Right before Christmas I received the latest Spink-Smythe catalog. This is a beautiful 4-color catalog offering around 1,800 lots this time. The sale is divided into five sessions, scheduled to take place in New York, January 15 to 17.
This time, the bulk of the lots are coins, currency, and autographs. Only about 348 lots are related to stocks and bonds, and of that number, only 52 are railroad issues from North America. There are a few more lots among the autographs related to railroad personalities including one lot with Gould's autographs and another with William H. Vanderbilt's.
I am especially curious to see how prices will behave. I'd expect to see common and intermediate-scarcity items sell fairly cheaply. Higher-rarity items, though, are complete unknowns. Late 2008 prices from Europe show schizophrenic behavior where some items fetched absurdly high prices in the face of the declining economy. I just don't know what to expect!!
4 comments:
I don't bid unless I see a pic.They are the worst auction house on providing images on items they are trying to sell.When and if I consign it will not be with them.
Since the stocks and bonds are on saturday (I think) I hope to attend and maybe pick up some bargain. And, even if I don't, it should be interesting to see.
Tim W.
The stocks and bonds section of the sale starts Saturday morning at 10:00. I always advise my correspondents to attend as many live auctions as possible.
Two things...
The previous comment about not bidding unless there is a picture is something I follow as well. In this case there were two lots I was interested in but were not pictured. I sent an email asking for scans of the items and got a reply within minutes. And because the scans were pretty good size - I could see better detail than a lot of the smaller pictures in the catalog. So the moral is, just ask and you may be pleasantly surprised.
Secondly, I did attend the auction. There were only four of us live bidders in the room, they said that 5 people were on Spink Online to bid. There were two small cameras on the rostrum so online folks could see the auctioneer. The pace was quick and all the bonds and share certificates were sold by 11:30 (starting right on time at 10:00). Seemed like prices were mostly at the low end compared to the catalog estimates. It was a little hard for me to hear the difference between not sold and sold to a mail bidder but that is really a function of my poor hearing and my sitting at the back of the room. I'll look at the prices realized and if anything comes out interesting will make an additional post. Glad I attended the auction and got to see everything.
Tim W.
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