Unusual local auction

After work today I walked down to the local Eagles lodge where they were
having an antique/collectables auction to see what would be there
numismatically.
There was a dealer display case (like you see at coin shows with coins under
glass) filled with common date "junk box" type stuff (common circ. silver
dollars, rolls of wheat cents, war nickels, Franklin halves, .proof sets,
various world coins etc.) Most in 2x2's or the original proof set packaging.
I got to wondering just how they were going to sell this hodge podge of stuff.


What they did was call everyone who was interested to come up to the front
of the room (around 10 people came) and the auctioneers assistant simply
reached into the display case and grabbed maybe 15-20 coins along with a
proof set and they sold them that way. Each handfull usually brought around
$15-$22 each. Everyone was basically taking a chance since you really
didn't have anytime to look at them carefully. One guy bought maybe 75%
of the coins and as he bought them the auctioneers assistant poured them
into a paper bag for him. After about 80% of the coins were gone the rest of
them in the case were sold for around $105.


I didn't buy anything but it was interesting to watch coins being sold
this way.

"JSTONE9352" wrote in message
...

I didn't buy anything but it was interesting to watch coins being sold
this way.

At a local auction a couple of years ago, there was a set of circulated
Morgan dollars up for bid. They were in those old Whitman three page folders
(the kind that you push the coin in with your thumb, and you can't see the
reverse). There were four folders and they were nearly filled, only missing
a couple of the key dates. They were auctioned like this: The auctioneer
picked up the first folder, and started the bidding for... winner's choice
from that folder, as many pieces as he wanted at the high bid per each coin
selected.

Naturally, everybody bid on the highest valued coin in that folder, and
that's the only coin the high bidder selected. So the auctioneer picked up
the folder and repeated the whole process. Over. And over. And over.

For all four folders.

It was kind of funny watching people trying to keep track of which dates
were left after each round of bidding.