How does one go about getting auction consignments?

Longacre

The "business side" of the coin hobby always fascinates me. I was hoping that someone from one of the major auction houses (ANR, Heritage, etc.) could comment on how they go about getting consignments for their auctions. I assume that there is already a relationship between the auction house (which is usually a retail seller as well) and the consignor, but with the volume of coins that have come up for auction in the past year or two, there has to be other ways that auction firms go about getting consignments. Does anyone have any comments?

kranky

Any problem if I toss out some uninformed guesses?

1. As you suggested, collectors contact the firm they bought from and the firm auctions them.
2. Collectors contact a dealer who refers the collector to an auction firm.
3. Auction firm includes material from their own inventory in the auction.
4. Collector contacts an auction firm after seeing an advertisement in a hobby publication.
5. Collector contacts multiple auction firms to shop for the best deal.

beartracks42

I can't speak with any experience, since I have never consigned coins, but, I do get copious letters from both Heritage and Bowers&Merena, wanting my coins, collection, etc. for their consignments. I do not think that this is coincidence, since I have purchased from each of them several times and they know that I am a collector.

kieferscoins

Advertise. Word of mouth. Be at every major show. Have good sale results.

Cameron Kiefer

photog

As the industry is small, of course we know a lot of the people who bring us consignments on a first name basis. They bring them to us because of confidence in our cataloguing, our presentations, our advertising, or by recommendation from other dealers, etc.
But we also get phone calls (quite regularly) out of nowhere (seemingly) from someone who has found our number, saw us on TV (like during the DuPont dollar publicity), got our number off the internet (hey! there are benies to being early in the alphabet, you know), or sometimes a spouse dies and the coin book on their shelf has Dave (QDB) on the back cover, so they call looking for him. We get all sorts of things from people who have very little to do with the hobby except that they inherited something.
When we were on the local ABC news channel last winter we got hundreds of calls from people who had "dollars worth millions, too!" and out of those calls we wound up with a beautiful consignment from a small town here in NH, two beautiful eagles that had been off the market in family hands for nearly a century, and we were quite thrilled to see what a little treasure they had!
This week we are getting all SORTS of calls from people who have "pennies worth thousands," as they have seen the publicity from the Strawberry cent. It takes a great deal of patience to explain to someone that the 1898 IHC they found in a sock drawer does NOT have "strawberry leaves" on the back!
It's always interesting here, if nothing else!
So the short answer: we get them from all sorts of places, people, and situations. It's a real mixed bag.

Jenna
ANR