Welcome to E-Auction 46

Most collections have “odds-and-ends” that have been acquired along the way—early acquisitions, impulse buys, exploring different collecting directions. One of the great appeals of coin collecting is the almost limitless variety that is available. There are many different reasons why most coin collections include runs or groups of less expensive material after all the main items have been accounted for.

Some of this catalog reflects this. Nearly a third of the sale is from the Pat Zabel collection that anchored our major March sale. Several gold pieces, Greek and Roman coins, Saxon material along with more Spanish American material, coins of Guatemala, a few scarce Mexican Revolutionary pieces and more. All of these are coins that he chose carefully acquiring high quality examples of pieces that have moderate catalog values. There are condition rarities here—low value coins can be particularly difficult for collectors to find simply because they don’t command the attention that major rarities enjoy.

Greek coins from several well put-together collections that we introduced in the March sale anchor the ancient section of the sale. Day-to-day base metal coins of the ancient eras are also represented with appealing examples from other consignments, most notably the special Roman Republic denarii.

The British section offers a variety of hammered and milled coins including something a bit unusual—a partial date run of Jubilee Head crowns of Victoria, something that happened by chance as we assembled this catalog from different consignors.

The D&H tokens are mostly high-quality examples from the collection of tokens created for actual commercial use that we began in our March auction. I have added references to the beautifully produced 2014 book by Jon Lusk, British and Irish Tradesmen and their Copper Tokens of 1787-1804. The other two references that identify and comment on the “real commercial use” tokens are the works by Waters (1954) and Bell (1963).

I have also included the source names and dates of purchase for all the tokens from this collection. It provides a fascinating look at token activity in the last decades of the 20th century.

The sale continues with the Zabel Spanish American material, other foreign coins and some groups of high-quality United States silver dollars from a crown collection we have been handling as well as an encased postage stamp, a “necessity coinage” that also carried an advertisement. 

Then, almost as a postscript, check out the eight large lots, estimated at wholesale levels. Photos are online. The huge collection of world crowns consists of fully catalogued pieces with the description, KM number and actual silver weight noted on each.  The complete list is online but we can send a print copy—just ask.

Pat Zabel’s wide-ranging interests covered Eastern areas including Ancient India, Scythian and Indo-Bactrian kingdoms, Cilician Armenia, and Judaea, and some of those collections are included here. (Look for the balance of his collection in our August sale.)

Every large lot in this section has substantially more value than the estimate suggests.

Best wishes for the coming spring and summer. For many of us in the USA this year, winter has been particularly challenging. The coming spring seems all the sweeter.

 

Allan Davisson

Wednesday, April 12, 2023

 

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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