auction experience

[Valentinian]

We have threads that mention auction experiences, for example:
https://www.numisforums.com/topic/366-cng-e-sale-wins-share-‘em/
I'd like to focus more on the experience than the particular coins I won. Maybe they will get their own threads later.

I won coins in Leu auctions 22&23 of August 20-22. They arrived yesterday, Sept. 16. The auction was huge and I knew shipping would take some time, but it seemed slow. However, now I am very happy with it all. When I the shipment arrived I understood more about why it seemed slow. My envelope had eight sheets of paperwork sealed in a thin bag sealed to the outside of the envelope and then more paperwork and the coins inside. I'm guessing a well-attended auction with 5000 coins yields 1000 different winning bidders. That’s a lot of envelopes, each enclosing all right coins and none of the wrong coins. Add paperwork inside lined up in the clear window for a shipping address and the paperwork outside in the bag. It’s a huge amount of work to do that nine hundred times and then do something special for each of the one hundred (I am guessing at these numbers) buyers who need/want something different done. Keeping track of what has been done and what needs to be done and entering individual shipping information into records must be a nightmare. If the firm works only with its normal staff, I can see that might take days or even weeks. It is probably not that easy to hire short-term staff who could do the sorting, packing, shipping, and recording who are also reliable around tiny but valuable objects.

I always download the auction photos and compare them to the coins. I’d say Leu’s photos were excellent. One coin among the five had a distinctly better surface in hand than suggested by the photo. All the other coins were as good as their photos, or maybe the tiniest bit better. I’m very pleased.

Tell us your recent auction experience!

Edited September 17, 2022 by Valentinian