I went to an auction this weekend because it had coins on the bill. It listed silver dollars, halves, quarters, dimes, and indian head cents. I thought I would go see if I could get any good deals. I went early to figure what I woulb bid for them. I walked in and saw the coins and my heart sank, almost every coin there had been cleaned. Not just cleaned but highly pollished.:hammer: I could not believe someone had ruined all those coins. One was an 83 cc morgan, but the coin was so worn out it wasn't worth much anyway. I thought I would bid on some just for the silver but people were bidding as if the coins were undamaged. some one payed $26 for a worn out mirror pollished common date walker and several pollished IHCs went at $2 each. All the silver went over melt. I guess I'll have to wait for the coin show this weekend to do my buying.
Woo-that's dissapointing. You gotta wonder if they were trying to deceive public or just didn't know what they really had. Reputable name?
I've seen this same thing happen at many public auctions. Many uneducated bidders think that because a large silver coin is over 100 years old, that it has to be valuable and the bidding wars begin. I appraise coins for a local auctioneer and at first they always wanted to know if they should polish the coins to make them look better and draw a better price. We had many arguments over this before I finally convinced them to just leave them be! Sadly this probably happens a lot simply because the auction service or the family think they are doing the right thing and improving the value of the coin. As for price. Typically, auctioneers will never announce the value of coins in an estate auction because of the welcomed over-bidding that occurs. This is why they almost always over-emphasis the fact of how rare the coins are because of their age.
The same local auction house is selling more coins next month, I may go to see if they are cleaned also or if was just bad luck on this auction. I am curios to see how people would bid on undamaged coins.
That is exactly why I don't attend public auctions of coins. People have the must win at any cost attitudes and often bid foolishly, running up the winning bids on coins, often payimg way above the coins worth either melt or numismatic values. Willcoins
