KOLBE & FANNING ONLINE SALE RESULTS

Kolbe & Fanning Numismatic Booksellers held their first purely online auction of numismatic books on Saturday, February 28, through the firm’s internet bidding portal at auction.numislit.com. The sale offered 380 lots of North American numismatic literature and was a fine success.

This is the first in what is expected to be a series of smaller online numismatic book auctions held by Kolbe & Fanning in addition to their traditional printed and public auctions. The lots were all illustrated and fully described, and bidders were able to browse through the lots and leave absentee bids in the days leading up to sale. Many bidders participated in this manner, so that nearly 60% of the lots had bids on them before the live auction began at noon on Saturday.

Real-time bidding was also quite spirited and those participating in the live sale saw strong action on a variety of lots, with some highlights as follows:

Thirty-one lots of pre-WWII volumes of The Numismatist (lots 3 through 33), did very well, nearly all bringing over estimate. The 1896 and 1897 volumes brought $425 each (all prices quoted here are hammer prices and do not include the buyer’s premium).

S.H. & H. Chapman’s 1895 sale of the E.J.M. Chaloner collection, with plates (lot 96), brought a strong $550 hammer.

Nice copies of the Bushnell and H.P. Smith collections, with reprint plates (lots 93 and 97), also brought strong prices of $375 and $425, respectively.

Lot 228, a copy of the Lyman Low sale of the Benjamin Betts collection, brought $650 on a $350 estimate.

Perhaps the greatest action of the sale came with lot 276, a rare 1861 catalogue of coins and medals for sale by Alfred S. Robinson. This copy had last been sold in 2010, when it brought $220 in the firm’s 119th sale. Several bidders pursued this lot, with two of them going head to head and pushing the sale price to $1700 hammer.

Another fiercely contested item was lot 359, an offprint of a 1949 Saturday Evening Post promotional piece on B. Max Mehl, which ended up bringing $350 hammer.

Sale catalogues of W. Elliot Woodward continued to see strong demand, with plated copies of his 1885 J. Colvin Randall sale (lot 374) bringing $800 and his masterly All the Kingdoms of the World sale of 1884 (lot 372) bringing $650. Several unplated Woodward sales also brought very strong prices.

Kolbe & Fanning plan to hold a second online sale in several weeks, focusing on works on ancient and world coins. Details will, of course, be provided here in the near future. Thanks to everyone who participated and helped make this such a fun and successful sale.

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web