Now THAT'S an auction catalog!

The internet has changed many things, some for the better, some for the worse.
An improvement is that I no longer need to collect auction catalogs. I keep the pre-internet ones (even bought a few old catalogs last year), and catalogs from floor auctions that I have participated in. Other than that, it was a relief to get rid of them.

What do you guys think when a seller sends you a catalog that you didn’t ask for, and wants money for it? Things like that makes me think so much that steam comes out of my ears.

 

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About three years ago, I threw about 2 meters of catalogs in the paper trash and kept only the ones that were important to me, but even those lie unread in the basement....

If you place a bid, there is now often a button to click that you don't want a catalog. I always put a checkmark there, because it hurts to throw such a nice catalog as the Leu catalog in the trash.
But I still have several meters of "real" coin books and of course I will keep these.

 

You can never have enough books or catalogues. I think people are becoming too reliant on the internet, assuming with a false sense of security that the information will always be there, but that won't necessarily be the case. A website revamp and a lot of things frequently go missing. It doesn't matter whether the removal of info was intentional, unintentional or due to some software incompatibility - it's gone. It may be auction listings or it may be articles, but once it has gone the only way people will rediscover the information is to read the printed word.

A good example of the above was following a redesign of the Spink website, where some sales were kept, but all the back issues of the Numismatic Circular previously available to view disappeared. I'm often asked if I have any spares of many issues.

DNW's archive is only good for the past 8 or 10 years because the pictures (if available) are dire prior to this. The same can be said for many archives including Heritage etc.

If people are comfortable relying on good fortune so be it, but don't assume the info will only be a mouse click away.

 

If they SEND it to you, I presume it's yours.

As far as being on mailing lists, my understanding with Heritage is that if you do enough business with them -- someone mentioned I think $10,000 in buyers premium paid which equates to about $50,000 in purchases -- you get the catalogs for free. Otherwise, there was an option to get them all or most of them for about $150 as I recall.

 

Commentary I often save to Word Documents via cut-and-paste on my PC so I have them.....PDFs or pictures or stuff like that I save directly.