Outbid On Heritage Auction But Then I Find The Coin For Sale

Heritage will enter bids for "themselves" so to speak, it's a form of a hidden reserve. It's nice to think some of the above comments are true and sometimes they are true but be realistic. If the item doesn't reach a price level considered acceptable to the consignor and/or consignee then a hidden reserve can kick in and I'm certain this has happened to me as well. I look at it this way - I bid the most I'm willing pay when including the BP & shipping and let it go at that. Sometimes coins I "lose" end up as a B-I-N on Heritage or with hnai.com on ebay. ebay seller hnai.com is Heritage Auctions and often you can get better deals from them off ebay than on their own website!

P.S. @BStrauss3: That's what I'm talking about. Good work on the one (won) you got on ebay!

You could certainly call it that and, of course, any consignor could also shill their own coins with an alternate account. There are so many eventualities that I quit worrying about what I can't control. It's not like they are bidding up their auctions like Teletrade used to do. I have never seen evidence of it anyway.

Now defunct Teletrade Auctions was a well known and obvious example of shill bidding to a criminal degree IMO. They knew what highest value a bidder was willing to pay (from their max bid) and would regularly shill their auctions up to your max bid. It was rare to win anything at Teletrade for under your max bid - very rare.

Good question. I think it evolved into Great Collections.

Hey, calm down. Sorry, apologies, didn't mean to upset you.

Stack's didn't buy TeleTrade to shut it down. They ran it for a couple years while "improving" their name-brand offering. It's just that TT filled a niche that SB's weekly Internet only auctions don't (fill). And the new tech is not as good as TT's was.

Why did Stacks Bowers shut down Teletrade to swap it iut for their inferior web site?

They must have some real weak IT people at Stacks Bowers. I aslo feel they probabaly have an old time culture (look at the names, can't get much older!) with the fancy hard bound catalogues, etc. I lile the catalogues, I'm just glad I don't pay to produce them.

Ditto, your forgiven about mentioning GreatCollections. For their defense I want to share my recent experience with them. I have won over 20 bids totaling almost 5G's. Of the 20 I won 18 under book, 8 of them at 26-42% under the PCGS pop/value. The rest were easily under by 20%.
Only one coin was listed over book and I won it at opening bid, I paid 12% over POP listing. I did so grudgingly but the coin rarely surfaces in any certified grade. All coins shipped within 12 hours of purchase and received within 3 working days. They rock man let me tell you. I was burnt on ebay one time on a 1980 DDO F'S-101 AU-50ish. The seller sent it to me in a little girls thank you card with a child hand written thank you note. The coin was not the one shown...that was one of two ebay purchases I made and my last. Being basically robbed was a good lesson for me.
Great collections has enabled me to put together a killer die variety Lincoln Memorial cent set way under any of my local dealers, they can't even compete anymore and I blush when shown prices they offer me on the good ones.
The only draw back to GreatCollections is they are putting local coin dealers in my area in a curtailed mode of action. OK I'm done ranting.