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Message:: [QUOTE="I Palindrome I, post: 51233, member: 2059"]Marshall Field's is an old school department store in downtown Chicago (also a chain). The downtown store has a coin and stamp department in the lower level. Every couple of weeks, they have an auction with about 500 items to bid on. About 80% of it is US coins and currency with the other 20% being foreign. About 20% of the coins are slabbed. The coins are on display for the duration of the auction (usually about two weeks) -- you can go in at any point during business hours to check them out. Bids are collected in a three-ring binder, and bidding is incremented in 5% segments. You can also make a blind bid if you like. On the night the auction closes, there is usually a few people there and they then do live bidding. The guy who does the grading tends to be a bit happy with the grades, so many times an EF is actually a VF and so on. However, there are still good deals to be had (as in the case of my half eagle) as long as you are comfortable with the grade and know what the coin usually goes for. I've picked up a fair amount of coins there since I found out about it. If anyone is interested, let me know and I'll post the phone number here so you can request a bidder ID and give them your mailing address so they can send the price and description sheet for each auction to you.[/QUOTE]