So at lunchtime yesterday I headed to Costco to gas up the car and buy some stuff. I'm walking toward the store and feel my phone buzz, thinking it's my wife texting me a shopping list. I grab a cart, head into the store and check my phone for the list, only to find the buzz was the SB app notifying me of a lot coming up. Tapped the notification, went right to the live auction and the next lot was the one I wanted. I waited for the lot to go live, swiped right to bid, won the lot, and continued with my shopping. Yeah, I could have been driving at the time or missed it by one lot, but not this time. The app did exactly what it was supposed to do. I love it when things work as intended.
Cool. I did quite a bit of bidding via the Great Collections website (not an app), but on my Mobile phone on a Ski Mountain in Maine a few years back. Very handy when you are looking at coins on the go!
I don't have a mobile device. Everything is done through my desktop at home. I just got a Watch List notification from Heritage. I bid (80% of catalog) and currently have the high bid but it's still a few days before the lot closes. I'm running about a 50-50 win/loss using this procedure. Keeps me happy.
That's actually pretty cool, messy. I don't spend a lot of time on Stacks, but I'll have to check out their app.
I haven't utilized Stacks-Bowers, may give it a shot. I understand they do many fewer auctions than Heritage; I asked the SB people about that at FUN. The HA App does give you notifications before auctions you express an interest come up; not sure if you get a Text Message a few minutes before your item hits. That is very helpful -- if an auction goes off at 8 PM, the reminder is OK but if your item is going off closer to 10 PM then a Text Message about 9:50 or so would be really great. At least for HA, it appears to take about 15-20 seconds per auction so if they notify you with about 30-40 auctions (7-10 minutes) before yours that it's getting close that would be great.
You do get a text message from HA, but I don't remember if it's as seamlessly linked to the app. Maybe it is. I'm usually at a desktop PC when I'm bidding. I was just amazed at how smoothly the SB app worked at Costco, and I have a 5 year old phone that's never in a hurry to do anything. Thankfully, the phone was responsive when I needed it to be. It was as if it were scripted for a commercial.
So here's the 1804 gold piece I got -- a Mexican escudo for my "World Coins Circulating in Early America" type set. Much cheaper than the US equivalent, an 1804 $2.50.
I'll be bidding on an item in Stack's/Bowers auction that's linked to the Baltimore Whitman show later this month. It's a coin that's in a Details holder that I wouldn't be able to afford otherwise. If I win you'll definitely hear about from me here on CoinTalk
I'm not familiar with these at all, so I'm not terribly sure where it should be. I'd guess there's a bit of strike weakness, but I do see a decent amount of wear. Based on the luster present, I would have guessed AU-50. 45 seems a bit low, but any higher than 53 and I would have had a problem with it.
I'm also in the AU50 camp. The reverse doesn't show the wear the same because of the nature of the design, but there is a lot of luster remaining.