Who's to say when a collection has been seasoned enough for sale (and is there ever a right time)?

Longacre

In another thread, someone posted an interesting response. In commenting on a major collection, this person indicated that if there were any negatives to the collection, it is that it was being brought to market without having been seasoned enough. Does anyone know what factors have to be taken into account in determining whether a collection is seasoned enough to bring back to market? In the information about this collection, I believe that it was started in 1999, and it is being offered at FUN 2007. When I read this, I thought to myself that it seemed to be formed very quickly and disposed just as quickly. Although it is not up to us to judge when a collector can sell his collection, do the "best" collections gain some credibility when they are held for long periods of time rather than flipped almost immediately? Are the big auction houses to blame for this churning? Or should we not care that a collection is not seasoned and just gorge ourselves on these numismatic delicacies?

Zoins

How long a collection has been around doesn't matter to me because it's independent of the quality of coins. With the Internet and air travel, you can sometimes bulid a quality collection very quickly if you are determined enough and the pieces become available to you. The timing of the sale can be due to any number of factors such as if a cash infusion is necessary for personal reasons or an investor thinks the market is going to turn and wants to make sure he gets a good price. Either reason doesn't relate to the quality of the coins.

MrEureka

I don't know if a collection needs to be "seasoned", but individual coins that have been off the market for decades tend to get people excited.

ColonialCoinUnion

<< <i>With the Internet and air travel, you can sometimes bulid a quality collection very quickly if you are determined enough and the pieces become available to you. >>



I like airplanes as much as the next guy, but when a really significant collection is assembled quickly it is most often becaue the owner bought an existing collection (which had invariably been painstakingly assembled over a long period of time).

Zoins

<< <i>

<< <i>With the Internet and air travel, you can sometimes bulid a quality collection very quickly if you are determined enough and the pieces become available to you. >>



I like airplanes as much as the next guy, but when a really significant collection is assembled quickly it is most often becaue the owner bought an existing collection (which had invariably been painstakingly assembled over a long period of time). >>

I thought the question here is specifically about the case where a collection was formed quickly? I didn't think to exclude time previous people spent working on the collection. Does the time that went into putting together a collection get reset to 0 when it changes hands?

1921obsession

Maybe I'm showing my rookie chops here, but who cares? The coins don't know where they are or where they were. "Seasoning," to my jaded ears, sounds like "hasn't been off the market long enough to generate sick profits for the seller." Provenance aside, and I think that term is pretty violently overworked anyways, I can't even comprehend what's important about where a coin was before it entered my posession.

Julian

Andy is certainly correct on this.

Think about the Garrett collection, or better yet, the John J. Ford series of sales.

Items from these collections were never available to 99% of the active collectors. That is where the frenzy comes in.

1921Obs thought that this was strictly toward obscene profits, but it is more about the excitement generated from coins that have never been seen before.

IMHO, seasoning a collection is quite important to the financial return and many of the Registry collectors are very much interested in that.