I am just now getting a
moment to decompress from a very active and dynamic ANA World’s Fair of
Money. Our auction and activity on the bourse floor exceeded our
expectations and from these results we see that the numismatic market alive and
well.
The clear highlight of
our auction and the entire show was the Lord St. Oswald-Norweb 1794 Flowing
Hair silver dollar, which realized $2.8
million, far exceeding our estimate of $2.0 million. In fact, Stack’s
Bowers auctioned 5 of the 7 most valuable US coins at the ANA convention and
has auctioned 17 of the top 20 US coins thus far in 2017. This continues the
trend from 2016 when we auctioned 15 of the top 20 US coins.
It is clear to us that
there are two major drivers of the strong prices we are seeing in our auctions
– a very strong interest from our customer base in rarities and an overall
shortage of available good to great coins. These two factors result in
tremendous competition and great prices realized for our consignors.
In addition to US coins,
our ANA auction featured World and Ancient coin, US currency, and World
currency sessions as well. These specialties also performed well, with
the prices realized for every world and ancient coin session exceeding high
estimate. Our US and world currency sessions achieved price totals that
were solidly between high and low estimate.
Next week, I will be in
Hong Kong as we host our Hong Kong Auction along with the Hong Kong Coin
Show. This is our gateway to the very exciting and dynamic Asian market
and we expect strong results. If you plan to attend next week, I look
forward to seeing you!
Overall, the market
remains strong and we have a robust selection of exciting rarities and
collections in the pipeline for our upcoming auctions. If you are
interested in consigning, please contact me and I will be happy to work with
you.
I look forward to hearing
from you.
All the best,
Brian Kendrella
