New England coin auction
logger7
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A dealer told me about this auction today in Deerfield, MA, which I did not want to drive up to. They were accepting online bids but there is no way to find if bidding is strong or weak since they don't run it online.
Are these types of "blind" auctions where no one knows other's bids unless you are in the bidding room as successful as online ones that most numismatic companies run?
https://douglasauctioneers.com/auctions/product/april-15-at-10-am/
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This is rather old school
If they have a lot of coins and few bidders, it could be a good opportunity.
There were some better coins, most all certified. I'd think dealers would be looking for inventory or material they could flip. The problem with an outfit like this is that they may not have achieved the type of saturation they would need to get full market value. No results posted online for whatever reason.
It might. But on the other hand, if you’re unfamiliar with the company, how do you know that your bid won’t automatically be maxed out? Some mail bid sales treat maximum bids as offers on the items being “auctioned”.
Mark Feld* of Heritage Auctions*Unless otherwise noted, my posts here represent my personal opinions.
That is a good point by @MFeld.... Be sure you understand the auction terms... Cheers, RickO
I don't know. I used to see these sales like this when I lived in New England. If you had any chance of doing well at all, you had to see the coins in person.
I remember one outfit had an 1879 $4 gold piece in the auction is "a draw." It was not nice and fairly marked up. When it came up for bidding, the open was $20,000. It didn't draw a floor bid. I had the impression that they were "buying it in." This was in the 1990s.
The minimums were all pretty high, and there were not any bargains from what I could see. Remember if the material is protected, nothing is going out the door cheap.
Or not.
(Just saw @MFeld beat me to it.)
I put in a few online bids and they told me that Monday they would alert buyers to what they had won. I just put in conservative bids. Clearly we've seen some shenanigans in the past. And though auctions are licensed that doesn't mean that they can't play games.