Colonial Acres Auction

Several of the sales went very well. The 1965 LB nickel (EF-40) went for $2478, an EF 1973 LB 25c went for $212.40, a 1969 1c PL-67 UHC went for $354. It really just depended if there was the right buyer looking for something. I played the hypergrade game for a while, but got out of it as many others also seemed to. There is still a lot of modern coin tucked away in rolls, and a 1960-something "finest known" will likely not stay that way. I bought one coin at the sale, the others I was watching just went for more than I was willing to pay.

Just to add to the original scope of this post: I can confirm there was an (oblivious) shill bidder bidding in person at the CA auction last week. The bidder had voluntarily told me he had consigned a "large" number of items for the sale, and admittedly bid on some of his own material, in addition to new material. The shill bidder freely admitted his actions to me at the store, and went on to explain that he purposefully did it to try and drive up the price and increase his return; which he shockingly seemed to think was acceptable practice! What I don't understand is how CA could've allowed the bids from a bidder who was also the consignor? I don't think they closed their internal loop holes for such a thing to occur, especially at a live auction (that had approximately 6 attendees).

skip.. in CA's defense I could easily see how that can happen.

Said person takes their stuff to the auctioneer to be auctioned.... then makes an icollector account and bids on it themself...

CA is none the wiser...

And risky game on the shill.... if nobody else "bites" they're paying 20% or more just to get their own coin back to them...stupid if you ask me..

Undoubtedly the market for common Canadian coinage is depressed but it does alright in certain areas as mentioned above. Certain key year coinage still does well. Early Canadian silver also does well in any grade and really well in good grade. I've seen early tokens that are ever so elusive in higher grades (AU and up) also do very well. We recently had a good run on Large Victoria cents and small cents before that. Varieties are also of interest to many although the pricing can be all over the map and inconsistent. Like any other collectible, coins are trendy. Both by country and individually within. From a business point of view its somewhat irrelevant. Nothing but the obvious, but outside of an occasional deal, the daily market transactions determine current market value. It also dictates what dealers are willing to pay for coins at any given time. The delta is that as a dealer I'll buy everything (bulk) at X percentage of current retail with a market protection buffer in place to be able to walk away at "even" if need be if stock doesn't turn over quickly enough. As a collector I'm willing to pay fair market value for a specific item and likely hold longer term. Lastly, the world of online allows dealers to diversify into other markets. This allows you to hedge against different markets. On the point of auctions, I'm sometimes perplexed at the outcome. Many times I have had coins for sale at price X for months only to send them to auction and get 30% over that. As far as shill bidding, this isn't a new phenomenon. Pretty much every country auction in Ontario does it. Know your price point and stick to it.

On our side of the border this is not remotely uncommon. Neither is the House shilling. And irrelevant to someone who knows what they're willing to pay for a given coin. And anyone who finds it objectionable because it increases the price they pay is guilty of the same offense as the shiller - trying as hard as possible to screw someone out of money, in this case by paying too little instead of too much. An argument like this doesn't stand up well.

Not to defend the guy - I'm accustomed to the practice but don't particularly care for it - but is there any assurance that CA even knew he was the consignor? Even if there were an in-person meeting for the consignment (doesn't happen that way at Heritage or Stacks or Legend often, and I doubt it happens at Great Collections much at all), are the CA reps present at the auction the same ones who would recognize the bidder?

IMHO if you are a victim of shill bidding it is your own fault. Set your max bid and
stick to it. There was an auctioneer of Canadian material some years ago that used to
run a lot of his own material through his auctions. Nothing wrong with that at all.
What I did find amusing was that when you were bidding against the book he would give
the impression that he had mail bids you were competing against. In reality he was just
trying to drive the price up to his reserve on his material. Nothing to get upset about
but the auctions would drag on.
It was quite clever as to the casual observer and potential consignor it would appear
that he had a strong participation from mail bidders and a high sell through rate. A
lot of his material would not sell and then reappear in later auctions and the process
would be repeated.
Again set your max bid and stick to it.This is easy advise for me to dispense. I wish
I would have followed it in my early years of collecting.

Just to clarify re: the CA shill bidder..... he had apparently (and accidentally) won several of his own lots and then tried to claim to the auctioneer that he didn't bid on those items at all, then later admitted that he was bidding them up to his reserve price; which didn't even make any sense. Then he simply shrugged after the auctioneer explained to him that what he did was a "no-no", and very casually replied "oh well, there's always a solution to these things". The shill bidder was completely aloof.