Maybe the better question would be, "Does anybody remember mail bid auctions?"
Back in the early 1980's the major coin newspapers (I don't think I'm allowed to mention their names?) always had a couple of mail bid sales in them. For the most part, the coins were listed but they were NOT pictured. They normally had a form that you would use to fill in your name, address, the lot numbers you were interested in and the amount you were willing to bid. You would cut the form out of the paper, put it in an envelope and mail it to the folks holding the auction and then wait for a notification in the mail letting you know if you won.
Paper forms and snail mail! That seems SO crude by today's standards. And the frightening part is that you generally did not even get to see a photo of the coin you were bidding on. All you had was the WRITTEN denomination, year, mint and the seller's SWAG at the grade (unless, of course, it was slabbed).
Look at all the counterfeiting and other sneaky stuff that goes on today on places like
ebay and then imagine (or remember) a world where you did not get to see the coin AT ALL, didn't have buyer protection plans or any of the safeguards we have now. I wonder if it was just a kinder, gentler time or if people just didn't have enough sophistication to know if they had been swindled? I mean, I was in my 20s back then and I don't remember hardly any of the sneaky, underhanded, dishonest stuff that you read about right here in this Forum that happens so often in today's world on
ebay.
It seems like the worst thing that happened was that the coins would be overgraded by one grade...but most bidders compensated for that by basing their bid on a grade that would be one grade below what the seller listed it as.
A friend and I tried to start up a "side-business" doing this. We were too poor or too cheap to place full-blown ads in these papers so we put an ad in these paper's classified sections saying that if you send us your name and address we'll send you our list of mail bid coins. That lasted for about 2 years until the weekly grind of sending lists and buying stamps and envelopes and receiving bids in the mail and sending notifications in the mail and renewing our ads in the papers blah, blah, blah - finally wore us completely out!
So - does anybody know? Are there still mail-bid auctions of the type that I've described here...?
Posted 02/21/2010 12:42 pm
