Yesterdays (2/24/2026) Stack's Bowers Sale of The Richard August Collection.
JohnnyCache
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Did anyone follow the Richard August auction yesterday at Stack's?
I thought that the final hammer price on a number of the coins offered was quite strong.
Here are a couple of examples that I thought brought a strong hammer price.
These are but a few of the many examples in this auction I was surprised by.
Do the prices seem strong to you? or is it just a case of me needing to re-adjust my pricing to this new reality?
Did you bid on anything?
Did you win?
2
Comments
While I was watching (and not bidding), I thought prices were strong as well. Especially on anything unusual (overdates, varieties, etc.) or MS. Spanish Colonial generally is quite hot now and I'm not really sure what's driving it.
There are big coin conventions/conferences in many of the Latin American countries (including Puerto Rico) this year and last. And every region of Mexico it seems has its own numismatic society now.
Since I am not a date/mint/assayer collector, there was nothing I was after, so I didn't win anything or lose anything.
But there are a bunch of interesting auctions coming up in the next few months that I plan to have fun with.
Agreed…Strong prices which seems to be the new direction for better coins and quality for the grade. That may explain the 1801 4R hammer
No bids so no wins.
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My suggestion for buying these days is to avoid “big name” auctions as they generate excitement and (rightly or wrongly) cause people to think the coins are “better” because they were chosen by an expert.
Sometimes the expert has such a wide field of interest that he bought the first coin he encountered and never upgraded when a better one appeared.
I didn't bid, though it was an amazing collection. I sure do miss seeing him around.
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Was his collection submitted for grading after he passed?
Successful buys/sales on BST board from NotSure, Nankraut, Yorkshireman, Astrorat, Ikeigwin(2x), Bob13, Outhaul, coinbuf, dpvilla, jayPem, Sean1990, TwoKopeiki, bidask, Downtown1974, drddm, nederveit2, ajann
I don't know, but I was wondering the same thing.
It seemed to me that the majority of his Spanish Colonial collection at least was housed in PCGS holders with a few NGC sprinkled in.
The prices were insane, competition was stiff. Anything XF and above seemed very strong for Pillar minors. I was blown away and willing to pay pretty strong money compared to recent auction numbers. I didn’t even come close on most. I only recall seeing probably 3 that were in line with what I expected to see pricewise.
I bid on many of them, landed a single one, nothing overly special, but a decent coin.
$660 all in, which seemed reasonable, especially considering the XF45 of the same date went for an additional $2,000. It was quite a bit nicer, but not $2k nicer!
I do think this one is mildly overgraded, but still nice.
1757 4 Reales XF40
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Did I mention the auction was insane?! I thought I was taking crazy pills or something. Entered a parallel universe. $1k coins were going for $5k! $500 coins for $3k…
Looks like the coins I do have are more valuable now, so there’s that 😂
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This is what I’m saying. Why? The name (reputation) of the collector?
I’ve sat through auctions where I struggle to win anything. And at the end, I think “well the bright side is that my collection is worth more now.” But is it?
I don’t think this was about the reputation of the collector, per-se. Much of the collection went reasonably, anything that was very high grade, very rare or special in some way did what you’d expect; brought record prices. But not all of them. I got at least five coins from Winter’s collection that have 5-10 known in all grades that auctioned quite reasonably.
I think this is something else. My bet is that there’s a few bidders that are aware of each other and fighting over the same material. If those people weren’t interested in the coin, it went pretty normal, pricewise. I started paying attention to the bidders, many of the paddles for the top Mexican minors were the same paddles (the same five or six of them.) The funny thing is, The coins that went BONKERS weren’t the best coins out there. The 4R 1757 XF45 went for about 4X expectation, there’s 5 coins graded higher JUST in the PCGS census. Certainly more in NGC, puts it outside condition census probably.
A few were “best known” but most weren’t, some very much not.
I don’t think there’s necessarily a huge price climb going on, personally.
In my professional life (not coins) I see some auctions go nuts, usually it’s because one person with deep pockets is trying to beat some other guy with deep pockets. I wish it were more meaningful than that, but not usually.
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I only collect the Portrait issues, so I am normally swimming in the shallow waters concerning pricing, but I saw an overall increase in the coin prices that I was tracking.
Successful buys/sales on BST board from NotSure, Nankraut, Yorkshireman, Astrorat, Ikeigwin(2x), Bob13, Outhaul, coinbuf, dpvilla, jayPem, Sean1990, TwoKopeiki, bidask, Downtown1974, drddm, nederveit2, ajann
Richard generally kept everything in 2x2 envelopes and 2x2 boxes.
I have one of his old envelopes from when I bought an 1844-O half dime from him. If I can find it, I'll share it to this thread.
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I bid on a few, but the closest I came to winning, and it was only on one coin, was being the first under bidder. I suppose I could have closed my eyes and kept going but in good conscience I just couldn't let myself do it.
This was for a coin in AU condition that can admittedly be somewhat tough to locate, certainly scarce, but the thing is that in Oct of 2024, in the Rutherford Sale, I had been the under bidder on a nearly comparable coin, it was a higher grade (MS62) and a different date. So in the Richard August auction I bid as high on the AU example being offered as the successful bidder in the Rutherford auction had bid for the MS62 and I still came out short.
Ya, that’s what I saw as well. When buying group lots they’re all in white 2x2 envelopes with his handwriting, what he paid, etc. Some have shown up that were already graded, but if it says “Richard August Collection” it was graded by Stacks for the auction. I’m not the only person that watched the census numbers climbing over the last year or so, then seeing most of them show up in the Winter auctions.
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I understand your point and I don’t completely disagree, but I would never rule out bidding on a great coin just because it’s part of a great collection!
Doggedly collecting coins of the Central American Republic.
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I wish I had known him, we clearly loved the same type of Spanish colonial material.
I think we would have really enjoyed discussing the coins we love, I know I would have.
We had a lot of similar coins in our collection. Here's a small example:
Both of our 4 Reales are graded AU53.
His with the cross between I+S
Mine with the cross between H+I
Good quality Latin American coins are expensive currently, no matter where you buy.
I know I am not alone as someone who has joined the active buyers market for quality LA stuff in the past year.
I don’t know what took me so long…… oh wait yes I do……it was being a slave to my own 7070 type set. So much of the Spanish colonial stuff in particular can come with such cool history and great eye appeal. I’ve really enjoyed jumping into it, although admittedly the learning curve is steeper than I’ve found US coins to be over the years (maybe that’s biased thinking towards the present day, though).
Glad to be of service to all of you who’ve assembled such great collections of the stuff at “yesterdays” prices
Many of you post coins in this realm that I’ve found quite inspiring.
Glad to help you on the journey with your Portrait. Thanks
Successful buys/sales on BST board from NotSure, Nankraut, Yorkshireman, Astrorat, Ikeigwin(2x), Bob13, Outhaul, coinbuf, dpvilla, jayPem, Sean1990, TwoKopeiki, bidask, Downtown1974, drddm, nederveit2, ajann
As promised, this is a 2x2 holder once owned by Richard.
Custom album maker and numismatic photographer.
Need a personalized album made? Design it on the website below and I'll build it for you.
https://www.donahuenumismatics.com/.
I got my 3 winning lots in the other day and one of them had a similar tag. I think it’s cool Stacks includes them when they can.
I put it away already but here was the coin it came from:
1796/5 VF 25
Here were the other 2 lots I picked up. (I had what I thought were pretty strong bids on 7 lots….ended up getting smoked on 2 and was underbidder on 2 others.)
F 12
VF 35 (already shared in the new purchases thread but what the heck)
And while we’re discussing Richard August’s vast collection, here is my only other coin with his provenance. Also came with one of his flips jotted with his notes on the coin.
AU 58
