Welcome to E-Auction 32

Watching numismatic auctions while sitting at my desk allows me to get a feel for the coin market that used to require days of travel and substantial expense. While I cannot view the lots themselves and thus can readily miss the subtle characteristics that render a coin particularly appealing, I can get a sense of what people are paying. And when everything is in a grading slab, most of the lots are some variation of Mint State and those subtleties are less obvious even with the coin in hand.

We did not make it to this year’s ANA show in August but I spent time at my desk following some of the sales. While I watched more than one sale, the Heritage sale that stood out made headlines for a record-making sale of “foreign” coins that realized a total of well into eight figures. (I cannot recall seeing mere three figure coin sales during my viewing of the live sale.) Coins costing many thousands of dollars each made up the sale and I was struck by the level of interest.

There were slabbed modern and semi-modern issues with MS numbers in the mid to high 60s (heady stuff for those of you who do not follow the ins-and-outs of 11 different gradations of Mint State) and modern rarities with a mintage of a couple hundred or so that achieved individual prices higher than if you bought everything in this catalog.

The joy of numismatics is that inexpensive material can be just as exciting and fascinating as very expensive pieces. This gives one pause. And a sense of gratitude that all the appealing aspects of numismatics--historic significance, artistic merit, appealing design, and even high grade pieces--can be had for modest sums. We enjoy the opportunity to put together these eclectic sales—a run of ancient coins including unusual and less-often-seen things, British coins, tokens, medals and then runs of some of the unusual items that we pick up in collections or even when looking around the market generally.

Rather than my commenting on bits and pieces in this sale, I suggest you look through it—a small sale with some fascinating variety in a catalog you can browse through quickly, or pause to spend more time when something catches your eye.

 

Thank you for your interest, and best wishes from the three of us.

Allan

Thursday, September 19, 2019

 

How Bidding Works

 

Davissons Ltd uses a soft close for its auctions, which means no lot closes until everyone is done bidding. Every time a bid is placed within the final 40 seconds of a lot closing, the timer is reset to 40 seconds. This continues until no bids are placed for 40 seconds, at which point the lot closes. There will never be more than one lot closing at once, as the next lot is not allowed to begin closing until the current lot closes.

To bid: enter your maximum bid into the text box, and click submit. Only round dollar amounts are accepted. You are then required to confirm your bid. Once confirmed, all bids are final. If you have placed a bid in error you must call during office hours and speak to one of us. If you are the current high bidder then it will display “Current High Bidder: YOU” If you are not the high bidder, or if you are not logged in, then the current high bidder will be identified by their 5 digit client ID. You may find your client ID under the Account tab.

Bids are reduced automatically, so feel free to bid your maximum and it will be reduced to one increment over the current high bid. If a user places a bid that is higher than necessary to be the current high bidder on the lot, the displayed bid will reflect one advance over the next lower bid. For example, if a user "A" places a bid of $120 on a lot which opens at $100, "A" will be winning that lot at $100. If another user "B" bids $110, the winning bidder will be "A" at $120, one advance over the supporting bid of $110. If user "B" in this example instead placed a bid at $120, then user "A" will still be winning at $120 because they placed that maximum bid value first.

Increments can be viewed here. The next bid will always be on the next increment, so if a user is winning a lot at $100, or $105, or $109, the next bid will still always be $110.

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