Doug Winter Numismatics - I had a personal investment in the recent sale of Dr. Steven Duckor's gold dollar collection at the Heritage 2014 Platinum Night auction session. Steve is a good personal friend of mine (and my wife Irma) so we wanted to be there to cheer him on. I also helped him assemble the set and, as a dealer, you don't often get the chance to sit with a client while his world-class collection is being sold at auction.
Steve's collection contained 54 coins, all of which were in some way special. The final price realized for the set—including the 17.5% buyer's premium—was $1,912,316. This works out to an average of $35,413 and change per coin. Steve and I each figured the set before the sale and the final price realized was higher than we expected. We were both pleased at the prices, and we both felt that Heritage did an excellent job cataloging, promoting, and selling the coins.
I got a lot of feedback about the set prior to the auction and one discussion, in particular, was telling. A dealer whose opinion I respect but who isn't always the most "upbeat" individual came by my table and told me that the collection was, coin-by-coin, the best specialized set they had ever seen with no "almost there" pieces. And I think this was a perceptive comment.
Instead of analyzing each coin, which seems boring to do and boring to read, I'm going to choose three areas and look at a few coins which fall into these parameters. These areas are as follows: Civil War issues, "one offs" and surprises.
1. Civil War IssuesThe five Civil War gold dollars in the Duckor collection were amazing with grades ranging from a low of MS66 to a high of MS68+. I was pretty certain these coins were going to garner considerable interest as they are in demand by a number of Civil War specialists, not to mention gold dollar collectors.
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Posted 08/19/2015 3:05 pm
