Beat out again.

Spending that stimulus money!

 

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There are estate sales and then there are estate sales. Right now I see an ad for an auction of 350+ (as advertised) coins that I suppose came from estates, or consignment lots, but the word estate isn't used. To me, an estate sale means going to a sale that might have coins, but mostly a lot of other stuff. Also, my local coin club has an auction I usually bid in. So I included that when talking about local auctions.

Actually, I feel fortunate in that I can go to my local coin club, shop, or show, with the club meeting only 25 miles away as the longest distance I have to go to feed my habit.

 

Yup, that's the rub. You can pay a slight premium and get the coin today or soon....or save a few bucks and get it months or years down the line.

You have to make that choice.

Great Collections is a place you might want to check out if you aren't looking for hard-to-find coins and obscure years, mintmarks, types, etc. 12.5% commission and no sales tax ex-CA.

You mentioned you were looking for a common or pretty common Saint...no need to look on HA for a plentiful coin like that. You might get lucky, but with the 20% tack-on, I doubt it.

 

If you don't need a hard-to-find coin, GC is a great alternative.

Bought a few coins from them, more currency from HA.

 

Actually used right they can be helpful. At the auction house I have the most interest in, they post estimates, and I find that most of the time the hammer price ends up being right around twice the estimate. (The low estimate is a way the auction houses can say that they are so good that most everything sells over the estimate. It's a marketing trick, but I can use it to my advantage as well.)

No it is added BEFORE the sale. Difference between a store sale and an auction sale is the store owns the merchandise and gets the money from the sale and the markup is their profit. The auction house doesn't own the merchandise and the sale price (or most of it) is handed over to the consignor. The store gets their profit out of a markup before the sale, the auction house gets their profit from the buyers fee after the sale. They can't take on their percentage before the sale because they don't know what the sale price is going to be. The auction house has to get their money to operate from somewhere.

 

I like HA and GC. For both houses, I use the HA's "Heritage Value Index" as my guide. I ignore the "PCGS Price Guide Value", as I find that to just be way too high, and I also don't look (too frequently) at the CDN, as that, to me, is a wholesale guide, and I'm not a wholesale buyer, so I don't expect to buy at wholesale (but sometimes you get lucky).

Thing with the Heritage Value is that it is an average of past sales of a coin in that grade, so I have an idea of what to expect. However, that doesn't apply when it's a coin in a grade that doesn't come up frequently, or if there is something 'special' about the coin that can drive the price up such as toning, labels, which TPG it's from, etc., which you have to assess yourself. Also, the HVI may not be updatedvery frequently in some cases.

The coin the OP was looking at is a coin that hasn't been offered in that straight grade since 2015 (that's 5.5 years), and it has nice eye-appeal. It doesn't surprise me that it went for more than 2x CDN.

 

Has anyone used David Lawrence Auctions? I have had success with them and they charge no buyer's premium.

 

That depends on the coin and where it falls in the grade range.

For me I will evaluate the coin for what I think I can sell it for and then bid a percentage of that.

 

I have purchased a few coins from David Lawrence and have been pleased. The trouble is they deal mostly in American coins, and I have moved away from them with my purchases, but not my research, in recent years.

I very much prefer bidding in auctions that have no buyers’ fee. There are just enough people, who seem to ignore them, to make buyers’ fee auction miserable for me. When I am figuring out what I should bid with a calculator, it feels like the air is going out of my checking account.

 

Seller pays the commission ? How's it work ?

I think they sell alot of stuff on Ebay.

 

My impression is that David Lawrence owns most of the material that they auction, but that might be the wrong assumption.

 

I guess I started something about auction houses. Evidently, it has become standard practice by the auction houses to have buyers pay the "mark-up" on items sold. The sellers become a client to the auction house and the auction house charges the buyer a fee based on the selling price of the coin. (Am I correct so far.) The auction house gets a "bonus" for selling the coin. The high the final selling price, the higher the auction house's bonus will be. So, the auction house does a "toe dance" to entertain byers so they will pay more for the purchase. (I say "toe dance", because all of the auctions I have seen, the auction houses have men stationed around the audience and they are entertaining the buyers so that they are get worked up and spend more. I've only seen car auctions on TV for my source of my statement. Which part of what I've said is wrong?

 

I don't think anything.

The "hammer price" is the bidding price that you see going on during the auction over at HA or GC (NOT Ebay, where there is no fee on sales).

After the auction is done, they tack on 20% (usually) at HA and 12.5% over at GC.

This is online bidding, there's no sideline entertainment by the auction sites..... the only entertainment is if you decide to head on over to a porn site.

Here's an item right now. It's a super-rare Saint-Gaudens coin and the price is $1.325 MM and the price with the buyers premium (if the sales price doesn't go higher) will be $1.590 MM.

Do you want to bid, Jim ?

 

Yes, there's a selling fee that varies depending on what you negotiate which obviously depends on what you have.

They sell a lot of stuff period.

 

If has changed several times over the years. Back when I started collecting the Sellers paid the commission, usually 10%. Then tit changed to a split fee, seller 5%, Buyer 5%. Then Seller 5%, Buyer 10%. Then seller variable, Buyer 15%. Then the buyer fee went to 17.5%, and now buyer 20%. (In Europe some firms are now at buyer 22% plus often a VAT tax of 12 to 15%. Think about that, an extra 34 to 37% tacked on after the hammer price..)

 

Heritage has about the same thing on political items. They have a 25% buyers’ fee plus you state sales tax, which for me is 8.5%. That works out to almost 36%. Needless to say, they are the most expensive supplier.

 

I regularly bid at Heritage, but rarely come close unless there is a significant problem with the coin. But I like more detail, even with issues than the typical collector.

I was shocked when I won 3 NCs at one time, but each had issues. But I'm still happy with winning.

 

Slow down. Did you kiss the wife first

 

Wow, they charge MORE for political stuff ? WTF ?

Why would they do that...if anything, considering there's fewer political stuff than coins, I would think the markup would be less (no catalogs, less expenses, etc.) ?

 

i use numusmedia, because the prices are a lot more reasonable than pcgs price guide, or any other...and pay about 30-50% of that, if looking to resell, if for my error collection, well then,,,skies the limit, lol