Market reports provide sense, auction results provide proof

By Steve Roach
First published in the November 22, 2010 issue of Coin World

After a major show, there is little shortage of collectors and dealers who post market reports. These can be useful for providing a general sense of the market at a given show, while a look at the auction results provides tangible proof of where the market is at a given moment.

Coinfest was held Oct. 28 to 30 in Stamford, Conn. It's a relatively new show and promoted a bourse of 150 dealers in 2010.

This year the show suffered a loss and a gain.

It lost free evaluations by Certified Acceptance Corp., which places stickers on certified coins if they meet a certain standard of quality. The service had been a popular draw at the show.

The show gained a Heritage auction that realized a healthy $9.42 million.

Viewing post-show reports online provides good indicators of the traffic at a show, which at Coinfest was almost universally described as slow, and the voices online offer plenty of suggestions why.

The winning reason seems to be that the Whitman Coin & Collectibles Baltimore Expo was the next weekend, and collectors and dealers alike decided to wait for that show. For many New York City-area collectors, a trip to Stamford takes the same effort as a trip to Baltimore.

A Heritage Auctions post-auction press release characterized results as 20 percent higher than pre-auction projections.

The obvious auction star was an 1879 Washlady dollar pattern in silver graded Proof 66+ by Numismatic Guaranty Corp. that was purchased by New Jersey dealer Legend Numismatics for $161,000. (Pictured left, image courtesy HeritageAuctions.com)

An exceedingly rare Colonial coin, a 1785 Connecticut copper of the African Head design graded Very Fine 30, realized a robust $115,000.

Just several nights later at Sotheby's Impressionist and Modern auction in New York, a Modigliani canvas of a sensual nude sold for a record $68.9 million, showing that at the very top of a similar market, lots of money is available to spend big to acquire the best.

However, the rapid advances in bullion prices have not seemed to bring the action in the lower-segments of the coin market for which many dealers have hoped.