Poll: I am drowning in auction catalogs!

RYK

Heritage, B&M, Superior, ANR, Scotsman (no, I do not bother with Stacks)...In the last year or so, I have received seemingly countless auction catalogs. I have purchased coins from Heritage, B&M, and Superior, and consigned coins to Scotsman, so the catalogs should keep coming for a while. Some of them are very interesting/educational--others are rather mundane. What do others do?

Tonekiller

Add the Goldberg's.

TBT

Outhaul

I save every single one. I love looking through them.

Cheers,

Bob

dbldie55

I save them all (and have multiples of many now). I need more book shelves and a plan on how to arrange them.

Nysoto

I save all of them, and buy more of the old ones I don't have. Last year I built a detached garage/workshop to house my DeSoto's and auction catalogs.

Placid

Sell them.

Barry

I toss them after the auction. If I win a coin, I tear out that page from the catalog and staple it to the invoice, for future reference. You guys must have endless bookshelves!

Shamika

I love auction catalogs. They get me fired up for auctions that I might otherwise not bother with.

RYK

I have decided that I am going to keep the ones that are interesting (large cent errors, Jay Roe fractional gold collection, 1804 Silver Dollar feature, Bass 1861-D $5) and discard those that are a random smattering of coins.

It is tempting also to discard the Heritage catalogs that come with a CD-ROM. The CD-ROM is much easier to store. Frankly, the online archives for Heritage and B&M are very easy to use, and the Heritage archives are usually amenable to research auctions for specific date/MM/condition coins.

Robert

jacktheknife

I only collect Lincolns. So, if there are no high end Lincolns in a particular sale, that catalog gets circular filed.

Outhaul

Anyone who feels overly burdened with auction catalogs are more than welcome to send them on to me. I will gladly pay postage...book rate of course

Cheers,

Bob

Dahlonega

Usually take the ones I don't want to keep to the weekly coin club meeting auction. Always auction them with the proceeds going to the club...usually will bring couple of dollars a catalogue and someone else enjoys the catalogue again.

mgoodm3

There's no check mark for "I don't have no stinking auction catalogs and have never received any."

Lakesammman

I have a couple 4 drawer file cabinets in the garage. Each one holds about 4-5 years of catalogs, in perfect order. It's cheap and doesn't take up much space.

nwcs

Only have one auction catalog and I've saved it so far.

Steve27

I'm with mgoodm3, I don't get no stinkin catalogs.

Geoman

I'm also with mgoodm3 and Steve27.

I do not have a single auction catalog, and don't want any. Besides, if the coin is in an auction catalog, I couldn't afford it anyways. I have a hard enough time reading and throwing out the weekly NN. Just went through those last night, and threw out everything before Jan 2003.

291fifth

Unless a catalog can serve as a reference work for a series, which very few do, it just takes up valuable shelf space.

RiffRaff1967

Don't get any. Knowing my pack-rat ways, I'm glad that I don't.

paigowjohnny

I never get any because I'm a cheap screw....

Nic

I save them and collect all early plated cat.'s. Great reference tool. K

ColonialCoinUnion

<< <i>Unless a catalog can serve as a reference work for a series, which very few do, it just takes up valuable shelf space.

-------------------------
Think like a dealer. >>



291fifth -

Now theres a numismatic oxymoron if I've ever seen one.

If you want to think like a dealer (and I assume you do or you woudn't be using that little tagline) then you better save those auction catalogs and track what the coins you collect are selling for. It may surprise you to learn which of the same old coins show up in shiny new holders in the next catalog.

Trime

Love those catalogues!
Coupled with the collated list of prices paid and auction source ,they are an incredible resource.

Pistareen

I'm curious -- who actually reads the catalogues they receive? If you read them (and I don't mean flipping through and looking at the big pictures), do you only read the series you collect or do you read it all?

From the sound of some of the posts, auction catalogues are more consumed as temporary buying resource than used as permanent tool. I prefer the later more than the former, which is why my apartment has one more bedroom than people I suppose. There is not a day that goes by that I don't use an old auction catalogue.

For those who don't know what to do with their old ones, I'd recommend either boxing them up and shipping them to the ANA Library (who sells their duplicates every year and uses the money to buy new books for the membership) or taking them to a local coin club as one poster suggested -- my local coin club was the first place I was exposed to auction catalogues as a source of information and where I began to build my library as a young collector.

ColonialCoinUnion

<< <i>I'm curious -- who actually reads the catalogues they receive? If you read them (and I don't mean flipping through and looking at the big pictures), do you only read the series you collect or do you read it all?
>>



John -

Based on a piece of advice from Dave Bowers, I started building a catalog library and now have most every Stacks, Bowers, Heritage, Goldberg, Superior, Merkin, Melkin, Pine Tree, New Netherlands, Kagin's and Paramount catalog plus all kinds of obscure one-off stuff dating back to about 1950 or so with a few of the old classics thrown in.

I read the colonial sections every day - either researching a particular coin or just killing time before work. It seems like theres always something new to be learned even re-reading one I've looked at dozens of times.

For anyone spending any meaningful money on coins I think assembling at least a basic catalog library is mandatory.

EarlyHalfBoobu

Auction catalogs have been an absolute necessity to me in my study of individual examples and pedigrees of early US half dollars.