Anybody else seeing a pattern from Zeus Numismatics of their prebids going to the limit...everytime?

I bid in one Zeus auction. I won two coins with prebids. In both cases, the hammer amount was the exact amount of the prebid. Although in both cases the hammer amount was a round number that conceivably many bidders could have chosen.

For a variety of reasons I have decided that I don't want to do any more business with Zeus.

Biddr absolutely does forward prebids to auction houses to handle. They say as much in their "What is a prebid" info. You should only prebid with auction houses you trust not to shill bid you.

Edit: proxy bidding is different as has been pointed out.

 

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I looked up my recent wins on biddr from Zeus and found 2 were pre-bids that I won for less than my max, and 1 proxy-bid also well below my max bid.

 

I recall that type auction and believe it really does separate the serious from the players as well as any. The other form of auction I miss from the old days was what I thought was called 'Dutch' rather than the one described above. In it the offering was a quantity of supposedly like items. We bid an amount and how many we would take at that price. If you bid that you would take them all, you paid the amount you bid. If, for example, the seller had 35 random denarii and you only wanted a few at random, you could bid more than they were worth and the price would be set for everyone by the amount bid by the 35th highest number. I participated in one of these in 1999 on eBay where I saw a real sleeper for which I would easily pay $350 in a junk group of 35 coins. I bid $50 on (up to) 34 coins. The highest other bid was $10 for an unknown number (lets guess 10). Because of my unreasonably high bid, I won 34 and the other bidder got only one but we both paid his bid of $10 per coin. I was risking having to pay $1700 for the 34 (if the second bidder also offered $50) but I was hopeful that the bids would be lower and ended up getting my coin and 33 other denarii for $340. It would have been dishonest to ask the seller to sell that one separately after the listing was posted.

I was sweating bullets hoping that the one coin I would not get would not be the one I wanted when I got a note from the seller saying the winner of #35 really, really wanted the Elagabalus in the group but the rules required him to draw randomly. He was an honest man! I told him to let the other bidder have the Elagabalus trying not to act too elated that I really was going to get my coin.

I ended up putting 6 other coins from the group in my collection and sold/gave away the others for much less than the $10 each I had paid. Later, I sold one of the six (not pictured here) but still have the coin I wanted so badly and five of the 'also ran' group. The 6 coins below cost me $340 minus about $100 I got for the 28 others. Remember many of them were absolute trash by then current standards. $240/6=$40 and none of the others below were worth $40 back then or now. Only people who have paid attention to my past posts would be able to pick out the one I risked $1700 to get. That is what I call a Dutch Auction. I was able to find several online explanations of the term agreeing with mine and others with the reverse style auction as described by Ocatarinetabellatchitchix. ebay stopped this sort of sale years ago because it really required all participants to be honest and follow the rules. Had I not received the coin I wanted, I would not have been entitled to returning the coins. These problems led to the end of the sales.







Today, the closest thing we have are 'Buy or Bid' sales but, in these, the seller does not agree to sell the item even if it goes down to $1. We see many so called auctions that are really dream listings with ridiculous reserves. The good old days are gone.

 

OK, I'll play. Was it the Domna VICTOR IVST?

What a nerve-wracking story!!

 

Doug PM'd me the correct answer, so others can play too.

 

This makes me think you missed the mark...so, I will guess it is one of the Septy Sevs (Doug's oldest and dearest friend). Let's go with that Fortuna reverse. It looks busy and unique (plus it has a really cool portrait!).

 

My guess is one of the middle two:
AEQVITAS AVGG Sept Sev
MONET AVG Sept Sev
FORTVNAE DVC Sept Sev
VICTOR IVST Julia Domna
AEQVITAS AVG Sev Alexander
MARTI VLTORI Caracalla

I'll add a vote for VICTOR IVST Julia Domna, and the seated victory

 

Thank you. Nice clarity.

 

Here, here! Thanks for the insight @Severus Alexander! That answered a couple of my questions and gave a very valuable best practice for auction going

 

That is FORTVN REDVC and a very ordinary coin. VICTOR IVST Julia Domna is the star of my page Bride of My Favorite Coin where she married the coin that started my Severan interest in ~1963 (guessing but it appeared in a photo from 1964 and was not new then).
http://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/bride.html

In the nine years since that page was written the guest list for that wedding has grown to include the estranged twin sister of the bride (a die duplicate with better surfaces but poor centering - pretty skin but no personality) ex. AK collection from Triton XX. If I still had access to my Forvm sponsored pages, I might have to double the size of this page.

and an evil uncle (the VICTOR IVST of Pescennius Niger).

I have posted so much on these coins that everyone should be completely bored by now but these coins have been the center of my numismatic existence for over 50 years. The Bride has been dismissed by experts as just a mule with reverse of Septimius Severus but I am aware of five coins (my two, two in the BM and one as listed by Cohen in the BnF). None are known in the name of Septimius. Alexandria did not make a practice of sharing reverse DIES between Septimius and Julia even when the types were identical. IMHO there never were any seated VICTOR IVST coins for Septimius. Prove me wrong; post one. Please!

To all of you relatively new to collecting ancient coins: I hope you find even a fraction of the joy from this hobby that I have experienced. I suggest you get over rating your coins according to their profit potential and find satisfaction from the learning they enable. If you really would rather be collecting race horses or hockey players, save time and move along now.

If you missed that last line, see the below starting at 1:54.