Palm Beach Signature Sale analysis.

[truthteller]

About 1000 coins did not sell in the Palm Beach Heritage Signature sale, out of a possible 5500 lots for a nonsale rate of 17% which is on the higher end of the non sale spectrum but not a panic. A bad auction is 20% plus in no sales. However, Heritage did provide viewing at Las Vegas Mandalay Bay and made a special effort to advertise the sale, moreso than with other sales. Coupled with the fact that the Palm Beach show promoters spent a high dollar value on advertising in a very wealthy population area, the expectations were higher. In addition, there were many recycled coins in the sale, along with noticeably high reserves leading me to conclude that areas of the coin market have become sluggish. Although not unusual for a typical coin sales period at this time of year, this is supposedly a hotter than hot market. Various factors come into play for the slower than normal auction. 1) a venue city that recently had natural disasters, 2) a population base that has little interest in coins at this time, 3) a new coin show open to the public for only 2 days. From what I understand, the dealer to dealer activity was good, not great.

 

Yet, I see a trend.

 

Coming off a very, very strong ANA in August, several national auctions have experienced slow sales. A recent October ANR sale was somewhat slow with nonexistant floor bidding, primarily due to poor scheduling, on a Monday. In addition, the Las Vegas show was good to fair. Now Palm Beach was good to fair. Again, in a hot market.

 

My position is that there are WAY TOO MANY auctions for the market to digest at the same time. In addition, there are many nice collections coming onto the market that were recently assembled, so reserves may be higher than coins put away many years ago. The trend appears to be flat for now, with FRESH material being the fuel that runs the machinery. In my opinion, fresh means collections put away over 10 years ago, not recently assembled. Santa Clara show will be the next bellweather, going into Baltimore.

 

I would appreciate other points of view.

 

 

TRUTH

[TomB]

Taking the Devil's Advocate position, the percentage of buybacks might have been affected by a higher than normal frequency of recycled coins coupled with the higher reserves that you mention. The recycled coins likely had poor eye appeal, were overgraded, had reserves that were too aggressive or were in more dormant areas of the market. I don't know that this is the case, however, it might be.

 

In my opinion, there will be some good buys if there is a glut of auction material, related to timing and greed as opposed to panic and forced industry liquidation, as the competition for the better coins will be spread more thinly.

[James_OldeTowne]

I spent about $10,000 in this auction on about ten coins, but $9000 of that was just on two biggies. The trend I noticed was that over-graded near-pop-top coins, especially of recent vintage, fared very poorly, seemingly in all price ranges. It's something to think about when a major auction house can't get $30 for an MS-65 Franklin!

 

Scan through what failed to sell, and you will see many graded MS65, MS66 or PR67 and up!

 

All that said, ironically, the two coins I spent $9000 were graded PCGS MS-65 and NGC MS-66, so I guess the trend I saw had many exceptions.

 

James

[thebeav]

An interesting read and a good post !!

Thanks guys.......

Paul

[michael]

Taking the Devil's Advocate position, the percentage of buybacks might have been affected by a higher than normal frequency of recycled coins coupled with the higher reserves that you mention. The recycled coins likely had poor eye appeal, were overgraded, had reserves that were too aggressive or were in more dormant areas of the market.

 

and also the comment for fresh coins this is important

 

if this auction had killer eye appeal fresh coins with extraordinary/exceptional qualities then there would have been 100% sales for strong money

 

and also there are so many auctions no matter even if it is the hottest market on record just too many auctions and also of many less than great coins

 

looks to me like more $$ in auctions the last two years than in the preceeding 6 years before that combined combined

 

michael

 

it will be good to take a breather in fact this is healthly for the market

[Tradedollarnut]

I think it more likely the result of a sudden switch in market emphasis that caught sellers off guard. Type was weak whereas gold and Morgans were strong. The type reserves were based on past market values, so the coins didn't sell.

 

Also, for part of the sale the ebay Live was not working. I tried to log in to watch some of my personal lots and couldn't get in. How much this affected the end results of that session is unknown.... perhaps someone could do an analysis to see if that session had an inordinate amount of no sales?