Guidelines for consigning?

dan1ecu

Sometime in the future, I might want to upgrade my collection. Would you say that consigning to an auction is the best way to go about selling coins, providing that I don’t know any coin dealers personally? For those of you who have gone this route, do you have any advice that you can give to someone who is inexperienced with selling at auctions? I’m assuming that the buyer and seller share the commission to the auctioneer? Even so, have you gotten fair prices for your coins? Are there rules of thumb regarding where to set the reserve? Also, I believe that Heritage will buy coins outright. Has anyone sold directly to Heritage?

Thanks,

Dan

gmarguli

What is the value of the collection and how many coins. Slabbed or raw? Type? Those are big factors.

dan1ecu

Well, they’re all slabbed (PCGS and NGC). Various types. As far as value, I’d say they range from a couple of hundred dollars to about a thousand dollars. I’d probably sell no more than a few at a time, as I add nicer coins to my collection.

Dan

coinguy1

Hi Dan,

There are a few pointers I feel I can give you (having worked for a major aution company and being a buyer and seller in many sales, as well) :

While on paper, it might appear that the buyer and seller split the auction fees to some degree, in reality, such is not really the case. For instance, if you consign to a company that charges 5% to the seller and 15% to the buyer (many major auctioneers charge a 15% buyer's fee these days), you must take into account that nearly every buyer takes the buyer's fee into account when calculating bids. If I am willing to pay $1150 for a coin, I bid a maximum of $1000 hammer price, knowing that a 15% fee will be added to the winning bid. So, you as a seller, are getting paid based on my reduced bid of $1000, not $1150 Bottom line, whatever the so called split is between buyer's and seller's commissions, the money comes out of the seller's pocket.

Many coins are not well suited for auction. The hype is usually about the coins that bring staggering prices at auctions but many coins bring only so-so prices and you are wasting your time and money consigning them to auction. Coins best suited for auction fall into two categories, in my opinion :

1) premium quality coins where bidders go nuts in hopes of getting coins that will upgrade from the major grading services. Many times the coins don't upgrade and sometimes, even if they do, the prices realized correspond to a higher grade anyway. We have sold such coins in auction for more money than we would feel comfortable quoting our clients.

2) coins that are especially rare or esoteric and need exposure through a major auction beacuse you don't know who the potential audience for a such a coin is otherwise.

Many other coins can just as easily be sold through Ebay or through a dealer, where you hopefuly wont have to incur commissions of 15% or more. For auctions you must also consider buy-back fees if the coins don't meet reserves, the fact that you don't ususally get paid for 30 to 45 days and that you usually have your coins tied up for a minimum of 30 days. Don't get me wrong, I'm not at all opposed to autions but it must be for the right coins.

gmarguli

If you only want to do a couple at a time then I would suggest eBay. Thousand dollar coins are not good sellers there, but you can sell coins for a few hundred. Dealers usually suck. They lowball offers. Consider posting a list on the B/S/T board with what you want to get rid of and what you want.

Unless you are going to consign a large amount to auction comapnies, you are not going to get a good return. As was stated, you're getting market price minus the buyers fee. If you wanted to consign $50,000+ then you could maybe get 5%-10% of the buyers fee, but no way for under $50,000.

dan1ecu

Hello, Mark –

That’s a good point about the fees really coming out of the sellers pocket. That makes me wonder if coins that auction for $20-$30 are making anything at all for the sellers, considering shipping, insurance, etc.

Greg - eBay sounds like a good idea...

Thanks,

Dan

dan1ecu

After thinking it over...

I’m just going to wait 15-20 years until the coins are worth 5x what I payed Then auction fees won’t bother me as much. Am I being too optimistic? Oh, well...

Dan

littlewicher

Ebay has cheap seller fees and no buyer fees.

Nic

Pinnacle's website has an excellent and true discussion on this topic. I often buy/sell coins at auction. For generic, easy to price, everyday coins the cost is too high. Use Ebay or a good dealer. K