Tag Archives: Dave Nauert

Boos & Booyahs: Best & Bad Auctioneer Lot Descriptions

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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.)

bezeled

One Big Booyah! to Leonard Auction for identifying flaws in this bezeled coin (grade and details) in addition to the karat of the bezel.

doesntnotemintmark

One Big Boo! (or several) to this auction house that doesn’t know coins enough to note the mint mark on this and other lots. Bidders steal coins from consignors when this happens.

exjewelry_silvertowne

One Big Booyah! to Dave Nauert at SilverTowne who does his bidders a service by noting this gold coin was once bezeled as jewelry, significantly lowering the value of the lot. Other auctioneers typically do not state or see the jewelry mark. SilverTowne is a top company on our blog in part because of its expert grading.

munda_notes_pinhole

Booyah Munda Auction! for describing pin holes in the currency which, like bezeled coins, descreases value. We bid in Munda Auctions because of its superior grading, as described in this post.

nofsb

Boo! to this auction house that claims full split bands–a device on the reverse–without depicting the reverse. Come on, folks!

nottoned

Boo! to this auction company that doesn’t understand how improperly cleaned coins can retone. Note the dull colors. Toning should be bright and reflective on most copper coins.

nottoned_altered color

Booyah Star Coin and Currency! for noting artificial color on this lot. This is how it’s done, folks!

polished

Booyah BidALot Auction! for noting this coin has been polished, often hard to cipher from online photos.

notinvestment

Boo! to this auction company for continuing to state as “investment” horrible silver melt coins like this one, worth about $8.

weaver_cleaning

Booyah Weaver Auction! for noting when coins are cleaned. We bid with confidence in auctions by Dave and Cheryl Weaver because of their ethics and customer service!

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.

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Boos & Booyahs: Best & Bad Auctioneer Lot Descriptions

Posted on by

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.)

defects

One Big Booyah! to SilverTowne’s Dave Nauert for identifying flaws in this otherwise attractive coin.

hardly

Boo! to this unnamed auction house maintaining this bagmarked slider is a super gem. If you don’t know how to grade, don’t hype.

fakegold

One Big Boo and then Booyah! (or several) to this auction house that featured a fake California gold piece and then retracted it when informed. Watch for a post on this soon.

hype

Boo! to this unnamed auction house for hyping ridiculously high this common silver lot worth $28-30 and not thousands.

investment

Boo! to this auction house that has the nerve to label what may be the ugliest flawed silver melt dollar “an investment.” The $19.95 shipping rate is about the worth of this coin.

nomintmarkmentioned

Boo! to this auction company that doesn’t know where to look for the mint mark. Bidders can rob consignors blind when this happens, and it happens too often.

onesidephoto

Boo! to this long-time Proxibid auction house that refuses to show both sides of a coin. Would you buy a car, or any item, if you saw only half of it?

polished

Booyah Traders Cottage! for noting this Peace dollar is polished. Always note flaws, and gain trust with bidders.

cleaned

Booyah Jewelry Exchange! for noting this coin has been cleaned, often hard to cipher from online photos.

varieties

Booyah Liberty Shops Auction! for taking the time to note varieties on coins, which add to value.

values_NGC

Booyah Southwest Bullion and Coin! for taking the time to note values on lots, using the right price guide for the coin in question.

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.

Capitol Coin Auction tops list!

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Competition among top coin-selling houses on Proxibid has become even keener, with only fractions separating one favorite company from another. Only one scored a full 25 points in all categories: quality consignments, detailed descriptions, quick and inexpensive shipping, superior photography, expert grading, reasonable buyer’s premium and other value-added considerations. Not only is competition growing, our audience is too, surpassing 1,600 views for the first 28 days in April.

Capitol Coin Auction continues to feature some of the best numismatic estate auctions on the portal. Every few months it schedules an auction with key date coinage and holdered rarities. Moreover, as we noted in this recent post, Brad Lisembee ranks among the best graders in the business along with John Leonard of Leonard Auction.

Also high on the numismatic grading list are Dave Nauert of SilverTowne Auction, Justin Quinn of Southwest Bullion and Coin, Dave Weaver of Weaver Signature Coin and Currency Auction, and Sean Cook of Liberty Shops Auctions.

These were ranked ever so close behind Capitol at 24.5 each out of 25, along with Western Auction (one of our personal favorites) and Fox Valley Coins.

Returning to the portal is Kaufman Realty and Auctions, with strong consignments, numismatic lot descriptions and good photography. If it shipped more quickly, it would challenge other top houses in our rankings.

Darron Meares, one of our favorite auctioneers, elevated his company to the top rankings, too, with great consignments and much improved photography. Engstrom Auction continues to improve with better consignments. Its photography has been good, and its customer service is fine, too.

Essentially, you should have an exciting time in the spirit of traditional auctioneering bidding in any auction by these top-houses.

Rolling M Auctions is one of our favorite houses. Mark Murphy is going a fantasic job for Rolling M. with great consignments and fine pre-auction advertising. We think he can still do better with sharper photography that captures luster and provides an onsite view for the Internet crowd.

Key Date Coin continues to showcase the best photography and auctions always worth a look. We advocate for better consignments as Eddie Caven knows how to feature premium lots. Star Coin and Currency continues to impress with improving consignments, neat photos and numismatic lot descriptions.

New on the list this month are Atlantic Auction Company and Cannon Auction whose Honor Roll features include 15% buyer’s fee, good photography and numismatic lot descriptions.

Online buyers expect:

  • Rapid shipping with professional packing.
  • Sharp, expandable photos of both sides of a coin.
  • Accurate lot descriptions.

That said, our rankings are reviews of favorite houses based on our buying and/or selling experience and numismatic expertise. Your experience with our top houses may differ from ours. Our intent is to educate and praise whenever possible–to our own buying detriment, at times! We have seen when we showcase an auction house how bidding becomes more intense, often edging out our own bids.

Perhaps this is due to the rise in our viewership. As the screen shot below shows, more than 1600 page views were logged in the first few weeks of April alone.
30dayview

The favorite and most accessed page? “Boos and Booyahs.” The all-time most favorite post? “California Gold: Real, Replica and Fake,” which gets on average 100+ views per month from all over the world, indicating once again that auctioneers need to take care before they label those tiny yellow tokens “gold.”

Also becoming more popular are our “Find the Flaw!” features, designed to improve grading skills.

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.

Spotlight on SilverTowne Auction

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This week we begin a series of spotlight reviews on the top five houses in our numerical rankings. Depicted here is a copy of our score sheet. Earning a 4 or 5 in our rankings is significant, and few top 20 houses earn more than one or two maximum scores. Those earning the highest scores this month also tied for top house, with Capitol, Key Date, SilverTowne, Weaver and Western all registering the maximum 25 points.

SilverTowne Coin Auctions on Proxibid feature two of the big names in numismatics: Rick Howard’s Coin Shop and Leon Hendrickson’s SilverTowne. Together, both companies have more than a century’s experience buying and selling coins. Perhaps their secret asset on Proxibid, however, is 75-year-old numismatist Larry Fuller whose lot descriptions are among the best on Proxibid.

Proxiblog consigns periodically to SilverTowne, and it is not unusual for Larry to send back a coin because it has a flaw. We never argue with him.

One of his specialties, which we applaud, is identifying slabbed coins of inferior quality–quite a difference from some Proxibid auctioneers, including current ones, who quote Red Book or Coin Values prices for self-slabbed coins worth only silver melt but billed as MS66 or higher.

Click here for an example of Larry’s lot descriptions.

Once again, you can gauge the quality of this house by the number of occurrences on our Boos and Booyah’s page–an even dozen in the past year. Here is a sampling:

Larry Fuller’s expertise adds significantly to that of Rick Howard and other SilverTowne employees, including Dave Nauert, who contributed one of our first and most enlightening “On the Block” posts.

As always, our rankings are based on personal experience with the auction house. Generally, SilverTowne values and designations are close to PCGS ones. The 1891-O one below was designated MS63, although it sold for MS62 rates, which turned out to be also PCGS’s opinion. (Click photos to expand).

Proxiblog photo
Proxiblog photo
Proxiblog photo

SilverTowne, like Key Date Coins, ships within one day using numismatic packaging. Earlier in the year it discontinued maximum-bid viewing, again like Key Date Coins. We continue to find superior coins, raw and slabbed, in SilverTowne auctions, and we’re excited about its series of timed auctions in which bargains are to be had.

To learn more about SilverTowne auctions, visit the company’s home page by clicking here.

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.