From an email received by Stirling and Currency - "The Australian numismatic industry has suffered two high-profile casualties in the past 18 months (John Pettit and the Rare Coin Company), and as salacious as that fact is, I'd venture to suggest that most other sectors of the Australian retail market have been hit by corporate failures in recent times as well."
I have noticed some premium British coins on auctions sells nearly the same price in AU$ here as in the UK for . Even with the usual 17% buyer's premium loss good profit can be made.
John Pettit going down really hurt the banknote industry, he propped up the market with his ruthless bidding at auctions. The M000001 10 Shillings note that John purchased in 2008 for $1,909,000 was his downfall, he purchased it on behalf of (Mr X) and paid more than (Mr X) was willing to pay so he got stuck with it and that was the end of him which saw the price of banknotes take a huge dive.. The Rare Coin Company had a similar effect but more on the coin side of things, stupidity was the factor in them going down. They were offering rare coins at ludicrous prices but even more ludicrous was that they guaranteed to buy them back after a certain period with a good percentage of profit to the buyer. They never took into account that if the price of coins tumbled they would be in trouble, and that's exactly what happened.
SS has a few members that i regard to be among the very best in numismatics. thepurplepenny would be right up with them, very knowledgeable in every aspect, in fact one of the better graders of coins.
From a new comer to the industry Point of view i have seen these situations many times, "The traditional, conservative old dogs of the game" are not use to change and when it comes it will come at such speeds that they take contingency measures to halt its advance Now i say this strictly speaking as someone very new to the coin hobby but have seen both sides of the story, its like UBER vs Taxi industry in australia only in terms of coins and its APCGS vs all the traditional coin collectors who always grade with the same people and never change. only time will tell... ANYWAYS that was just my dramatic story telling of the situation YAY
I find it surprising that one of the major auction houses does not spin up a grading (and slabbing) service. Do any of them have a good reputation among dealers and are viewed as having no problems with managing conflict of interest? Eg would not use gradings to manipulate auction prices?
Here is an interesting article from Drake Sterling. While they are actually offering a PCGS service and so are probably biased it does give a little more background on the topic. http://www.drakesterling.com/coins-...ralias-professional-coin-grading-service-pcgs Something to note about that article is that it avoid APCGS entirely. Further from ACPGS is that their website at this time has a big banner saying that they are taking no further coins in for grading! From http://apcgs.com.au/
