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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Andrew McCabe, post: 3133263, member: 90666&quot;]Totally agree. Setting much lower opening bids just adds an air of unrealism as especially novice collectors climb the inevitable ladder to get close to a realistic estimate of value. An estimate is normally a fairly conservative assessment of what a coin should fetch on an ordinary rainy day. An opening lower than estimate allows for the fact that a seller may sometimes (especially over hundreds of coins) misjudge the quality or market-desirability of a coin, and the coin may be worth a bit less than estimate even to the very highest bidder who turns up on the day. It allows some leeway. Once you set openings very low e.g. at 50% then the whole thing turns into a game of guesswork because probably only a few percent of lots are going to actually sell at such low estimates, AND it disrupts consignors who just may not want to consign if they think their coin might be sold for half of a conservative reasonable estimate made by an expert. </p><p><br /></p><p>If I were setting an estimate, I&#039;d go onto CoinArchives or ACsearch and see what coins in similar condition have hammered for. Then I&#039;d choose a number which would be rather less than the median and somewhat above the lowest. So if there were 9 comparable coins in about the same condition, I&#039;d probably estimate my coin at about what the third cheapest sold for (so a bit conservative). And then set a starting price of 80% of that number. I suspect most dealers do this process by instinct, especially for cheaper coins.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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