Just placed like 60 Bids at StacksBowers, "watched" 10 coins at Great Collections, and poked around on a few dealer sites. I feel exhausted!!! You wouldn't think 60 bids would take such a beating on me, but sifting through almost 700 coins, checking against my want-list, checking previously completed auction records for each candidate, reviewing the photos, determining my bid, placing my bid (and dealing with SB sloooow site), I feel like a just ran a marathon. Neck hurts, wrists hurt, eyes hurt. I need to go back to my real work just to take a break. Does this ever happen to anyone else?
That is my biggest complaint with great collections. I would like to bid in 100 - 300 coins every week, but they dont have a group bid, like teletrade had. Bidding on gc is time consuming, you bid on a coin, then you have to go back to your watchlist, and bid on another one
I get a coin hangover usually Sunday night after bidding ends at GC. I spend a lot of time sifting through and bidding and watching, and when it's all over, I feel tired. Outsiders don't understand there is a lot of thought put into each purchase.
Ian is a good guy, I'm sure he's thought of that feature or taken requests for that feature, but obviously it's not been implemented yet. Seems odd, since GC has a bulk "Compare" and a bulk "add to want list" feature. I also once sent him an email asking how to do a "NOT" operator on a search, never heard back. I don't think they offer it, but I basically asked him to implement it for the future. I wish he would add that feature, and also the bulk bidding feature like you're talking about.
I did the same last night on one Ebay site with auctions of various PCGS coins and dates starting at .99 cents each. Grading Proof 69. Figured I had nothing to lose if no one wanted them as it cost $100 each or more just to get slabbed. Plus free shipping on all. Even if I don't need them they will make nice inexpensive gifts nest Christmas at nearly no cost if I get any of them.
Another problem with GC is that you need to open every listing to view a decent size picture of the coin. Unlike Stack's and HA, the coin picture doesn't expand when you put your cursor over it on the main listing page. It's so time consuming. Geek, I spent an hour + last night going through Stack's Feb. auction. I put bids on about 40 items. I don't plan to win any of them, it's just easier to watch items that way. Stack's still needs to make improvements to their website, but they do have some nice coins in the upcoming auction. One thing I hate is the day after the auction, your bids go away. No way to easily see what they sold for.
I've chatted with Ian on that not feature (I'm surprised you didn't hear back). As an IT guy I can confirm it's a lot harder to implement than it seems, especially w/o cratering database performance. Query optimizers are strange beasts and if they see something they are not programmed to handle they punt to finding it slowly but safely. Say you have an indexed phone book and want all the John Smiths. The index takes you to the first Smith, John and you read until you find the 1st record that isn't John Smith. Fast & Clean. Now find all the Smith's who are NOT John. The index can take you to the first Smith, but you have to read a lot of records both to collect the Smiths AND to exclude Johns.
I've also emailed and chatted with Ian many times, he helped me out big time once on an erroneous bid. However, on that one email (feature request) I never heard back. I am also an IT person, and I assumed that depending on the database he has on the backend, "NOT" would be something already cooked-in, that he just needed to turn-on. I guess that is probably not the case.
Well, cooked in is relative. The SQL handles it but under the covers an index read becomes a table scan and that doesn't scale...
Yeah, that method works but I am tempted by the dark side and end up browsing through many hits from a very generic search: All CAC coins < $500. So I am exposing myself to all sorts of coins that tempt the wallet. For me, that tends to ferret out the coins faster than doing individual searches on the ~30 coins on my active want-list. Either way, I end up feeling tired! Maybe it's just old age.
Best thing there's seldom many trade dollars even lees that's problrm free less that I need even proofs and even less that aren't dipped white out of 40 I usually only want 1
sifting thru a lot of listings, picking your bid etc. is somewhat stressful. I go with brandy to relieve stress & keep on chugging. urp!