New auction, ancient & early coins, 506 lots, LOW start bids, NO buyer fee
fsrcoin
Posts: 38 ✭
Auction 109 will close July 16 — 506 lots of ancient and early coins, mostly good stuff, with LOW starting bids. Includes group lots, literature, and some fixed price specials. NO BUYER FEE.
Catalog at: http://www.fsrcoin.com/a.html
Bid simply by e-mailing me; or fax, phone, or snail mail.
Commentary: A guy complained on CoinTalk because he bought some "raw" Roman bronzes that came back slabbed as "tooled." Said he'd never buy unslabbed ancients again.
Slabbing for authenticity is reasonable. For grading and quality, not so much. I wish NGC would do only the former because what they say about grade and quality is mostly whacko. I've long known the NGC ancients grader, he's a good guy, but what he puts on slabs baffles me. (Most dealers agree.) Way overgrading, major problems overlooked; and results seem to vary a lot depending on who's the submitter.
Note the difference between smoothing and tooling. Smoothing to ameliorate surface roughness is actually quite common on ancient coins. While they're worth less than ones naturally smooth, this is by no means a value killer. Attractively smoothed coins can bring very strong prices. Tooling is different — this refers to alteration of design features, even actually adding them. That to me is a serious detraction (though I'm often surprised at high prices for them too).
On the buyer fee front: recently seen 26.6%, a new high water mark? And auctions often seem to make the fee a secret. A German firm had a big online auction; searching around their website revealed no buyer fee. I e-mailed them, "what is the f---ing buyer fee?" No reply! (My buyer fee is clear: O%. And I won't bill you $30 to send a $40 coin.)
Also note, Paypal payments processed with a credit card have NO FEE at either end.
World coin list updated to remove sold items at www.fsrcoin.com/131.htm
Best regards,
Frank S. Robinson
Comments
This thread and seller are lordmarcovan-endorsed.
Frank- I thought the seemingly-MIA Sabina denarius had arrived today, but was crestfallen when I found only the latest auction catalog upon opening the envelope.
However, that made me suddenly remember the arbitrary spot I had put down your last auction catalog... still in its sealed envelope.
So I opened that.
Ta-dahhh!
(Really more of a ta-duhhh moment on my part. Sorry.)
So that one's all good after all.
As were all the others before it. Thanks.