Aside from rising buyer’s fees, how coin auctions work hasn’t changed much lately.

Sincona Ag has introduced a change, however, that could make buying bullion at auction attractive.

The firm on May 15 launched its inaugural offering of the Sincona Gold Auction, “The new auction platform for investment and bullion gold.” This platform offers investment level quantities and types of gold bullion coins, modern and historic, without charging a buyer’s fee.

Not all inscription ‘misspellings’ are true misspellings: Mike Diamond reports on coins that, at first glance, appear to have misspelled legends or dates but, with closer study, are found to have die defects that are misleading.

The auction house is fixing the price of gold immediately before an auction, using that price as the basis for the bidding on each lot. Bidding may begin as low as 100 percent of the precious metal “spot” price, but generally begins at about 105 percent of the spot price, a 5 percent premium above the metal value. 

Some rarer coins are offered with premiums of 15 percent, and in a few instances, 50 and 60 percent premiums. 

Among the offerings are numismatic items sold in recent years that originally carried much higher premiums.

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Bidding increments will vary based on the starting price of the lot as compared to the precious metal value, but begin in increments of one-tenth of 1 percent. A full schedule of the increments is available in the firm’s catalog. 

The items in this special auction are generally geared toward buyers obtaining many ounces at a time. One such lot in the sale is a group of 10 1986 Chinese Panda 1-ounce gold coins. That lot opens at a price that is 104 percent of the “melt” value. 

For full details of the sale, visit the firm’s website.