone else bid $2 on it in the last few seconds!!! Oh well, hard to win them all!!!! :thumb:
