Thank you ajaan!
SYRACUSIAN
Posts: 6,448 ✭✭✭✭
Ever since this pandemic has started, I’ve “subcontracted” my bids on items sold by US sellers to ajaan, who is at his 4th or 5th now and not only he NEVER complains, but he helps me in impossible ways as well.
Last night it was the turn of a Swiss 1932 2 rappen PCGS MS67RD, way scarcer than the specimens of that era, pop 1, pop higher 1 to give you an idea. And probably among the top 5-7 coins of the entire 2 rappen series in MS (and not SP).
1932-B Switzerland 2 Rappen PCGS MS67 Red OGH
Sold by an old friend and Darksider, gmarguli, but there must be very few members left here who remember his fierce posts until he was banned, to switch to NGC, but now, in his mature age, he sells PCGS at 99%, regardless of forums to which only very zen sellers should be allowed to comment ( Josh you hear? ;-)
Greg has his own fanatic crowd, the kind of seller who via true auctions as he once used to label them, can beat hands down any other no reserve similar item and exceed even high priced BINs. So, yours truly via ajaan’s help and wisdom, has won this coin with less than ONE FULL bid increment above the underbidder and only because ajaan placed the bid early enough, so that the system rejects any higher bid that is not one full increment above him.
That’s how close it went after debates and debates trying to get to that magic number, just a dollar or two more than the underbidder and not by a huge margin which is an affair of fat wallets alone.
And he had his birthday two days ago, he just turned ¥§>45678#$&€<> years old.
HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY AND THANK YOU FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART.
Comments
Congrats on the pickup, in an OGH no less. Ajaan and Gmarguli are two of the good guys from 15+ years ago. Any idea what happened to JamminJ? I miss his and Greg's auctions. Interesting bid strategy. Are you saying an early bid is better than using a snipe program?
Congrats Dimitri - great looking coin!
8 Reales Madness Collection
Yes, ajaan is a great guy with a great wife who has helped me immensely. Yes, he's one of the good ones!
Wait, what? Did I miss Ajaan's birthday this year? Glad you got the coin Dimitri (I missed on the Italian minor, but oh well, I'm supposed to be focusing). The gmarguli auctions are always cool, I am old enough to remember him still on the boards. And JamminJ had a jammin' 1 yen. Maybe he will turn up again some day. Dang, I feel old all of a sudden. Not as old as The Mushroom though. I may have to recycle an old 'card' seeing as it's kind of late.
@ajaan Happy Birthday!
whats gmargulis ebay? I would like to see what kind of stuff he sells.
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Recently completed items.
https://www.ebay.com/sch/gmarguli/m.html?item=283987524338&LH_Complete=1&rt=nc&_trksid=p2046732.m1684
Lots of stuff from the King Norton’s mint, these past 2-3 weeks, much more before that. Mark him among your favorites if you like what you see, so you can receive an email whenever he decides to sell. He went through a period that he almost but vanished, then did 3 auctions per year. Now he seems more active once again, but there are no guarantees in life.
Cathy, JamminJ is not coming back. He made that abundantly clear to me in an email when he had his first kid. This was never a day job for him, not that I say that for Greg it is, I haven’t contacted him personally in a very long time , but the weekly presence consistently and then disappearing almost with 3 auctions per year, I believe speaks for itself. He might have two different things, or four or five, and a family to boot I assume.
Interesting summary of the Heaton and King Norton mints in any such item sold:
King's Norton Mint Collection History
Most coin collectors are familiar with the activities of the British Royal Mint. They are usually less aware of the important role in supplying the world with currency played by the country?s second city and industrial heart, Birmingham. It has always been a place where private mints thrived. In the early days these tended to be secretive back street operations where to put it politely they produced coins of an unofficial nature. In effect Birmingham acted as the forging capital of the world. Later these undoubted skills were put to more legitimate use with the formation of private mints run by individuals of great integrity. This ability to inspire trust allowed them to attract commissions from their own and foreign Governments. Between 1790 and 1849 the Boulton family operated the Soho Mint. Immediately after its closure Ralph Heaton and his sons took over the mantle of running a mint which later took the title of the Birmingham Mint. In 1860 James Watt & Co. established a mint which coined on and off for the next twenty years. This firm was hardly newcomers to the trade since they were formerly known as Boulton & Watt before they lost the right to use the Boulton name. For the past two centuries these Birmingham firms have exported mints, minting expertise, coins and blanks. By this accomplishment they have succeeded in making a substantial contribution to oiling the wheels of the world?s commerce.
Just prior to the First World War a new company entered the fray, the Kings Norton Metal Company. In 1912 they were awarded a contract to supply the Royal Mint with bronze blanks, effectively breaking a monopoly previously held for many years by the Birmingham Mint. A coinage order quickly followed and in 1914 they struck a coinage for British West Africa bearing a K mintmark for Kynoch, the place of manufacture. The future of the Company was bright as they joined the Birmingham Mint in the sharing of Royal Mint contracts. These coins would bear the more familiar KN mintmark for Kings Norton. Mention should be made of a few exceptions to this rule. Although the Birmingham and Kings Norton Mint were rivals they were friendly rivals and at times shared contracts. Taking the coins of Sarawak as an example the Birmingham Mint dies were dispatched across the city and the coins even though carrying the famous H mintmark were struck at Kings Norton.
In 1926 the Kings Norton Metal Company became part of Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) and in 1962 was reorganized as part of Imperial Metal Industries Limited (IMI). Two years later a consortium was formed of the Royal Mint, Birmingham Mint and Kings Norton Mint to bid for coining work. This partnership operated well for a number of years until difficult market conditions rendered it apart. With coinage contracts difficult to find the three firms went their independent ways. In 1992 this culminated in IMI making a hostile takeover of the Mint Birmingham Ltd. In terms of minting capacity this was a reverse takeover with the smaller mint taking charge of the larger mint. As a result of this change IMI closed their own minting facility.
Over the years between 1914 and 1991 the Kings Norton Mint struck coinages for at least 89 countries ranging alphabetically from Algeria to Zimbabwe. In a geographical sense they exported coins to six of the seven continents only missing out on Antarctica. One suspects that here they were deterred not so much by the icy wastes, since they counted Iceland amongst their clients, but rather by the lack of population!
Like many mints in the world the Kings Norton Mint had a habit of keeping a few examples of each coinage they struck as part of their records. In 2005, prior to the disposal of the IMI Archive Collection, I had the pleasure of being asked by IMI to arrange their collection and to separate and value two specimens of each coin intended for Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery. For a week I was like the proverbial child in a sweet shop as I spent a fascinating time ensconced in a large IMI strong room discovering small packets of coins in various cupboards and a large safe. I am pleased to report that at the conclusion of these efforts the coins set aside for Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery were very generously gifted to them even though they were valued at a considerable five figure sum. One can obtain an excellent overview of the content of the Archive Collection by a study of the holding gifted to Birmingham Museum. It contains a handful of different patterns and uniface trial pieces but the vast majority of the coins are what I would describe as being currency examples in choice condition where it is obvious that special efforts had been made to include the initial pieces struck from new polished dies. These pieces are worthy of the description of being called SPECIMENS. I suspect that this term originated from a previous disposal of a collection belonging to the Birmingham Mint in 1974. These coins were only marginally inferior to a full blown proof and were of exceptional quality with tremendous eye appeal. They required a new term to describe them and help explain why they attracted a considerable premium over a normal currency strike. So if you excuse the pun the word SPECIMEN was coined. These Birmingham and Kings Norton Mint SPECIMENS illustrate how something as mundane and utilitarian as a coin can be transformed into an object of beauty.
David Vice
Numismatic Researcher
Roman, thanks ,nice to see you as active as you were 14 years ago.
Thanks. Not really, I wasn’t discussing bid strategy. Frankly if it were up to me, I would have used an auto sniper program, and I would have probably won by the same margin that the underbidder lost, (I’ve been in his shoes), or lost like he did, if my snipe was a fraction of a second later than his.
In the last 3 seconds the coin went from $91 to $225. In the last 24 hours it went from $41 to $225. A 500% increase the last day is pretty much the norm with Greg’s hot items , or Dennis’ hot banknotes, they know what they do, they are honest and they have a crowd that believes in them like rock stars of the coin and banknote world.
Hmmmm, come to think about it, maybe putting a 5-10 second lead before and not the last desperate seconds (les jeux sont faits, rien ne va plus) is perhaps a better strategy. If someone’s set on a maximum and cannot afford to exceed it, better place it 2-3 hours earlier, definitely, like ajaan did and taught me an invaluable lesson. If not, you can place two snipes, one around 15-20 secs before the end, and a second one at 1-3 seconds before coming for anyone disrespectful enough to have outbid you in the meantime.
Make sure that one second is one second and that you don’t miss out on it. Gixen is probably the most popular, free and ultra reliable, that places a double snipe from the East and West Coast, in case of a blackout. Heh.
I for some weird reason have settled on a paying sniper program, auctionsniper, when I was a rookie and had no idea about auto sniper programs.
Cacheman recommended it, making sure that I understood that the 1% that they charged, is worth the outcome. Another Darksider who marked my coin life.
Speaking of which, is that MacCrimmon guy still around or is he another loss to the Darkside? The man introduced me to Swiss coins, he’s been my mentor. Mac, come out and say hi! Respectfully, your persistent student.
myEbay
DPOTD 3
Well, my collection would have never been what it is without all the folks on this forum. I've learned a lot and continue to do so while trying to share some of that passion back
@MacCrimmon hasn't been on since Last November - hope all is well with him.
8 Reales Madness Collection
_ Well, my collection would have never been what it is without all the folks on this forum. I've learned a lot and continue to do so while trying to share some of that passion back ;)_
Hmmm, sounds very familiar Roman, VERY familiar. I’m too old to remember the direction I had taken before joining this forum. There was a long period, that I was starting and finishing my day with the Darkside, way before Facebook had even been conceived as an idea, or other coin forums, locals or international etc. There is something magic happening here, that gets under your skin, before you even realize it. And it is always for the better. Some of us need help beyond coins and I have reason to believe that the Darkside helped me enormously to become a better person, and a better collector as well.
myEbay
DPOTD 3
Nice coin.
My YouTube Channel
I'm still alive!!
Got a nice dose of this coronavirus (13 days in hospital isolation).....but, I have excellent insurance so it didn't cost me a dime. Jeeez, it had to have been a $250k total bill.
Glad to see some of the old faces ..... Sweet 2Rp, btw. I'd put money on that once being in David Hall's collection.
Mac, so sorry to hear about the Covid, nasty virus. A friend of mine died from it. Hope all is well now.
DPOTD-3
'Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery'
CU #3245 B.N.A. #428
Don
Hey!!!! As long as you are still here!
BTW, it took me a LOOONG time, but by a pure coincidence I figured out what these green round stickers on the reverse of the slabs were and whose provenance it meant.
Here’s an old favorite that went through my hands twice and it’s still no longer mine.
Very sorry about your COVID fight and Don, I’m truly sorry about your friend.... This thread almost turned into a roll call, if we add a few PMs that I got, but it’s a different and crazy world that we live in, compared with 15 years ago for ex. BTW, I’m on my second part of my 17th year here as a member, still not nearly as close as shroom or Mac, but they are adding up rather quickly lately, posting or not....
myEbay
DPOTD 3
@SYRACUSIAN Thanks for the ebay link for gmarguli! Wow he has a lot of cool stuff, I will follow his auctions very closely.
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