Ancient Coin Auctions -- Fantasy Game

With the advent of American football season upon us, football fans are forming fantasy leagues and drafting players for the upcoming season. I thought it might be fun and interesting to start a similar game for the upcoming ancient coin auction season, for those of us who collect ancient coins.

The fundamental idea is this: each participant starts with the same budget and allocates this budget to maximum bids for those fantasy coins he’d like to buy. You “win” the coin if, at the actual auction, the coin is sold for an amount equal to or less than the amount of your maximum bid. At the end of the “season” you get an Auction Efficiency Score based on the success of your bid.

Interested? If so, read the detailed structure below.

1. Each participant starts with a budget of $100,000.

2. Any additional buyer’s fees are waived (accommodating buyer’s fees is functionally equivalent to giving each participant a higher budget).

3. Foreign exchange rates are fixed as follows:
- 1 Swiss Franc = $1.05
- 1 Euro = $1.30
- 1 British Pound = $1.50
These are generous rates but are chosen to simplify the structure.

4. Bids may be made only at the following five official auctions:
- CNG Auction 94 (18 Sep 2013, “season opener”)
- Roma Numismatics Auction VI (29 Sep 2013)
- Nomos AG Auction 8 (22 Oct 2013)
- Gorny & Mosch (14 – 18 Oct 2013, whichever auctions are appropriate)
- NAC Auctions 73 – 75 (18 Nov 2013)

5. All bids must be placed prior to the auction’s start.

6. After each auction starts, bids cannot be withdrawn.

7. Once a participant’s funds are allocated for a specific auction and that auction starts, those funds are no longer available for future bids even if you don’t win the coin. I.e., if you bid $5,000 for a coin at CNG and don’t win the coin, you have only $95,000 remaining for future bids and cannot reuse the $5,000 from the CNG auction. Similarly, if you bid $10,000 for a coin, but win the coin for $5,000, you cannot reuse the $5,000 that you overbid.

8. After the last auction of the season, each participant receives an Auction Efficiency Score (AES) calculated as follows:

AES = fraction of bids successful * fraction of funds used

For example, if you bid on 10 coins in all the auctions, win 6 of those coins, and spend $65,000 in winning those coins, your AES is:

AES = (6/10) * ($65,000/$100,000) = 39%

I would suggest that we start a thread specifically for this game, and use it ONLY for the game and no other purpose. Each participant should post his/her bids for an upcoming auction ONLY ONCE, and is allowed to edit those bids only by editing that posting, and only prior to the auction start. For example, you might post :

CNG Auction 94, Lot 1139 (Augustus AV aureus); max bid $25,000.











If you want to change your bid, you would edit this post as follows:

CNG Auction 94, Lot 1139 (Augustus AV aureus); max bid $30,000 (increased from $25,000 17 Sep 2013).

Serious comments welcome!

 

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I think it could be fun but you dont think ebay should be in the list? Alot of bottom feeders here including me.

Also the edit sucks on this new board. You can only edit your last post so if there is 10 replies since my last post, I will feel the need to post a new auction I bid on and thus my post before that cant be edited even though I want too.

Know what I mean?

 

I excluded EBay since it's not a limited-time auction like the others. There's no beginning and end to EBay's auctions and since the fantasy budget is fairly large, I thought it might be more appropriate to focus on higher-end coins. but let's see how others feel about including EBay.

Wasn't aware of the editing limit of 10 posts following an original post. We can easily accommodate this, though, by just allowing new posts that explicitly cite the previous post when they modify a bid.

 

It would be fun to do.

I agree with excluding eBay, due to the budget.

 

I'll definitely join in this. It may be worth adding in Kunker's Oct 7th-11th auctions. They have ~1,400 ancients coming up, including a few aurei which would be good candidates for this game.

 

But a nice thing about adding ebay in this game is it can show who did well with the quantity of coins they bought vs the high end netting you maybe 4 at $25,000 each.

Why only shop Neiman Marcus when Goodwill can have some name brand stuff for much less.

There is some quality stuff on the bay, some much nicer then these high end auctions offer. So what if you gotta sift you rubble to find it?

 

I think that there are enough auctions to use with the above amount.

 

I have to admit that I think of EBay as the following analogy: if you're drafting players in a fantasy football game, it's like drafting college players rather than pros. You have a chance to go for the best -- it's a fantasy!

Also, agree that maybe we should add Kunker's auction if others want it.

 

Well, I'm certainly interested!! (what could go wrong?)

Ummm, if you end-up getting enough interest => then, bring it!!

Curious though? ... is there a dollar-amount limit?
Example => at the upcoming CNG auction, can I bid on 100 x $250 coins? (sure, this may be a bad strategy ... I haven't really analyzed the game, yet) ... ummm, or is there a "minimum" bid amount? (example => only bother bidding on coins that are $5000 or more)

 

1980 Olympic "Miracle on Ice" anyone? It can happen, lol.

But this is your idea so I would play with no ebay. I am just a big tightwad so its hard to fathom spending X or XX when one I can live with is xx.

 

I'm not sure I understand (I'm a slow learner), but I'm game. Like steve, I need to analyze the strategies involved.

 

This is a great idea! I play a miniature version every time I view an auction.

But I think I would best abstain - I have an unfair advantage in one of the "rounds."

 

I would hate to see anyone abstain, especially someone like Ardatirion. Is there a way where each take a by on one of the auctions?

 

Don't worry about me. I have more than enough coins to keep me busy!
Besides, it's a great idea that I think everyone here should participate in. But it's a bit too similar to work for me.

 

I'm not so worried about you or anyone else, but, at the end of the game, it would be nice for the winner to have bragging rights that they were able to outbid/out-maneuver/out-strategize the best amongst us (which, btw, includes you Ard-man)

 

So, net net, the goal of the game is to pick out coins that you are most able to predict its final bid price? That is how I would "game" this contest. If you were really good at knowing 5 coins will go for right at $20k per, that is a better bet than getting a good deal on a coin, right?

 

I agree. Maybe Bill should recuse himself from one auction, but compete with us on the rest.

 

Tell you what. I volunteer to be a judge, if one is needed.

 

Essentially, yes, that's the nature of this fantasy game. But it involves research into prior coin prices, knowledge about coins and the market, etc. Plus, it allows collectors to simply to have fun by bidding on coins they like, rather than just coins on which they think they can predict the final price.

Out of curiosity, can you be specific about why you would have an unfair advantage in one of the auctions?

 

I work for CNG.