SimonW

Nice coin, @John Conduitt. I find the anonymous quadrantes particularly interesting. There are many great types.

Very nice coins @shanxi, @kapphnwn and @ambr0zie. @kapphnwn, wow, that's a stunner. Never seen one of these that is only remotly as well preserved as yours. Here's another rare one from Trajan. Traianus, Quadrans (2.68 g), Rome, 114-117 AD (?). Obv. IMP CAES TRAIAN AVG GERM, bust of Hercules, bearded, laureate, r., wearing lion-skin. Rev. S C (ex.), she-wolf l. Woytek 604A (RIC -). It might look rather common as each side is common in combination with another obverse and reverse. But the combination of the obverse type and reverse type is quite rare.

How so? What I said didn't refer exclusively to your comment, but here's yours that I had in mind. Wasn't that a sarcastic comment, complaining about how long it takes them to ship? I'll return that: I'd like to think that you're not deliberately lying, but simply didn't remember your actual words.

I have been collecting Quadrantes, Semisses and Tesserae of the Roman Empire for many years. In this thread I'd like to share a piece every now and then and am keen to see your fractions. One of my all-time favorites is the following rare Trajan Quadrans. Traianus, Quadrans (2.52 g), Rome, 114-117 AD (?). Obv. IMP CAES TRAIAN AVG GERM, bust of Minerva, helmeted, r., draped. Rev. S C (ex.), round shield, diagonal spear behind. Woytek 607 (RIC -). Share your Quadrantes, Semisses and Tesserae.

@DonnaML the email wording was unfortunate and obviously wrong as in fact someone was monitoring her email. Anyway, I wasn't refering to that but rather to your very sarcastic and other comments, complaining on how it's possible to take them up to 10 days to ship (it proved to be 5 days only in your case) and how does anybody dare going on vacation a week after their auction. When did the world become so unreasonably impatient? The coins have survived for centuries without you, they will make it another week or two, don't worry.

From their terms. What Fedex charged you are customs clearance fees. The auction house has nothing to do with that.

Well, as I said, if you have a big auction (or a big project, if you want to put it that way) every two months, there isn't any "good time" to take a few days off as there is always a lot to do (getting consignments, cataloging, shipping, etc.). And, frankly, I don't understand why you complain about their shipping costs as everything is clearly listed on their website and in their terms. Anyway, you seem to be upset and I won't continue the discussion. I hope you still enjoy the coins and am looking forward to seeing them online.

You think they can take a break every two months (after each auction), but are complaining because they (or one of their employees respectively) actually take a break after their last auction? I hope you see the flaw in your reasoning 🙂 As for shipping: given customs used the correct VAT rate of 7% (reduced), your invoice total was somewhere near 6'300 Euros. Insurance is usually about 1% and you said you paid approx. 90 Euros. So the effective shipping costs are roughly 27 Euros, which is pretty standard (and actually quite inexpensive for Switzerland). Personally, I would drive there and pick the coins up if it's only 150 km (~93 miles).

How dare they taking a few days off? 🙂 But seriously, do you think that there is ever a "good time" to take some days off if you're running multiple auctions a year? All this is complaining on a very high level. Give them a break!

I have to revise my theory after reading the entire thread again, sorry @Severus Alexander🙂 My theory was only true if a buyer always has to pay their maximum. But that's not true with auctions. If a bidder is below their maximum, a buyer's premium does increase the profit for both the consignor and the auction house even with rational bidders, who will pay more with the BP, but less than what they were ready to pay. So the BP increases the seller's surplus by reducing the buyer's surplus economical speaking. The BP sole purpose is, thus, not to deceive bidders, but to increase the final price in case the winning bidder would have been ready to pay more. The fact that it deceives irrational bidders may just be a welcome side-effect. But, it's still not a very honest business strategy as those auctions are supposed to be second price auctions or english auctions and the ever increasing BP makes them more to a first price auction, meaning that the winning bidder always pays their maximum.

It's quite simple: if all bidders were completely rational, the buyers premium was irrelevant and the consignor would always pay the entire cut. It's because rational bidders will bid a lower amount with increasing premium and the consigners, thus, get the same amount out of an auction. Here's an example: Buyer's premium 0%, consignor's fee 20%: Hammer 110 -> buyer pays 110 (no premium), consignor gets 88 (110 - 20%). Buyer's premium 10%, consignor's fee 12% (all buyers are 100% rational and factor in the BP): Hammer 100 -> buyer pays 110 (including 10% BP), consignor gets 88 (100 - 12%). Buyer's premium 25%, consignor's fee 0% (all buyers are 100% rational and factor in the BP): Hammer 88 -> buyer pays 110 (including 25% BP), consignor gets 88. As you can see, the buyer's premium increases more than the consignor's fee decreases. That's because one fee is on top and the other one is a cut. But it doesn't change the principle since the rational buyer wants to pay always the same amount after fees, no matter what the fees are, and the auction house will take the same fee as well. So, the only chance on higher profits for both the consignors and auction houses in the above example is taking advantage of irrational bidders (who will not factor in fees and be surprised by them afterwards), which is deceptive IMHO. Why should the consignor bear the entire cut? Because the consignor is the one using the auction house's service. The rational buyer doesn't care where they buy the coin, they will spend the same amount for a certain coin no matter if they buy it from a FPL, from an auction or from a collector friend. The seller of the coin, on the other hand, will want to sell their coin for the best price they can get with as little effort as possible. And that's most probably in an auction (professional picture, professional description and a great pool of potential buyers).

I'd say you're very self-controlled then 🙂 I am probably too impulsive. From an objective point of view, charging a buyer's premium is not a particularly honest business practice, as its sole purpose is to deceive bidders. If all bidders were rational, consignors and auction houses would not make a higher profit with a buyer's premium, so the buyer's premium would be irrelevant and no one would charge it. But since (I would say most) people are not always very rational, the only purpose of the buyer's premium is to mislead buyers to think that the final price is lower than what they will ultimately have to pay. The real problem is that this business practice is legal in the first place and that it leads to an imbalance if it is employed only by some and not by all. So the ever-increasing premium is simply the result of missing regulations.

I doubt that any bidder always and only bids rationally, let alone a majority. I, for example, often set myself a maximum bid, but in the heat of live bidding tend to bid more than what I wanted, especially for coins I have been looking for a long time. In spontaneous situations like these, it is almost impossible to factor in the buyer's premium and other fees.

Don't be so sure about that 🙂 I won't give away too much, but there will be something in this direction soon. The problem is the vast extent of such a task. Acsearch features almost 10'000 auctions of more than 330 different auction houses. Researching all the past buyer's premia takes a huge amount of time and you need access to all the old auction catalogs (not all of them are available online anymore) and their terms. If some members here have the time and are keen enough to approach this task, I am more than happy to implement this into acsearch. We will at least start recording auction terms from now on as this seems to be helpful in the future. BTW, hi everyone, I am Simon and I am working for both biddr and acsearch. Some of you know me already from CT (user name acsearch.info) 🙂