Interesting auction observation
TexasYN2024
Posts: 2 ✭
I was watching and recording the Heritage auction of the fabulous Whispering Pines collection today. The auctioneer said a couple very interesting things.
One was, in regards to a scarce item of which there are several in the same grade, the auctioneer said the collector (Whispering Pines) looked at and evaluated all the examples in the given grade and selected this one for the collection so, as far as he (the auctioneer) is concerned it must be the finest known. This is a bit disturbing. As a friend of the collector I know for a fact he did not look at all the graded examples. He had not even looked at a single other.
The other was in regards to a coin with a population of many but of which 3 have a CAC sticker. The auctioneer stated that of all the examples in the given grade, CAC only liked these 3. That is clearly stating CAC did not like all the rest which is also stating CAC has seen all the rest. Not only is this a false statement, because I own one of them that I pulled from a roll and had certified at PCGS and I would never send a coin to CAC, but it is not information that is possible to know. Well, unless there is corruption in the business. But we all know that is not possible. But even at that it would, at best, be misinformation.
As an interesting aside I am writing a book, hence the recording of auctions, etc., about the modern numismatic business. What started as a high school project has become a serious venture. My colleagues and I have been creating and documenting grading submissions for the sole purpose of publishing the results. We have been doing this and documented data for almost 3 years now. We are at the stage of documenting the CAC sticker dynamics. Recently we began including CAC validity testing. Our first experiment was cracking out several PCGS graded coins and sending them in to be graded again. All of these coins were in modern generation 6.1 holders. Of this batch 4 of the coins had green CAC stickers that that were purchased within the last 4 months. Of the CAC “approved” coins 1 came back graded the same. 1 came back graded .5 point lower and 2 came back graded 1 point lower. This resulted in a loss of value, according to the PCGS price guide, of 79% or $23,500.00. This is not inclusive of the CAC fees, shipping or insurance costs. Over the next year or so we will be sending coins to CAC over and over to document consistency.
It is going to be a great book!
Comments
Lmao. Hope you enjoyed your short stay here.
Hi @katanapilot, @varietyfan, @lermesh, @EScottCoins, @EScott83, @TagTail, and @Southside7 and any other alts I missed!
To be fair, I wish that book were published.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see results in line with what the OP is saying, but I doubt they actually did the work.
Coin Photographer.
I wish the book were published with a reasonable amount of scholarly integrity. It would actually be interesting.
Given the many years of vitriol, it seems unlikely that OP is testing his hypothesis in a statistically meaningful way. More likely, he has a predetermined conclusion and is working to find "data" to support it.
well, its good to know what your bidding on, talk is cheap sometimes. I guess I'm not surprised by this, trying to get the most for the consigner at auction and the house of course.
Information such as this would be incredibly useful……… but doing the work to get a statistically significant result would be pretty expensive - probably beyond the means of a person just writing a book. Anything short would just be a small collection of anecdotes.
I bet the bigger auction houses and bigger dealers have some pretty good data, at least for subsets of the market.
Of course, you could limit the research to inexpensive coins, but the usefulness of that data would be limited.
Cool, I look forward to it!
What bugs me is dealers who misuse the term "Finest known" when they actually just mean Top Pop at [TPG] but higher graded coins exist in other TPG holders.
http://ProofCollection.Net
Thank you for presenting this first hand experience. It sounds extremely credible and I am not at all surprised, which is why I always put the auctioneer on mute.
You listen to an auctioneer? They are just puffers.
I didn’t even know you could listen to the Heritage auctioneer.
Smitten with DBLCs.
How does a coin grade 0.5 lower? How many coins are you going to include in your study so it can have some statistical significance?
And how many times will they be regraded?
I discussed a similar project with a friend some time ago. 30 is the bare minimum amount of coins but, given the breadth of types and conditions, I think 100 is probably a better number.
It's been a while since I used a fancy HP calculator but would probably need to grade each coin at least 3 times but more is better.
So figure an average cost of $65/coin (some will be economy but some will be express + CAC) x 30 coins x 3 subs = $5850.
More statistically significant, $65 x 100 coins x 5 subs=$32,500.
I could buy a lot of axes to grind for $30k....
When CACG first started, they were really tough on grading the raw submitted coins which explains that some of the coins could grade one point lower. The half point lower is due to two reasons.
The way I interpreted it, he sent the coins to PCGS to be graded again, not CACG. Then, they would subsequently be sent to CAC stickering again in the near future.
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Isn't this the same guy who made an accusation against Rick Snow and when it was proven false never came back to apologized?
For the major auctions, there is a live feed.
Yes, but they were PCGS CAC
Aka tv shysters?
I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned the legal liability of damaging our hosts. Publishing your "research" could have damaging results to both parties, even if accurate.
Publishing honest and legitimate facts and research is 100% legal even if it is disparaging.
http://ProofCollection.Net