A few months back I was turned on to a local auction house that periodically does auctions for property, farm equipment and coins. The coin auctions are primarily pages and pages of very common stuff, but a few nice pieces pop up too. I won two pieces a few months back and have bids in on six coins with their current auction..... Long and short is I enjoy this a whole lot more than doing Ebay auctions. Are these local auction houses commonplace? How would one go about finding more of them?
Are you talking about local online auctions or local live auctions Randy ? I'm asking because if they are online, well you stand the same risk posed by many of those selling on ebay. Poor quality and or even deceptive pics, and inaccurate descriptions. But if they are live, where you can see the coins in hand, then you can form your own opinions. As to how to find more of them, internet searches and asking questions of folks in person would about your options to my knowledge.
I have a local auction house that sells mostly art, but there are coins occasionally (and other fun stuff). They are live once a month, but you can bid in person or online. Anyway, I've never found any deals.
You can google estate auctions, etc. Before the pandemic I worked about 30 miles away and there was a nice local auction house every week. I haven't been down there since.
It is an on-line auction house located in my state. I can gather by the descriptions they offer that they aren't seasoned numismatists, but they appear to be up front about the coins they offer. And yes, I have to gauge my purchases from photos but we are talking $100.00 coins here at best so the risk is minimal.
We have a few auction house's here in the metro. I used to go every once in a while. There weren't many deals to be had on coins. Unless it was culls and they went for melt.
I use the aggregate auction houses. As others have said, some places are better than others and you always need to read the details and fine print. That said, you get huge variety of auctions and a ton of "sorting" tools to where just search for auctions/items of a particular type in a particular state or particular distance from a zip code, etc. Since I know you are in MN (like me), the most localized aggregator I use is K-bid.com. For more "range", I use Hibid.com. Proxibid is another option. Now, the other things is I'm a value bullion hunter so as long as the auction houses back the authenticity of their items, I'm good. You will find some with super poor photos (flips of old cents that you literally can't tell what the coin is but labelled as 1911-S or such) and you just have to click by...
Dixon's Auctions periodically sells coins. Most of the time it ranges from real estate, surplus merchandise, open box, ... A couple years ago they auctioned off a lot of raw key date Lincolns. If I recall correctly, one auction had over 40 1909-S and 1909-S VDB coins along with many other key and semi-key dates. I purchased a 1914-S (listed as AU) for $60 and it graded MS63 from PCGS. So, there still are good coins to be found if you search around and have patience. Most raw coins, from auction sites that deal specifically in coins, are most likely cleaned or have some problem where it wouldn't straight grade, or are common coins not worth the grading fees.
I have bought a fair number of coins at Charter Oak Coins - an auction which is local to me, but he (Fred Serafino) runs an internet auction with the live auction. Its a monthly auction, he posts all the stuff online but also sends a monthly catalog list and I've had good luck with those auctions, though I mostly ignore his optimistic assessments and take a good look at the pictures. I haven't attended in person yet, but I hope to one of these days.
