It’s important to be in sync with the Proxibid technology to showcase your photos, hone your lot descriptions, and highlight your consignments for top bids on the leading portal! In the latest installment, Proxiblog laments and compliments best and bad auctioneer lot descriptions during the past week. We will name the best, but you will have to search Proxibid for the bad. (Click pictures to expand and view lot descriptions below.)
One Big Booyah to SilverTowne Auction for grading a coin in a lower-tier slab more accurately for bidding. There’s a near $3000 difference between MS65 and MS62 for a 1926 $10 eagle. Watch for a post later this week about hyping coins in lower-tier slabs. SilverTowne doesn’t engage in such practices.
Booyah! to Black and Gold auction for identifying tape residue, one of the issues with this coin and difficult to remove, essentially rendering a common coin to silver melt status. But this is a rare 1895-O, and as such, the lot has value. Black and Gold Auction makes sure the buyer knows what he is getting.
One Big Booyah to Liberty Shops Auction! for going one step further and recommending that bidders view this damaged lot as silver melt. We never saw that before on Proxibid. We’re glad we did here.
Boo! to this unnamed auction house that routinely does this, inexplicably, photographing the box but not the coin. The auction house is trustworthy and the auctioneer knows numismatics, but geez, we even messaged the house to shoot the photos … to no avail.
Boo! to the same house for not showing the reverse of a 1903-S, as this coin has a rarer variety, a small “s” that can fetch hundreds of dollars in this grade. Oh, well. This suggests that someone who doesn’t know numismatics as well as the auctioneer is taking photographic shortcuts. Boo, boo, boo!
Booyah Leonard Auction! for noting that this Indian Head cent has been tampered with, probably using heat to effect a pastel rainbow. For more on this type of artificial toning, read this article.
Booyah Leonard Auction and Five Star Auction! for noting that these junk pieces are replicas, not California fractional gold. Auctioneers who do hype these brass copies as real risk violating the Hobby Protection Act. See this article to tell how to distinguish real from fake California gold.
Booyah Munda Auction! for correcting a bottom-tier holder for hyping the grade of a lot. Watch for a post from us concerning just the opposite. We’re glad Munda has the skill and integrity to call this for what it is. Kudos!
Boo! to this unnamed auction house for taking the tiniest photos we have ever seen on Proxibid and then advising bidders to view the photo for details. Bulletin: There is an online coin buying community. Learn to photograph correctly. Better still, learn numismatics.
Booyah! Weaver Coin Auction for noting that the slab is mismarked and advising bidders accordingly, yet another reason why this house consistently is at the top of our rankings.
Viewers can point us to other candidates for our “Boos & Booyahs!” series. Just leave a comment but follow our rules–all in good fun as a way to inspire accurate lot descriptions on Proxibid.
Proxiblog is an independent entity with no connection to the auction portal Proxibid. Our intent is to uphold basic numismatic standards as established by the American Numismatic Association and the National Auctioneer Association and to ensure a pleasurable bidding experience not only on Proxibid but also on similar portals such as iCollector and AuctionZip.
Proxiblog's Top Online Coin Auctions 