How do I define “decent”? A buyer’s fee of 15 percent or less, with no opening bids, desirable consignments and reasonable shipping. I can tolerate buyer’s fees approaching 18 percent. Anything over that must be accompanied by sharp coin photography, great customer service, alluring consignments and inexpensive shipping.

I still recommend Proxibid for buyers without extensive numismatic knowledge because of its excellent customer service department and Unified User Agreement that holds buyer and seller alike accountable.

I used to bid on a dozen or more Proxibid auctions per month. Now I patronize only a handful. My motive is to find raw coins and holder and consign them, sharing what I learn with you. I break even most of the time, bidding in Weaver Coin and Currency Auctions, Silver City, Rolling M, Capitol Coin, McKee Coins, Hampton House, Blue Diamond and a few occasional others.

Of the 100 or so hosted sessions at Proxibid, several by the same company at any given time, I am seeing these questionable practices:

• ·        Auctioneer or employee bidding.
• ·        Auctioneers seeing maximum bids.
• ·        High shipping and handling fees.
• ·        Lots listed with retail opening bids.
• ·        Poor numismatic photography.
• ·        Buyer's fees above 20 percent.

I do not bid in auctions that allow the auctioneer or employee, seller or agent to place bids. Thankfully, Proxibid requires them to post a notice, assuming you read the terms of service.

I also do not bid anymore on auctions that see maximum bids. That’s just not fair nor in the spirit of an auction. Again, Proxibid also requires a notice be posted about that practice in a company’s terms of service.

And then there is shipping. One auction company that schedules several sessions per month on Proxibid charges a minimum of about $60 per coin shipment. Another company charges a high handling fee of $12.95 per item with a 19.75 percent buyer’s premium.

Even one of my previous favorite sellers has increased his buyer’s premium to 21 percent; I can understand that if his margins are too low and Proxibid fees too high (in his opinion). But now he also typically opens each lot at wholesale “Coin Dealer Newsletter Greysheet” values. With buyer’s fees added on, totals reach retail values. If you’re charging high premiums, open lots at zero or $1.

And then there are several sellers that charge 15 percent buyer’s fee with no opening bids and reasonable shipping. But you waste time bidding on their lots, only to see they were sold “onsite.” If so, those buyers must also be consignors because those very lots later appear in auction by the same company.

I’ll do a future post on “no-reserve auctions that aren’t.”

The lesson here is to read service terms carefully (and check them again periodically) and identify favorite sellers on Proxibid, ignoring others with questionable practices and patronizing ones with decent practices.

On Jan. 25, 2018, this 1922 Peace Dollar with rainbow toning sold with an $8,812.50 bid, more than $8,400 above its $400 retail price, according to PCGS.

Peace dollars do not tone the way Morgan dollars do, in fantastic rainbow and circus colors. So any Peace dollar that contains rainbow toning, like the one that sold for almost $9,000 at Legend’s Regency Auction XXV, is sure to attract bids.

Before the auction, Legend estimated the value at $750 to $850, writing:

“You have likely NEVER seen a Peace dollar of any date toned like this! At the top of the obverse a narrow band of rainbow iridescence then blends to wider bands of violet, gold and light blue. The luster is about as brilliant as can be expected for a 22 Peace and the strike sharp and complete throughout. …” 

Impurities in silver can trigger patina. Some 270 million Morgan dollars were melted according to tenets of the 1918 Pittman Act, with about 11 million melted silver dollars used to generate U.S. coinage, including Peace dollars. Perhaps that mixture had something to do with general lack of toning in the 1921 to 1935 series. 

But as an observer of online auctions, I can tell you that, for the Peace dollar, the issue most likely to tone well is from 1922. I have seen several, though not as spectacular as the Legend coin. I even own a toned MS-65 1922 example, which you can view here. 

You can usually find toned Peace dollars in online estate sales, especially if those coins were kept in albums. I just won two 1922 coins and one 1923 in such an auction for less than $200, and PCGS just slabbed them at MS-63 and MS-64. Though not as lovely as the Legend specimen or my gem 1922 coin, these surely will bring a premium when I consign them in auction, especially since they will have TrueView imaging — a good investment if you keep your coins in a bank box like I do.

Take a close look at the photo on the left. It’s difficult to tell that this coin was doctored. The fields look clean and there is ample luster. Now compare it to the photo on the right, and you can see the effects of dipping (or chemical alteration) combined with whizzing.

I can verify that this coin was doctored in such fashion because I was the unlucky buyer. I paid less than $60 for the coin, but in my opinion, its value is silver melt.

This is yet another example of how risky it is to bid online, unless you know what you are doing, and even then, as with this example, there is a steep downside.

If I had seen this coin at a show, or shop, I would not have given it a second glance and would have told the seller to mark it as doctored. But you cannot do that in online auctions. All sales are final, no matter what the seller says about the coin.

In this case, the seller—an estate auctioneer—was courteous enough to call me at home after I informed him that the coin had been whizzed. He explained that he could not verify grades but would take back the coin anyway, if I wanted, as I was a first-time buyer on his site.

I explained that I knew the auction rules and would not return the coin, primarily because it probably would be re-introduced as Uncirculated, only to go to another disappointed hobbyist.

As for the numismatics of the topic, the 1880-O Morgan is allusive in Mint State. It has a mintage of 5,305,000 and is a condition rarity: prices at MS-63 are in the $400s but at MS-64, more than $1,400.

There are bargains out there on this date and mint, but obviously, mine wasn’t one. 

In October 2017, I reported in this post on an uncertified 1889-O Morgan dollar I won with a $330 realized bid on the portal Proxibid. With only a tenth of the 11,875,000 examples of the coin struck that year surviving today, few such coins are preserved in the relatively high Mint State that this particular coin appeared to be in.

I predicted that this coin would grade as Mint State 64 or MS-65. As you can see from the PCGS certification number, the dollar graded MS-64+, making it worth $1,250 retail.

In Uncirculated grades, prices go up dramatically, from about $300 in MS-62 to more than $4,000 in MS-65.

The coin fell short of gem condition because of a typical weak strike and a faint scuff mark on the obverse at about 10 o’clock. The reverse is an easy MS-65, but PCGS pays more attention to the obverse in Morgan dollars, so a clean field was necessary for the premium grade.

To score big in online auctions, you have to know grading standards, not only for specific coins, but also grading criteria of your preferred holdering company.

PCGS, for example, defines MS-64 or Proof 64 as suitable for a coin with an “average or better strike with scattered marks or hairlines, though none severe,” while coins earning an MS- or PR-65 grade will have “above average strike with minor marks or hairlines, mostly out of focal areas.”

My scuff was in a focal area, explaining the 64+.

You also should know that big wins such as this happen infrequently. In the whole of last year, with my bidding on hundreds of coins (mostly failing to win, as I never bid above current auction prices, available on PCGS CoinFacts), I can claim only a dozen or so such numismatic prizes. Those were offset by bad bets on coins, typically caused by poor photography by sellers.

It goes without saying that the best way to ascertain condition is to hold the coin, in person, by the rim in good lighting at a coin shop or show.

Thus, bid wisely!

Essentially, the rule eliminates most common-date Uncirculated Peace dollars and lowball Morgan dollars, and a host of other denominations, especially cents.

Here’s the reasoning behind the rule: If you win one item, you’re going to pay fees to receive it, including buyer’s premium and shipping. Some auctions require as much as $25 minimum to ship, and a few even more than that, charging for their “labor” and packing materials, even though the materials they use are free via the U.S. Postal Service.

So if the lot is worth $25, and you win it, you’re going to pay double what you could for the same coin if you purchased it for its retail price at a local or online coin shop.

Every now and then, though, I am tempted to break that rule. I did that this month with a modest $20 bid in a Hibid.com auction, winning the 1903 Indian Head cent depicted above. I bid on this along with several other high-priced lots, losing the latter and winning only this one coin.

I broke my rule because the description read “toned coin,” with the photo showing what looked like magenta hues. The photo wasn’t great, but I have seen that toning on Uncirculated cents before when they have been kept in envelopes, so I thought the risk was worth breaking the rule.

It wasn’t. The coin is cleaned and Almost Uncirculated, not Mint State, and the toning is dull. The lot is worth about $3 (if that).

Thankfully, the auctioneer only charged $3 for mailing. I know some auctioneers that would have charged a much larger amount. Still, my loss was more than $20 — my bid plus fees.

Rules are meant for breaking. That is true. When you create a rule, you do so because you have learned from experience about bad buys. When you break that rule, you’re reminded why you created it in the first place.

It’s all about continuing numismatic education!

Last year I blogged here about a toned Peace dollar in a Tidy House cardboard holder and cautioned viewers to be careful about swapped-out coins, in this case, replacing a Morgan dollar.

The Tidy House advertising states: "DID YOU KNOW ... that your uncirculated SILVER DOLLAR is the famous "MORGAN" SILVER DOLLAR, named for its designer George T. Morgan?"

As you can see, the coin being auctioned in the Tidy House holder above is a 1923-D Peace dollar, which was not designed by Morgan but by Anthony de Francisci.

Peace dollars do not tone well, when they do tone at all. Tidy House Morgan dollars, in their original packaging, interact with those cardboard holders, causing many to tone in spectacular colors. Most of these dollars are common-date 1880s coins, often from the New Orleans mint. 

In the 1960s, Tidy House got its coins from U.S. Mint, purchasing $1,000 Morgan dollar bags at cost for an advertising premium.

Tidy House also had promotions for the 1964 Kennedy half dollar, and those also tone well. Unethical sellers take out those toned halves, too, and replace them with untoned or damaged ones for resale.

Why would someone tamper with a Tidy House coin package? The motive may be money. They can take out the colorful Morgan and replace it with an artificially or questionably toned Peace dollar. They keep or sell the toned Morgan and count on hobbyists being willing to pay high prices for a potentially rainbow-toned Peace dollar, because they are so scarce.

Coin World often covers toned Peace dollars that sell above their condition value, as when a 1926 toned example at MS-65 sold for $1,292.50 at a Stack’s Bowers Galleries’ 2015 Baltimore Expo auction.

When I wrote about swapped-out Tidy House coins in 2016, the example I featured was also a 1926 Peace dollar. This time it is a 1923-D example.

To be fair, I do not know if the Peace dollar depicted above is artificially toned. But it’s questionable. On the bright side, perhaps a collector took out the Morgan and replaced it with a Peace dollar and the cardboard genuinely interacted with it over a number of years.

Someone will take the bait, I’m sure. I’m also sure that I won’t bid on it.

I provided a photo of such a tampered set.

You can purchase original sets from the Littleton company for $345, but you also can find good buys in Internet auctions.

The photo above shows an original set on the bottom and a recently holdered coin from that set, graded Mint State 63 by PCGS.

I won the set with a $140 bid, or $165 with shipping and buyer’s premium. The coins were beautifully toned. All three graded a very conservative MS-63, although the 1883-O depicted in the photo here looks MS-64+ or even MS-65, in my view.

I was disappointed in the PCGS grades. It looked like a quick job without much deliberation, which sometimes happens. Clearly, the 1883-O was much finer with fewer marks than the 1884-O and 1885-O. In retrospect, I should have cracked it out and resubmitted. But I wanted to get the coins to market.

If you think that is the opinion of a hobbyist, the market decided who was right, PCGS grades notwithstanding. Consigned to eBay, the 1883-O coin sold for $100, the 1884-O for $67.85, and the 1885-O for $77.

It could have been a bigger payday if the grades were MS-64, but you have to take into account slabbing fees. So in the end, my $160 Littleton set, with holdering and mailing fees added, came to about $200.

After paying my eBay consignment fees, my net profit was a meager $15.

But at least several hobbyists got great coins at bargain online prices. 

Dozens of coin auctions are available each week on Proxibid, HiBid.com, eBay and other portals, which I visit almost every day, to see the selections available via Internet.

But I routinely ignore several of those auctions.

For example, seldom, if ever, will I patronize auctions on Proxibid that warn with these disclaimers:

PLEASE READ: At the request of the auction company, this auction permits bids to be placed by the auctioneer, an employee of the auctioneer, or the seller or an agent on the seller’s behalf. While Proxibid’s Unified User Agreement prohibits this behavior, in accordance with UCC 2-328, this auction is permitted to engage in this activity by providing this clear disclosure to you, the bidder.

PLEASE READ: This auction company has requested and been granted access to see all bids placed including any maximum pre-bids. This auction is permitted to engage in this activity by providing this clear disclosure to you, the bidder.

You never know if the auctioneer is running up a bid primarily because he sees your maximum and is allowed to shill bid. At least Proxibid tells you that in the terms of service for each seller. HiBid.com does not. That’s a risk you take if patronizing online auctions on that portal. I routinely question auctioneers about what they see and do during online sessions. They don’t like that. But that’s too bad.

And I rarely bid aggressively on online auctions that charge a 20 percent buyer’s premium. These auctioneers will never learn. Consider the math: 15 percent of $1,000 is $150; 20 percent of $700 is $140. Your chances of sparking a bidding war at 20 percent are considerably less.

And I have a bone to pick with coin dealer auctions that charge 20 percent premiums but do not provide descriptions of what is cleaned or otherwise damaged. Say what? You charge 20 percent, and I know you. I know you can grade and provide a reliable numismatic description, but you’re not doing that. What could be your motive? Perhaps that hobbyists will bid according to their skill level, and you’re hoping they will overbid for a problem lot?

I say it’s better to bid on Heritage, Great Collections, Legend, or Stacks. At least they tell you what you’re getting for your money.

Then there is shipping. A few Proxibid sellers have outrageous shipping charges. One warns that you’ll pay a “minimum approximately $60.00” for a small package. Another warns in all capital letters: “IMPORTANT- YOU MAY NOT COMBINE PURCHASES TO SAVE ON SHIPPING; HOWEVER, SOME ITEMS MAY BE SHIPPED TO YOU IN THE SAME MAILING PACKAGE.”

I won’t bother looking at their catalogs.

Some Internet auctions on HiBid.com do not ship and will not allow bidders to contract with a third-party shipper. No shipping. Period. When I inquired why, the auctioneer emailed, “Too many mail scams out there.”

Why, then, are you selling on an Internet portal if you cannot ship, “no exceptions?”!

Another HiBid.com seller requires wire transfers, with the buyer paying both banks. Nope.

Then there are coin dealer auctions that never sell lots below wholesale gray sheet. They claim an onsite buyer bought the lot, but then will recycle the same coin in a future auction. Nice. I only bid here if I really want the coin.

I have several favorite auction companies that sell on Proxibid and HiBid.com. I won’t share those with you. But they have this in common:

1. A buyer’s premium below 20%.

2. Reasonable or inexpensive shipping.

3. Accurate numismatic descriptions.

4. Real auctions where maximum bids are not seen and shill bidding is not allowed.

Always check the buyer ratings on eBay before bidding. 

I like to bid on 1950 to 1955 Proof sets packaged in boxes, as the photo above attempts to depict. You can find them regularly in online auctions on such portals as Proxibid, HiBid.com and eBay.

The set’s coins, each thinly wrapped in cellophane, as depicted above, often sport vivid toning within the cardboard that houses them.

Every now and then, though, I come across a box that has been tampered with, as was the case with this 1950 set (depicted above), won with a bid of $495 plus 15% buyer’s fee.

When I got the box, I was disappointed. The contents had been tampered with. The most expensive coin, the half dollar, which when slabbed can be worth hundreds of dollars, had been replaced with a lesser Proof half that had a pin scratch. Same with the quarter.

How could that be, you ask? Someone used a razor to slit the cellophane, took out the original half dollar and then put the impaired one in its place.

The quarter had the same damage and slit cellophane.

Worse, as you can see (or more likely, can’t see) from the auction screenshot above —look closely there—the dime was missing. This is one of the drawbacks of online bidding. You can only discern so much from non-numismatic photos and must go by descriptions. Even so, when a coin product has been tampered with and you cannot see it but win it, all sales are final.

That said, the cent was spectacular, and I collect rainbow Proof cents.

So I telephoned the auction company, PPI, out of New Jersey, and explained the situation. I did not blame the consignor. These sets have been kicking around for decades, and it would have been unfair to level such a charge.

And I have done business with PPI before and respect the company, which contacted the consignor, who had another 1950 box set, which I offered to buy, for $450, providing there was no buyer’s fee and the company shipped to my location for free.

This was agreed upon, and I soon should get the replacement set.

The lesson here is difficult. It was so easy to miss the missing dime from the photo, and who would have guessed that someone would have slit and replaced two Proof coins?

The upside, however, is the auction company. I buy only from ethical, trusted dealers. PPI falls into that category.

I’ll report on the new set when I receive it.

Over the years, the Littleton Coin Company has sold many sets of silver dollars, with one of the most popular being the New Orleans Silver Collection, depicted above.

While you can still order these sets from the company for $345, hobbyists typically seek older versions of the assembled Uncirculated sets, for the rich toning that occurs from the silver coins residing in the velvet-like casing.

Of the two sets depicted above, the one at top is a swapped-out set, and the one below, which I recently won in an online auction with a bid of $140, is the real deal.

It doesn’t take a numismatic detective to figure out what occurred in the top set, offered in a HiBid.com online auction. Someone removed the beautifully toned coins and replaced them with lower grade untoned dollar coins with the same common dates: 1883-O, 1884-O and 1885-O.

This type of swapping occurs frequently with coin sets, especially Double Mint sets (1947-1958), which we discussed in a previous post. The cardboard holders from the U.S. Mint also are known to tone those coins in rich hues. Unscrupulous sellers take out those toned coins and replace them with untoned, typically dipped ones, full of luster and deception.

To be sure, sellers have a right to swap out coins that they own. But bidders also need to know what to be on the lookout for, especially since few online auctions will state that originally housed coins have been replaced.

The point of this post is two-fold: Be wary whenever placing a bid, and look for older Littleton sets with rainbowed coins in the three-slot holder.

As for me, I will be sending mine in for holdering and may report on the results in a future Coin World blog post.