ANACS Question

Gentlemen - this will be the only warning you get. The insults and name calling stops this instant, or I'll stop it my way by removing your posting privileges.

If you wish to discuss this issue, fine, but do so in a civil manner or the thread will be closed.

 

To the issue at hand, I know nothing about the incident being discussed. What I do know is this. There have been incidents in Heritage auctions where a TPG has stepped up, stopped the auction in mid-stride, and taken the coin in question. And the owner of that coin was never consulted.

What I refer to was the second auction of the 1963 PF70 DCAM cent in 2004. That particular coin had been listed for 3 weeks with steadily increasing bids. By the day the auction was to close the bid had reached $58,000 (which included BP). At that point PCGS stepped up and told Heritage to pull the coin. PCGS then said they would pay $40,000 for the coin - and they did so. And the owner had no say in this. That left the owner out $18,000 that he would have received had the auction been allowed to conclude. But PCGS stopped it cold.

Now that $40,000 just happened to be what the owner of the coin had paid for it the year before in another Heritage auction. So what PCGS was doing was agreeing to give the guy his money back, but not agreeing to allow him to make a profit. Of course had they (PCGS) allowed the auction to conclude then they would have been the ones out the additional $18,000. That is because they knew they were going to buy the coin back so they could down-grade it. They just wanted to do that as cheaply as possible.

I guess my point in all this is to show that these kind of things do happen from time to time. No, the situation I described may not be exactly the same as what Garret is describing - but it's pretty dang similar if it isn't.

So Chris - it happens.

Garret - you say you hate NGC because of this incident that you described. Do you now also hate PCGS because of the incident that I have related to you ? If nothing else what PCGS did was far worse than what NGC did, from a monetary point of view.

 

But it did happen out of the blue Dick. The auction was live at the FUN show. Bids were coming in left and right and the numbers were climbing. PCGS stepped up and whispered the guys ear and the auction stopped - right there.

It was only after the auction ended that it came out as to what had happened because people were furious.

 

From a legal standpoint, yeah it matters what's in the contracts. And I can tell you, from my own contracts with Heritage - they can pull an item from an auction if they wish.

But the point is, it happened. And the owner was never questioned nor did he give permission. It happened - boom - DRT ! (dead right there)

 

I believe it was pointed out to him that he never had that $18k because it was not a completed auction. So he had no legs to stand on. Once an item is pulled - it's pulled, end of story. It then becomes a no auction.

 

Their contract allows heritage to choose the auction that your coins will be sold in. It also allows them to pull any item they wish from that auction, and sell it at a later date if they wish, or not sell it at all and return it to you.

And while I cannot specifically recall for certain, it may also allow them to re-submit the coin for re-grading or corss-grading if they think it is merited.

The difference between the incident that I related and the one that Garret related is this. In mine PCGS bought the coin, for a price they chose, but they bought it.

But it does not sound like NGC bought the coin in Garret's incident. They merely re-graded it. But if they down-graded the coin, then they owed the owner money.

The question that has not been answered is - did they pay him ?

If they did, end of story.