Today's Leu auction -- I put in what I considered VERY competitive bids on two coins of Trebonianus Gallus. Sniped in the last second on each one.
Yeah this auction was rough. But for even worse pain, I present to you the upcoming CNG EA 475. With nearly all coins coming from a single provenance I imagine next Wednesday will be a bloodbath for us non-billionaires
Sounds like a simple solution...become a billionaire before next week. Problem solved. You're welcome. I take payment in the form of bullion and ancient coins. No personal checks
It doesn’t help that CNG often seem to underestimate prices by quite a lot. Or even a big lot. Their estimates remind me of when the Texan asks Homer Simpson how many stars he thinks there are. “Two?” suggests Homer. “Two?! You think there are two?!”
..don't feel lonely..i'm 2nd best bidder on the last 10 coins.....funny how ya feel a loss when we never had the darn things to start with...(..of course "Cleo" most probably wasn't wanting the coins i'm bidding on)
Yes, CNG did that with several of my RIC vol. VII coins when I consigned them to one of their auctions several years ago.
The problem with being second-highest is you really don't know how high the top bidder was willing to go. For all we know they were prepared to go $1,000 higher than our top price but nobody made them do it.
I got skunked too, though underbidder on a couple where I thought the prices were reasonable. Generally very high hammers, though! Eagle-eyed @zumbly snagged a nice deal! One of my misses you would probably like, this Decius. I like the portrait... it sold for 101 CHF. And more importantly to instil attachment to particular coins...
Since the minimum acceptable bid is usually a percentage of the estimate (60% is common), setting estimates too high will result in more unsold lots and that looks bad in a sale. CNG does not estimate too low for for many low end coins and many sell under estimate. Sellers will differ on whether they would prefer a smaller return or no sale. Most of us who have been at this for a while own at least one coin we can document that previously sold for twice what we paid for it. That does not necessarily mean we got a bargain but that someone lost their shirt between the first and last sale. My last outing in consigning to an auction saw some coins go for half what I had paid 20 years earlier; others sold for double so it averages out one way or the other.