Auction Prices Provide Historical Perspective

By David L. Ganz
Numismatic News

Auctions fascinate and engage us.
It's not just eBay, but also mail-bid auction sales, live auctions and other sale methods where items go to the highest bidder.
It's a combination of skill - to win an item at the high bid but at the lowest possible price - knowledge (in knowing what to bid on, and how high to bid) and resources to accomplish the goal.
Sometimes it's just a case of luck. Some 30 years ago, for example, I attended a Saturday morning auction of New England Rare Coin Galleries in New York City and walked in just as a 1922 uncirculated Peace dollar hit the block. It was rare, but the bid was uncovered - no reserve - and it was mine for a shouted $5 bid to auctioneer Herb Melnick, who knew how to coax extra dollars and bids on higher end items.
Another example, more interesting but less numismatic, came at an auction conducted by a major auction house 20 years ago cataloged as an "engraving of the presidents' " I looked at it and recognized it for what it really was: a presidential commission, signed by Abraham Lincoln and his secretary of war, Edwin Stanton. A nice prize for diligence.
Auctions are also important price histories, which show trends for individual coins and the marketplace as a whole. They show a story line that allows both graphic, chart and written comparisons to be made over an extended period of time and to give an impression of market segments as well as the whole shooting match.
I've been going to auctions regularly for more than 30 years, and I retain the sale catalogs. It's useful, I find, to know where the bidding starts, where it ends and who the players are who bid on key lots. It also helps in the eventual pedigree of a coin - knowing who had the coin, and when.
That in turn allows for following values up and down over extended periods of time.
For more than 30 years, I've also charted coin prices for key dates - coins like the 1804 silver dollar, the 1913 Liberty nickel, the 1794 silver dollar and others - which I have augmented by acquiring older numismatic literature to round out the collection of information.
In 1973, when I worked in Iola, Wis., for Krause Publications as an assistant editor for Numismatic News, one of the most exciting stories took place in October, when the Gilhousen collection was first sold by Superior Galleries. Television producer Ralph Andrews was the buyer, but the quote from Larry Goldberg over the phone lines the next day was staggering.
"I just sold the first $100,000 coin," he said, and it was big news.
It may seem commonplace right now, but in the backwater times of the 1970s, a sixfigure sale of a coin was something else. (The Ellsworth collection, which contained a 1794 dollar in uncirculated, for example, was purchased intact by Wayte Raymond for $100,000 in the 1940s.
The 1794 dollar is a coin with a story, and an impressive price record - not to mention pedigree. For convenience, I've started back more than a century ago, 1903, when the Murdock collection was sold in London and an uncirculated 1794 dollar brought £48, or about $230.40, in the sale.

click here to continue