Best Of

shop around at your local coin stores

or try to sell it here to reputable forumites

@jmlanzaf said:
I place my best bid and then ignore it. If someone wants to bid more, 99.99% of the time, I don't care. If I do care in a live auction, I'll bid in the live auction. For a timed auction, if you really care you are basically in a lottery if you try to snipe. Does your bid get in in time? Is it the high bid? Is my internet stable?

Auctions really should extend bidding until bidding stops. I don't know why GC went with this format.

Pretty sure it's because @ianrussell knows exactly what he is doing. His objective is to achieve the highest sale price possible, both for himself and for his consignor.

I'll bet that means having a fixed closing time, where people know they have to get their highest proxy bids in before a fixed stop. The alternative is people slow playing it, knowing the auction won't close so long as anyone is bidding.

Live auctions don't lend themselves to this, but online auctions do. Do you honestly think the 800 pound gorilla in the space, eBay, doesn't know what it is doing, and has been leaving money on the table all along?

You are looking at it from a bidder perspective, and "don't know why GC went with this format." The simple answer is their objective is the exact opposite of yours as a bidder.

Finding yourself "basically in a lottery if you try to snipe" encourages nuclear bids. Extending an auction indefinitely does not.

Nuclear bids result in higher hammer prices when you have two people competing. You as a bidder want lower hammer prices. Not complicated.

Stamps and modern mint products made/make too many different ones to satisfy the needs of collectors who like to complete sets. When there are physically too many to collect each year, the collector can’t feel the sense of accomplishment that comes with completing a set. If/when the new additions to the set are/were more finite, then they could complete the set each year anew so even if they completed the set they would continue to do so each year. But when too many are offered then it’s too hard to complete. Once you don’t complete a set because of too many offerings, you can’t enjoy adding to it in the future as much because you know it’s not complete.

35 yards dead center on a quarter from a Civil War musket! That's American Sniper type accuracy. Nice shooting.

A 1909 VDB Matte is a rather rare coin, and one that very few people have the expertise to identify based off of images. Hell, sometimes even the TPGs get it wrong with the Mattes. It also seems that more than one poster caught your little trick, which renders your point here completely moot.

Try your little "experiment" again with a DCAM 1866 $20 and see what some people say.

I believe what you are seeing is from die deterioration giving a ghost image next to the word Liberty.

Great coins in this thread, I enjoy following along.
Just ordered a new camera. No new coins for quite a while.
Might have to change that.

Looks normal to me…