Very Disappointing Experience On My First Major (Near $7k) Auction Purchase - Advice Needed!

The authenticity of the coin doesn't appear to be in question here. We've all seen on here many times that grades are subjective and over/undergrading exists. "Buy the coin, not the slab" we hear. I'm not seeing a lot of liability here for the TPG aside from whatever reputational damage they might bear (and I can't quickly find the coin in question at HA so I have no idea what the "right" answer here is, even if this were a series I had any experience with).

Should HA have known? Maybe. When coins are cracked or crossed over, it can be hard to accurately trace the lineage. OP apparently did, but HA has hundreds if not thousands of coins to manage. If the certification number doesn't change, it's a lot easier.

Should HA have reported the background? If they knew, perhaps. In the interest of full disclosure, it would be great if they did. But given the degree of variance, I can see why they might not, especially if it would impact their buyer's premium, and moreso if there was any uncertainty in the conclusion.

Are you screwed for value? Coins are worth whatever someone is willing to pay for them. You felt this was worth what you paid, based on the information you had at the time. If you were to sell this with the information you had, you might get more or less that amount later. If you disclose what you found out, you still might get more or less, depending on the buyer and what the "true" grade really is (again, subjective). Without seeing the coin in question, it's feeling like 61 is too high and 45 is too low. If it's an attractive 55, you might still get good money back.

My semi-educated 1.5¢, take with a boulder of salt.

The fact that you did not receive the invoice means you did not pay yet?

Based on the fact alone that a lot of info was objectively missing or misleading from the description I think you have all the reasons to ask HA to cancel your bid.

Sounds to me like you now have several reservations on owning the coin (you are already talking about reselling) so if I were you I'd try that route.

Best of luck!

Very well, I didn't intend to muddle the issue.

The first question that occurs to me is this: is there any guarantee or disclaimer about provenance in the HA contract?

Also, how did you discover the expanded history of the coin? Is that something that HA should have reasonably discovered when investigating the coin? Did they have an obligation to do so? It sounds like the information they supplied to you was incomplete, not wrong.

There is a separate question about whether the seller was obligated to disclose cracking a circulated grade slab and resubmitting for a mint state grade. I know that people play the crack out game, but that's usually for a bump within circulated or MS, not a jump between the two. Is the current grade the grade, or does the grading history of the coin matter?

Thank you for your input.

Heritage probably won't send an invoice until early next week. I am not trying to get out of the responsibility of paying. Also, there is no way to prove that Heritage or the seller PURPOSEFULLY did not provide a reasonably accurate description based on publicly available data, even if they actually did not. I hope to get inputs, if they had an obligation to disclose or verify. It took my a couple of hours to find out the real provenance of this coin. Would such time per coin be a reasonable expectation from an auction house to perform? I do not know. Considering that they host a million coins every year, it may seem unreasonable.

Where is the line between expecting/obligation for an accurate provenance about a near unique 1804 dollar worth millions vs a $7K coin...of which dozens change hands every day?

What I hope is to get inputs from those who have some auction experience. And then later maybe a grading opinion, which obviously will not change anything as far as this Heritage auction.

It does provide a lesson that sloppy auction house descriptions are bountiful and should be aware of.

Very true. Incomplete vs deliberate omission. There is a huge difference, although an incomplete description can be deliberate.

The causes of incomplete description:

- negligence? (that assume a legal obligation per the terms and conditions of the auction)

- professional negligence? (that assumes a creed/industry-wide unwritten obligation to conduct a reasonable research/verification)

- deliberate omission? (that assumes the seller/HA were aware and made a decision not to disclose, assuming seller/they were not bound to disclose)

Quote:
There is a separate question about whether the seller was obligated to disclose cracking a circulated grade slab and resubmitting for a mint state grade. I know that people play the crack out game, but that's usually for a bump within circulated or MS, not a jump between the two.

Only Heritage Auction would know if the seller knew. The coin was last sold in Aug 2024 on a HA auction. If the seller who bought the coin in Aug 2024 was the same seller who sod it in Nov 2024 on another HA auction, then it was the seller who cracked out the PCGS XF45+ slab and submitted it to NGC on 11 Sep 2024. If that's the case, the seller deliberately omitted the provenance. Now, is that a violation of the terms? I doubt, will read the pages of small print.

Quote:
Is the current grade the grade, or does the grading history of the coin matter?

Good question. My answer is yes. The exact same variety in AU-58+ was sold for $18,000 on Stack/Bowers in 2022. Very sharp coin, but had a provenance a mile long, highlighting "Eliasberg" . I believe it was one of the five AU coins listed in the 2013 SHI census, on page 448.

Here is my original post draft with my research and background.

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

I ended up revising my original context below, in order to highlight what I have discovered about the sordid past of this $6,600 coin while I was writing this post. I just won this on Heritage Auction last night. I have some questions that I hope you can answer and some advice I am sure are due from you.

I have a bit of buyer's remorse that got worse after what I discovered just now. Hope it will subside.based on your solicited candid opinions. Hopefully, I will learn and others will learn from it too. Or maybe, I will be able to say: I have "escaped" relatively unscathed. Or maybe even did ok? :)

Always wanted a hidden "WM" New Jersey penny in decent condition. I missed an opportunity a few years back on ebay for an AU-looking near $1,000 that had a very clearly visible "WM". You may know the story behind this "WM" where master engraver Walter Mould from Morristown, NJ took some shortcuts after allegedly being told by the state to remove his initials from below the horse head.

Story here:
https://coinweek.com/new-jersey-cop...es-his-mark/

Had this coin on my watch list (starting bid below $300) for a couple of weeks and almost forgot about it until last night when it came up for live floor/internet auction. I had about 10 minutes to decide what maximum price I should pay, estimating its value at near $8000-$9000. At the $5,200 bid by someone else and "Fair Warning" I submitted a bid expecting to be outbid. To my surprise, it sold for $5,500 + $1,100 in fees.

I am OK with the price I paid compared to other coins I researched before the auction of same/similar grade 62-q coins sold, but I think I have failed in these aspects:

1. Felt assured by the NGC holder and the reputable auction house, so I did not examine the coin surfaces very close. It's a Die State 1. Besides the 62-q's characteristically weak mid-field strike, there were some noticeable deeper marks on the obverse around the horse and the reverse has two deeper marks. One of them is in the shield at 7pm, and the other between the star and the sprig also at 7pm. A colonial copper must get extra credit for these marks that would otherwise sink a Morgan silver, etc...thus the MS-61 grade.

2. Only after the auction did I notice and check that this coin was sold in an earlier auction as an unslabbed ungraded AU-55, and had other lives as well (more on this below).

3. I did not do a deep enough research on the actual population of the 62-q until after the auction.



This is the provenance that was cited by Heritage Auctions for this coin. It was sold as an ungraded AU-55 in 2013. See link to Stacks/Bowers Jan 2013 auction, Lot 11392:

https://auctions.stacksbowers.com/l...shield-au-55

So, I wanted to go a bit more in depth as far as for what prices same/similar grade 62-q sold and what is this coin's relative standing amongst the other third-party graded population.
Heritage Auction had a conflicting table below the coin's auction listing that shows no PCGS population above grade XF-45. But the PCGS website for 62-q shows a PCGS MS-63BN, although did not find an auction price for it yet.

https://www.pcgs.com/coinfacts/coin...ig-bn/522415

PCGS also shows 1ea AU-58+, and 3ea AU-55s. The AU-58+ sold for $18,000 in 2022 on Stack's Bowers. Why did it sell for near 3 times that seemingly reasonable price of $5000 I hat grade? For two reasons IMHO: a lengthy distinguished provenance and a relatively sharp strike, even though it's a Die State 2.

https://auctions.stacksbowers.com/l...m-au-58-pcgs

The auction describes that coin as:

"This coin is ranked as sixth finest known on the SHI Census, one of five AU coins that trail the Gem Unc Bushnell-Garrett coin and a Gem Unc in the Anton Collection. The third-ranked Taylor coin reappeared in the March 2021 Partrick sale as NGC MS-61; that coin is more lustrous but less sharp at centers."

This description from 2022 also cites the SHI census which (as far as I know) was not revised/updated since 2013 or prior, which was when that book was published. So I looked up in my SHI book (page 448), their census lists 2ea GEM and 5ea aU-55s.
Side note: thanks to two gents here in the forum who (while I was writing this post) helped me figure out that one of the two major New Jersey coppers books (New Jersey State Coppers and other being Breen's I already had is called "SHI" after the authors partial last names combined SIboni + Howes + Ish is what the auctions refer to as "SHI census".

So the SB note on this coin makes me wonder, how accurate these auction sites are as far as researching $18,000 coins? In 2013 the top grades listed in SHI for the 62-q were two MS-65, and five AU specimens. As of Nov 2024, besides the two top grades of MS-65 mentioned in SHI, I could locate one MS-63 on PCGS (no auction records), and one other NGC MS-61 (besides mine) sold in 2004 for $6,700 on HA.

https://coins.ha.com/itm/colonials/...t=1&x=0&y=0#

PCGS population report shows only 3ea AU-55s and that $18K AU-58+. NGC population report shows 1ea MS-61, 1ea AU-58 (sold for $9,987 in 2014 HA), 2ea AU-55s.

https://coins.ha.com/itm/colonials/...type=NGC1199

https://www.ngccoin.com/coin-explor...s/?des=ms-bn

Two NGC AU-55s were sold in a 4 May 2022 HA auction: one AU-55 (Long Island Collection) for $4,560 , along with another AU-55 for $5,280. In the same auction there was a PCGS XF-45+ which sold for $5,760. This same coin sold later that year on HA on 15 Dec for $4,320. Upon a closer look, I realized that this is the same NGC MS-61 coin I just bought!

https://coins.ha.com/itm/colonials/...bnail-071515

https://coins.ha.com/itm/colonials/...nail-071515#


So I went to check PCGS's registration to see if it's still there: sure enough, it's still valid. So as far as PCGS (or anyone else) is concerned, this XF-45+ coin still exists as a PCGS XF-45+. PCGS has this same coin listed sold three times. The first two are the ones I already mentioned, and the third one was on 18 Aug 2024 at HA again for $3,960!

https://coins.ha.com/itm/colonials/...376-08122024

https://www.pcgs.com/cert/37887348

And that's not all.HA had it listed sold for $4,080 on 5 Sep 2023:

https://coins.ha.com/itm/colonials/...bnail-071515

How can a XF-45+ PCGS coin end up as an MS-61 NGC coin a couple of months later? This took me back in a circle to my coin I won last night, and looked up its NGC verification. Sure enough, it was slabbed on 11 Sep 2024. Apparently, it was broken out of its PCGS slab, and was sent to NGC.

https://www.ngccoin.com/certlookup/8211786-007/61/

So this coin, after being purchased for $3,290 in the 2013 Stack Bowers Auction, as an ungraded AU-55 then lived its life as PCGS XF45+, was sold a few times until 2024. Was broken out from its slab in Sep 2024 and ended up at NGC for either slabbing, or conservation + slabbing. Maybe because "NGC Conservation services" did the work, the NGC's grading services" were more lenient in grading(?) What would you grade this coin?


I do like the coin, but I wonder if for this price I could have bought another NJ or other (possibly obscure or less appreciated) US/world coin that is near the top or at the top of its population? The main reason I have buyer's remorse is not really the price paid, but that it may not appreciate much in my lifetime. But what is troubling that the population reports hard to rely and price upon, unless talking about unique or ultra rare specimens.

I am wondering how could HA cite my coin's provenance as an ungraded unslabbed AU-55 specimen all the way back to a 2013 auction, while at the same time completely unaware that this coin was sold at least four times since then in a PCGS XF-45+ slab? Who supplied them with the provenance? Did they research it themselves?

https://coins.ha.com/itm/colonials/...yBids-101116