The past and the future of coin collecting?

SwK

The past was interesting in its own way, multiple coins in a lot, for example:

Tradesmen's tokens [condor] of the XVII century.Copper halfpennies, and farthings, including some town pieces.

Lot.1 Bedfordshire, 61; Bucks, 79 140 pieces sold 1-2-0 (one pound two shillings)
Lot.12 Salop, 21; Somerset, 129 150 peces sold 12-0 (12 shillings)

The first day sale totaled 301-14-6 a great sum in 1844

The sale was over 9 days with the proceeds being 3'779-4-0 this being quite a sum for the period


QUESTION, I WONDER WILL WE EVER REVERT BACK TO MULTIPLE LOTS? what have we to look foreward to?


Regards

laurentyvan

If you mean by multiple coins in a lot, you mean I bid on say, 12 coins at once, I'm probably a wholesaler who will resell.

As a collector there may be several coins I want, all part of several different lots, but I will bid and purchase singly as I want them.

If I'm selling a lot of 40 coins, I'm also not maximizing my profits by finding the right customer for the right coin.

RobP

I don't think we will ever revert back to the previous form as the auction houses have a vested interest in maximising their profits. It is also much easier today to provide illustrated lists of lots following the advent of computers compared to 100 years ago when they had to take a wax impression and transfer the image to paper in order to illustrate the coins. Consequently, only the most important or spectacular pieces were illustrated in a catalogue, whilst many rarities languished in anonymity.

Things are much more hurried now than they were fifty or a hundred years ago or more as well. To pick a past catalogue at random illustrates the point well. The Morrieson collection sold at Sotheby's over 5 days from 20-24/11/1933 with 236, 241, 238, 240(ish) and 242 lots on their respective days, but there was a large number of lots with double digit numbers of coins and the total number of coins in the sale ran to many, many thousands. Today we have sales which regularly feature over 1000 lots in one day, and the vast majority are illustrated.

Thankfully, low grades are still lumped together as multiple lots, but any half decent coin will be illustrated and so typically sold as a single lot (which also encourages new buyers to bid because they can see what they would be buying). The days of old when Spink or Baldwin would back every lot are over - price increases have seen to that. When you are paying 100-1000x early 1900's prices for a coin or 50x that of a mid-fifties example, the cost is prohibitive. As a result the quality of your average collection has similarly reduced. e.g. The O'Hagan sale in 1907 was a second line sale in terms of its contemporaries, but he still had over 30, 5 guinea pieces, and most of those were multiple lots combined with 2 guineas, guineas and fractions. Today this would be unthinkable.