Bid Board Buying Strategies you used.
Insider2
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If you are old enough to remember a bid board in a coin shop auction please tell us some of the tricks 
you used to be a successful bidder.
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During the week I would go to the shop and rearrange the lots on the wall so that the coins I was going to bid on were next to each other in one small area. Others must have done the same thing because this continued until the day of the auction. Then I would need to note the final location of each lot on the night of the sale. You didn't do this with a bunch of bidders around waiting for the auction to end.
'Old enough'? Come out to Tucson--a bunch of the shops still use bid boards.
When I bought coins from this kind of auction (2007-2011), I usually bought European and Latin American gold (almost always BU). I filled two Dansco blank albums (the pages held flips) with coins before I sold them when gold went up enough to make a decent profit. With one exception (100 Fr Angel Writing--French gold coin ca. the size of a double eagle), I never paid above spot + 2%. Lots of interesting designs, and I learned some things (particularly authentication, since almost all of the foreign gold coins were raw).
Most coins on bid boards are there for two reasons---they didn't sell well when in a case (low grade or foreign) and the boards get customers into the shops on Saturday mornings. The most important 'trick' is self control. On occasion, I watched two determined and antagonistic bidders run up bids way beyond what they were bidding on was worth. Once in a while, I noticed that an interesting foreign coin was misidentified. If I wanted it, I simply waited until the time of the actual auction to place my bid, after others had finished bidding. I usually got whatever I really wanted.
RMR: 'Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen?'
CJ: 'No one!' [Ain't no angels in the coin biz]
There was a shop I used to frequent in Renton, WA that had a bid board... It was still in active use in 2007...Never participated, but did buy some of their coins from them. Cheers, RickO
There was a shop in Pasadena, CA in the 80s with an active bid board. There would be drawing each week, usually for a 2 peso gold piece. I would bid on all the junk silver lots at the going rate, just to increase my odds of winning the gold. This worked well...I won a fair number.
LRC Numismatics eBay listings:
http://stores.ebay.com/lrcnumismatics
Insult bid on almost everything that had no reserve. Be shocked and surprised if I won anything, and feel bad for the consignor. I did the same with Heritage bid sheets. Actually won a few.
The only one I ever participated in was at our annual club show when I lived in Ohio.
Members had to submit coins one month prior to the show, and no reserves were allowed.
Members were encouraged to place protective bids, if they wanted a 'reserve'. There were no fees or commissions charged to the consignors or buyers.
As I was on the Bid Board committee, we put together the lot orders, grades, descriptions, and estimated values on sheets issued, then manned the table of lots and the board the day of the show, and we were allowed to bid on the coins ourselves, along with the other club members, the public, and the show dealers in attendance.
I had my slips filled out and submitted my bids late in the auction, when of course things got crazy, as most others were doing the same thing, and there was generally >100 lots.
The 'nice stuff' generally brought respectable prices, or had protective bids from the owners on them. But there were also a lot of bargains to be had as well, especially if the consignors didn't bother to place protective bids.
Elbow the other guy out
I give away money. I collect money.
I don’t love money . I do love the Lord God.
Being a millennial, I am unfamiliar with what a “bid board” is/was. Does this video capture the general gist of how a bid board would work?
I can't tell.
A lot of this went on when someone was blocking a lot he wanted. Several times an arm would shoot past by ear to get to a lot I didn't care to bid on.
@NSP
Yes
Buy low sell high. Regards.
PS: Village down in the ATX still had the bid board going last time I was down. It's been a few years though.
The whole worlds off its rocker, buy Gold™.
BOOMIN!™
Wooooha! Did someone just say it's officially "TACO™" Tuesday????
I knew Type2 had a great eye and would let him do all the work and try to outbid him.
The one I went to (Niles Coin Store) was still active recently (although just barely). It used to be better (with more variety and lower opening bids). My strategy was to wait until the end and to focus on overlooked coins (like foreign). I did win some at bargain prices. A few times there were bidding wars, but everything was fairly calm (no shoving that I recall). There was one nicely toned coin where my strategy did not work. It that had a higher opening and no action early in the week. I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to get it for the starting bid near the end. Unfortunately, when I arrived on the day of the auction, it was gone. Apparently the seller changed their mind and removed it (I'm not sure if they would have still been allowed to do so had I put the opening bid in when it was just posted).
The one I was involved with in the late 70's, closed at noon on Saturday. I would show up around 11:45 to check on my bids. I would bid a small jump on coins I wanted but wasn't desperate for and a larger bid for those that I really, really wanted and as close to the closing time as I could be. I got most of those.
Once at a silent auction I was at, a guy started writing his name and bid a minute or two before the closing time...and took the full 2 minutes to do so! It caused a lot of complaining and he was instructed to not do that again.
Louis Armstrong
About thirty five years ago, I went to a charity auction in DC and put a high bid on a guitar signed by Emmy Lou Harris. About a month later I got a phone call asking if I still wanted the item? I said yes, I had forgotten all about it. Apparently my first bid was a good one (stupid?) because no other attendees bid on the lot. I guess that night the Charity thought it was a joke bid and didn't know what to do. I had left earlier as you didn't need to be present to win. I guess they were able to eventually find me and called. Anyway, two people dropped off the guitar the next week, minus the signed picture and record album that went with the lot.
I still have it.
During my years as a collector, I participated in two bid walls. By far the bigger one by far one was the Worthy Coin Company wall which was run in Boston. The late Don Romano ran it. His father, Corrado, was the founder of the business. By the time I started coming to the Worthy Coin Shop circa 1980, Corrado had retired from the business. I never had the pleasure of meeting him because he never came to the store. I think that Corrado did select the lots from his extensive collection and inventory that were sold. I got to know Don quite well.
Some people think that bid walls mainly have coins of nominal value, but that was hardly the case with Worthy Coin. Among other pieces, I bought 1793 Chain Cent, my avatar, and a 1796 Quarter that is now in a PCGS VF-25 holder. On the day I bought that piece, there were TWO 1796 Quarters coming down on the same day. The other one was better, but I didn’t have the money to bid on it.
One piece that got away is now one of the finiest known 1804 dimes. I simply ran out of money and couldn't bid any more. A freind of mine, who was bidding on behalf of another person nodded to me to that I had reached his limit, but I just couldn't keep going. I wish I could have. The piece is worth ten times what I was bidding in that sale.
Of course in those days, everything was raw. There were ANACS papers, but when you bid on something, you had to use your knowledge and your brain. There were no slabbed coins.
Representatives from the large dealers in the area participated in these auctions. They included JJ Teaparty and New England Rare Coin Gallary, which was run by Jim Halprin. That was only a couple of the well-known dealers.
The bid worked on a duel bid system. The coins were put up on the wall, and you could bid on them using a bidder number. On the day they sold, there was a live auction. They took bids from the floor, but there were also book bids. The advances were ludicrously set at 25 cents. You could bid $10,000 and somebody on the floor could say “And a quarter,” and you were out bid. This changed toward the end, but it was in force for a long time.
My strategy was to bid live on some items, but to leave a book bid on the more expensive lots. In that case Don Romano or his helper, Henry, executed the book bids.
I might sound excessively conceited, but over the years, I’ve had trouble with people jumping into auctions simply because I started placing bids. That’s why I placed book bids for some of the better material.
The other bid wall was Night Owl Numismatics. It was a much smaller auction that was run by the late Tom Lacey who had a store in Foxboro and later Plainville Massachusetts. There were some good coins that came down from that auction and sometimes some real bargains. I usually bid live in those auctions. Most of the time I was bidding on the more expensive lots, and my competition was often other dealers or “more well healed collectors” who knew what they were doing.
Here was the best buy I made at Night Owl Numismatics, an 1852 half eagle. I bought this coin for less than $300. That was "dirt cheap" when I bought it, even back then, over 20 years ago. No one else was interested in it. It's now in an NGC MS-61 holder.
Writing this piece took me back to some interesting times ...
I had several bid numbers, and sometimes would bid on coins that I had no interest in to throw other bidders off.
There would be several bidders who would want a coin because I had shown interest in it, and this would throw them off the scent (pun intended.)
In the late 1960s, there were several bid boards not too far from where I lived and went to high school. Lots were generally a hodge podge of stuff that no one really wanted. There was a bid of $1.05 for something I wanted, and I bid $1.06 for it right before closing and got it.
I still have things, like four circulated mint marked Mercs from the 1920s for which I paid something like $1.00. I still have an XF late date common IHC I think I paid $1 for it. You have to remember, back then you could get a 38 D Buff (the shop owner had rolls of them) in today what would be MS 66 for $1 or $2. Some of them might grade MS 67 by today's standards.
Locally, the best place for coins were the George Bennett Auctions at the Masonic Hall in Van Nuys, CA.