Here's your end-of-year review. If you have the technology to have a website and to show upcoming coins, you have the technology to update the current bids in real time or near-real time. Please do so. Do not accumulate bids from all sources weeks before the auction and then drop the bomb of a $200 estimated lot opening at $2000. If we know ahead of time that a potential target has become out of reach, we can better plan other purchases. Have both sides of the coin viewable on the auction overview page (hello, Heritage?) If a coin has been smoothed or tampered with beyond ordinary cleaning, please indicate this in the description. If a coin has been tooled-- don't sell it, or at least note this in the description. If you don't have time to research a coin and to verify its authenticity, don't put it in the auction. We're paying you a premium to vet the coins. If you fail to do so, we might as well buy everything on eBay. And no, I'm not asking for you to slab your coins. Please don't do that. Stop charging an extra percent for the privilege of bidding live online unless your bidding platform is actually functional. If you insist on using Coretech, buyers should receive a discount for the headache, not an extra charge. Stop raising your fees. I doubt the cost of doing business has risen as rapidly as your fees. Why are you charging us more? Buyer's fee, credit card fee, PayPal fee, online bidding fee... I'm going to stop buying from some of you unless you curb your fees. If your company is serviced by an auction aggregator (Sixbid, Numisbids), please ensure that you respond to, record, and act on those incoming bids. Ship orders within two days of payment. If you don't have enough staff to handle the volume, either 1) reduce the volume of your auctions to a few hundred instead of thousands, 2) hire some temps to help address and stuff envelopes, or 3) hire additional permanent staff. If you have a big auction coming up, please ensure that you have adequate packaging and mailing supplies. (hello, Roma?) If an employee is not capable of even pretending to be concerned or helpful, that employee should not be answering the telephone (hello, Baldwin's?) I'm all for you making profit and continuing to provide us with purchasing options but you've become so greedy. Your competition grows by the month and one of these days your bubble is going to burst. Kisses, TIF
I think kiss was the right sentiment. Have you never been kissed before your were....well, you know what I mean. Excellent TIF. Some of your complaints are why I've given up on a couple of those auctions. Now if someone would just listen.
i still haven't purchased a coin from an auction house...the fees being one of the issue that has kept me from doing so.
Auctions? whats that? Seriously though, I don't bid on any auctions except maybe ebay and even that is very rare. I tend to buy from regular online stores. Most of the auction sites I have heard of are known for late shipping, buyer fees... and all that bad stuff.
The fact that you are continuing to patronize houses that do these things means that they are acceptable practices in your eyes. There are thousands of coins out there willing to compete for your collecting dollar but that are not in the hands of people who take the fun out of collecting. Buy them. If you have more money to spend than you can find coins to buy without the games, find a dealer/agent and tell him what you want. For an additional 5% or so you may enjoy participating in the sales more. I only used an agent once but that was a foreign sale where I really wanted the coins, where I knew my agent was attending anyway and where I did not trust the seller to value my little bids since he would have so many high rollers participating. I won several lots at under my maximum bid. If I were planning on buying things in the 4+ digit bracket, I would let someone play for me - someone who knows the game.
Or it means the coin I want is not readily available elsewhere. Often the coin I'm bidding on is either not available from a "retail" source, is ambitiously priced on the retail site, or is in lesser/unacceptable condition. Employing an buyer's agent would remove a good amount of the fun parts and would only mitigate a couple of the above-listed gripes. As for the slow-to-ship houses, I hope that repeatedly expressing dissatisfaction will lead to them shipping my winnings more quickly. There is one major house I will not buy from again though and that is due to poor customer service (in person and online). Usually their coins are ho-hum so I doubt I'll miss anything.
I find myself generally in agreement with TIF's observation about this issue. Rarely is a situation so black-and-white that you can simply walk away from an auction house permanently because of its shortcomings. Everything in life has shortcomings from someone's perspective, and only when those shortcomings are extreme do you say "This isn't worth it, I'm going elsewhere." Ancient coins aren't the fungible commodity that modern U.S. coins seem to be, so if you see one that you really like or that completes your collection, you pretty much won't find a substitute elsewhere and are limited to purchasing it from the auction house that is selling it. There's nothing wrong with trying to improve an auction house's policies in the future. Think about it: if you want to vacation in the Bahamas, and your spouse wants to go to Acapulco, do you react with "OK, let's divorce, we can't agree on this."? Or do you try to work out a compromise and improve things going forward?
But they have to be willing to at least discuss it. I think in most cases they do not see any of this as a problem for them. They keep selling and making money, so what's the problem?
I agree but only when dealing with coins that are not easily available elsewhere. I have not been seeing this class of rarity but rather a class of popular coins of which there are dozens available and one sold somewhat regularly. I have even bought coins from outfits like our oft discussed and ridiculed eBay High Price promoters when they happen to get something special. I'm not talking about common things like EID MAR here (there are at least 80 of them) but things you want that most people do not know (or care) exists. Are you buying coins that we can not find on acsearch or other online resources or are you just in a hurry? I do agree with TIF about the thrill of the hunt being important. I recall Bruce McNall relating how the Hunt brothers would send him instructions to buy coins but never would see the coins themselves since they would be held in trust for them in his vaults. Of course these were the same guys who asked him how much it would cost to buy all of the existent Byzantine gold coins and were quite serious about it. I could not collect that way. I find slabs unacceptable because I want to touch my coins. A slab in a vault 2000 miles away? No.
"how much would it cost to buy all byzantine gold coins in existence".......man, if I could only dream, that would be a good one, no?
I'm part way through the Bruce McNall autobiography now and will probably review it when finished but so far the outstanding part is the personalities of some people whose names you might have heard but whose life was all about money.
I agree with TIF and IdesOfMarch01 - in today's world, most of "the best" coins are simply not available through private transactions. I have long wantlists and every dealer I've shown them to says, "These are only available at auction these days." Sellers know that the best way to get the widest visibility onto their coins today is through auctions so the top coins end up selling at the top auction houses. Like them or not, we're stuck with them. I have sellers I prefer to not buy from but if they did happen to get the perfect coin for me and I wouldn't be able to find it elsewhere, I'd be forced to buy it from them, or wait five years for another example which would probably cost considerably more. The insinuation of sacrificing quality because of being "in a hurry" isn't fair - sure, many coins are relatively available but they often don't match the entirety of one's desired attributes. Even the EID MAR isn't nearly as common when quality is taken into account: of the 80 examples in museums or private collections, I'd only want to own perhaps 10 of them. Most of the others I'd just consider to be tying up capital. I'm not one that requires the "finest known" but I have a specific set of attributes that I look for which I will only very rarely sacrifice to acquire a particularly special coin. As an example, there's a coin that I've long waited for coming up in the next few weeks. It is unique and EF+ in detail... but the metal quality leaves a lot to be desired and it has a large edge chip. I don't think I'm going to be able to stomach the issues and will instead have to "settle" for a more common variety of the overall type which is in better condition.
