Three weeks before the ANA, we got an email from a customer who was looking to sell his coin collection. We get quite a few of these per week, but the list that soon accompanied the email was rather large, to the tune of nearly 1000 coins. Unfortunately I couldn’t make it to his home in Florida that week to view the collection, but we were able to arrange a meeting the next week where I was able to pay a visit.

Let me tell you, looking at and taking notes on an 1000 coin collection isn’t something that goes quickly, and I only had 3 hours to go over them due to time restraints for the customer. By the end of the day, I was pretty exhausted, but excited about the possibilities. I wasn’t able to come home with the deal that night as the customer was waiting on another bid or two, but I assured him I would have an offer within the week. Indeed DLRC’s offer was presented within the week, but our competition, a rather large firm, wasn’t as timely. It took the customer several weeks of prodding to receive their offer, but once it was received, their offer wasn’t nearly the guarantee of ours at David Lawrence Rare Coins.

Unfortunately, many times our competitors will attempt to get a customer to consign something to auction, while giving rather large estimates and rather low guarantees. As typical of the situation, we put our money where our mouth is and ended up buying the nearly million dollar collection outright. As a result of this deal, I left the ANA show early (the Sunday before it started!) and headed to New York to pick up the coins.

After a nice night in the customer’s lake house, we accounted for all of the pieces and arranged for getting the coins shipped to our offices in Virginia Beach.

Now that the coins have arrived, we’re preparing the collection for auction.A collection as substantial as this obviously requires a lot of work and the previous owner scoured many different websites, auctions, and coin shows to procure what he needed. While completeness is noticed in several of the series, there are just a few coins missing from the Indian Cents and the Walking Liberty Halves. However, there’s a little bit of something for everyone in this collection from registry-quality pieces, several nicely colored coins, and many key date rarities that are tough to locate otherwise. The Summer Sunset Collection, open for bidding on the 7th of September and ending on September 21st, is an excellent way to close out your numismatic summer!