Legend/Simpson and Heritage
NebuchadnezzarTheGreat
Posts: 219 ✭✭
Laura's market report this week was dead-on. I particularly enjoyed her comments about how Legend built the Simpson collections (very true!). Unfortunately an interview was recently posted about Heritage auctioning his coins that was misleading regarding his collection and how he acquired the coins.
0
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
I personally don't think it was misleading but rather that aspect of collecting simply wasn't covered.
Of course, one could argue that omission is misleading but I don't necessarily think it is. It's common for dealers to not get mentioned when great collectors and collections are discussed, for better and worse. This isn't an exception to the "rule", it's following the rule.
This has been discussed extensively in another thread already. At the end of the thread there is a list of dealers for prominent collectors. Ask yourself how often are the dealers mentioned in the context of the collector and collection? My answer is not enough, but it goes to show how common this is.
https://forums.collectors.com/discussion/1045027/interview-with-bob-simpson#latest
In your context...does discretion = privacy? That's what I would want! If I bought a coin from Legend...went to auction it...I wouldn't want it mentioned. I think it's probably a reasonable assumption if you bought a coin from Legend, you probably paid all the money at the time.
This is my pick for post of the month.
My Saint Set
Honestly I agree, BUT I can see it from both sides. Laura does not want someone else getting the credit for assembling that massive collection, but SImpson payed them (most likely) a hefty chunk of change to do it.
I think discretion is very important to a coin collector, yet I post here. Makes no sense, but as @crazyhounddog says, what good are they if you can’t show them off.
On the point of dealers getting credit it does seem historically more often than not that the dealer actually owned the coin, even if only a short period of time. Perhaps that was the case here for at least some of the subject coins?
I'm not sure. Even if the dealer did own the coin for some time, they still don't tend to come up in conversation about those collections. For example, we have lots of threads on Brent Pogue here and I don't recall his dealers ever coming up.
Agree, but I was actually alluding to the chain of custody provenance where dealers who actually just purchased a significant coin to turn around and then sell it become a link in the chain themselves even when their ownership was of limited time duration.
Personally, I like more information than less so even if a dealer owned a coin for a short period of time or even if they didn't own it and handled it on consignment, I'd like to see them listed in the provenance chain. For consignment, often Heritage or Stack’s are included in provenance chains. I've posted on this topic before and not everyone agrees. For example, to me it's very interesting to note that Kevin Lipton is in the provenance chain before Bruce for the Dexter Dollar. I'd love to see Laura / Legend, Doug Winter, John Agre / CRO in provenance chains, but at the same time I'm not sure how collectors feel about the dealer that sold them a coin figuring so prominently in a provenance chain.
My point was that in casual discussion, dealers aren't generally mentioned when talking about great collectors and collections. This happens even when provenance chains are known. This fits with your big game hunting story as well. How many big game hunters want to tell the story that their guide tracked the prey so they only had to point and squeeze the trigger?
No disrespect intended towards Laura, but my thoughts are if a dealer owns a coin for a length of time then sells it by all means they should be in the provenance chain. If the dealer found the coin and bought it just to flip, I don't believe they should be noted just because they done their job, which they got paid for.
I also wonder what the unedited video had to say. Quite possible Laura & Legacy were at least mentioned, if not discussed at length and that part " hit the editing room floor "
edited to add : Laura / Legacy should have been mentioned. I just have to wonder how many hours / years they put in in assembling Mr. Simpsons collection. Does anyone happen to know when Laura / Legacy got involved with Mr. Simpson ?
Laura indicated they started working together in 2001.
T.Y. Zoins
Maybe im missing something but Mr. Simpson has without saying alot over the years built one of the great collections of all time. If at this time he wants to do an interview that focuses solely on him (whether his choice or edited) thats ok.
I would say I found Laura's alternate account, but I noticed everything is spelled correct and the punctuation is accurate as well...
She’s using spellcheck.
Funny. I'm definitely not Laura. However, I've worked with her in the past. I'm just not at liberty to post here as a representative of my company, thus my lack of naming myself.
That being said, I know Laura isn't the first dealer who got shafted by a large auction house after building a major collection. It's not the auction house's job to advertise for the competitor, I get that, but it is rather unprofessional to handle it this way.
I don’t recall dealers for Pogue, Newman, Gardner and others being highlighted in their sales, but I also didn’t look for it. Will I find their dealers mentioned in the sales materials by Heritage and Stack’s? I had assumed I wouldn’t find it but perhaps is there?
If it’s common practice to mention dealers, can you point to auction house material for those collection sales that indicate the dealers that helped build the collections?
this is about collectors, not about the dealers.
I don't get this one. I'm pretty sure that Pogue, Simpson, Cardinal, Hanson, Morelan... wrote the checks. Who they, or who they didn't, rely on to help build the set is completely irrelevant.
Shafted? How so?
Compensation, in the form of a sales commission, was fully received by the seller at the time of sale. As far as I’m concerned no further advertising or promotion of the dealer is “due” at a later date. A mention of a particularly helpful dealer is nice, but should not be an expectation. Discretion, possibly in perpetuity, is part of the job.
I think it is disingenuous to call an auction where the two most important coins (and two of the most important U.S. coins period) fail to sell a "success."
I love that she can't even spell her long term business partner's name correctly. Who is "Bruce Morgan?" I've never heard of the "THE BRUCE MORGAN SET OF BUST DOLLARS."
I find it interesting that she is willing to throw Bruce under the bus and deflect blame: "Its (sic) not that Legend Auctions was the wrong venue (we were perfect for this set), Bruce simply made the reserves too high for the current market...." Every other auction house offered an 1804 dollar has been able to sell it. I've never heard of an 1804 dollar being passed over in an auction. If the reserves were too high she should have rejected the consignment. This is a stain on the auction house's legacy IMHO. It's looks like it can't move seven figure coins regardless of whether this is true or not.
In true spirit, she always has to make things about her. She may have been the hired help, but it was Simpson's collection built with Simpson's money. He could have hired any number of other dealers and built the same set. I also doubt she picked out every one of Simpson's coins.
But the pattern of grandiosity and sense of superiority implied by the moniker (e.g. "Nebuchadnezzar The Great") as well of sense of entitlement (the "shafted" comment) is consistent with her MO. It's a textbook sign of narcissism. Maybe she finally heeded our advice and hired a college English major to write her prose for her.
She didn't get the admiration and praise she felt entitled to receive.
Go read Laura's rants in the DLH thread if you want to see what that woman is all about. Herself. She sees the collections she is paid to build as her own, in a way, because of the time she put into them. Somewhat understandable, but at the end of the day, Simpson likely paid her multiples of what my net worth will ever be to do so. If she was not already rich from building his collection, she probably got rich doing it. I do not understand how that woman can whine so much about perceived sleights when others have so little relative to her privileged position in this world. Be grateful you had those opportunities and got to enjoy building his collection.
Her comments in the DLH thread start in the link below and you can see that she is really only there to push herself up via her clients money. Reading the way she fawns over his collection should explain why she is so upset over her client walking to HA to sell and preventing Legend from getting a double dip.
https://forums.collectors.com/discussion/comment/12343017#Comment_12343017
I do wonder if Simpson walked at least in part due to being tired of hearing Laura take credit for what his money bought. I know I would.
"It's like God, Family, Country, except Sticker, Plastic, Coin."
With all due respect - you know nothing. You don’t know the number of times I yelled at her for making too little on a great coin for Simpson. You don’t know the number of times she had to roll over during her ‘grades are too loose’ campaign to host a regrade party for Simpson. To allow a coin to have a ‘magic dip’ where she fought for nothing to happen despite the 1% conservation fee. To have a certain customer almost break her company by not paying for a near 7 figure coin for almost a year...when she probably made 5% on it. And you say she made what she deserved? She always told me if she took care of him on the way in she’d make the money on the way out. And not only does she not get the consignment but she gets edited out of the comments? That’s total bullcrap and I’m telling it for what it is now. Bullcrap.
I don’t get it. Why is Simpson obligated to consign with Legend?
He may not obligated to but it's good business as they've had a nearly 2 decade relationship. I imagine Simpson would have consigned with Legend under different circumstances.
Because a good relationship is a two way street.
Maybe, just maybe, Simpson is familiar with the concept of fiduciary responsibility and feels he has a fiduciary responsibility to maximize the returns off the sale of the collection, and in his best judgement, HA is the place to do that at this time, not Legend.
At any rate, you are hardly unbiased, being Laura's business partner. How much is Legend missing out on from not getting to sell Simpsons collection? You have already said that Laura had basically counted that chicken before it hatched... So how big was the egg?
Of course you will not answer that because you want to talk about things like relationships and honor, when in reality, relationships and honor are just a vehicle to what Legend Numismatics really cares about. Money.
Heritage has done more for the hobby and society in general than Legend ever has and ever will. Good on Simpson for going with them.
"It's like God, Family, Country, except Sticker, Plastic, Coin."
At the end of the day, they were Simpson's coins and he has the right to do what he thinks is best for him including where to sell those coins.
Simpson is going through a divorce. Venue may not have totally been his choice.
It's doubtful he did the editing. Did he even have a choice in venue or was choice of venue made by property settlement agreement or court order?
Very true.
Generally speaking, wife's attorney would want to avoid husband's prior choices in business relationships.
Fify
Love it when people who have no clue espouse on subjects that they shouldn’t...
Please someone kill this thread.
11.5$ Southern Dollars, The little “Big Easy” set
It’s been interesting.
No. Please leave it.
A coin buying business relationship is not related in any way to a potential coin selling relationship. In many cases actually a good buying venue is not the best selling venue. And the collections should be named after the collectors and not after the dealers.
I do 100% agree with Gazes.
So he dispersed his coin assets into his wife's name as part of a estate tax plan and lost control.
Latin American Collection
Seems like her "big fish" are swimming away.
My Saint Set
Perhaps Bob can do an interview with PCGS? PCGS seemed always happy to mention Legend in their Simpson articles. It would be great to hear Bob's thoughts on Legend. He was very well-spoken in the interview so I'm sure he'd say nice things about Laura and Legend.
And there you have it. A divorce hurts or ruins many things, in this case possibly his relationship with Legend. I can totally see him working with Legend again when the divorce crap is behind him.
Even if the divorce was the driving factor for the venue (i have no idea and i doubt anyone on this forum knows 100%) keep in mind that both parties should want the greatest return. Further in my opinion, as a general rule i try to stay on good relations with my clients and their spouses for this very reason.