There is an IRS auction Wednesday 10-01-2014 in Oakland California. Has anyone ever been. What's was your experience. How should I prepare. Www.treasury.gov/auctions/irs/oaca_coin_7520.htm
Just be sure you don't overbid. Seems that auctions of those type tend to attract less sophisticated buyers who may not be aware of the current value of numismatic coins. In my opinion, the best strategy would be to assess each lot you'd like to place a bid on, get a good estimate of the market value, then decide how closely to market value you'd like to bid, then stick to that bid and don't let the heat-of-the-moment get to you during the auction.
20% is due immediately. Balance within one hour. I just wonder if it's worth taken the day off of work to go
I guess you won't know unless you go. Since they're starting the bids at 95% of spot, you're not likely to get any huge steals. Your best bet would be to find something that has some higher numismatic value that's being sold at or near spot. Problem there is that the auction info page doesn't give you any hint at exactly what's going to be in the auction, just general list of the coins and some photos that aren't even good enough to tell if they're fakes or not. Hopefully they'll let you examine the coins closer up before you have to bid, and bring along a price guide to keep your bids in line.
Yea after reading the article with the auction it sounds kind of confusing. So they're going to sell the coins in lots first, then try and auction them 1 by 1, and whoever pays the most(either way) wins.... so they're auctioning everything off twice? "Inventory Note: The items will be offered first in the aggregate and then as individual lots and will be declared sold by the method that receives the highest bid amount." If there's seriously "thousands of gold and silver coins" that's going to be a LOOOOOOOOONNNNNGGG auction if they go one by one. If you get there and they have a list of each coin, one by one, I'd obviously look for keys, but I'd also look for commons in high grade. If you can get them at opening bid(95% spot plus 20%BP) you can get a nice high grade looks like double eagles for 15% over melt. I'd personally go just to see what exactly is for sale. Sure it might all be junk silver with no numismatic value, but you never know. Maybe some of those pre 65 silver halves are Bust or Seated coins... if those are nice and you can get a good price near spot... it'd be a no brainier. Obviously the listing doesn't help the cause, but if you don't go you'll never know... Peter has some great advise above!
The key to participating in any auction is to control yourself. Otherwise you will be played for a fool.
