Anyone else enjoying Spink Live!

[Rob]

Spinks have destroyed their Website,and their search facility ,and their photos are rubbish.

I used to find their photo quality to be the best there was. Now its pretty well the worst,

and I find I just cannot judge the true grade enough to be able to risk a strong bid .

And yet yesterday I arrived home to find a glossy copy of Spink Insider magazine(?) on my door mat.

Seems like maybe they are spending money on the wrong things ...?

You were lucky. Besides the Insider, I also now receive banknote catalogues for some reason but not the stamp ones I used to get. Thankfully the coin catalogues are still coming through.

[Peter]

Spinks have destroyed their Website,and their search facility ,and their photos are rubbish.

I used to find their photo quality to be the best there was. Now its pretty well the worst,

and I find I just cannot judge the true grade enough to be able to risk a strong bid .

And yet yesterday I arrived home to find a glossy copy of Spink Insider magazine(?) on my door mat.

Seems like maybe they are spending money on the wrong things ...?

Yep I got one Can't see how this will embrace my collection.

[HistoricCoinage]

You were lucky. Besides the Insider, I also now receive banknote catalogues for some reason but not the stamp ones I used to get. Thankfully the coin catalogues are still coming through.

You just wait until you get the wine ones! Personally, I prefer to drink mine rather than look at pictures.

[Nicholas]

Spink live won't work on my iPhone.- that's my only computer at home. So I missed the auction as well.

[Peckris]

Spink live won't work on my iPhone.- that's my only computer at home. So I missed the auction as well.

Blimey, you must have good eyesight! Or maybe you used to have

[Rob]

Spink live won't work on my iPhone.- that's my only computer at home. So I missed the auction as well.

You didn't miss anything, trust me. You had a day well spent, whatever you were doing.

[Nicholas]

Do you mean a lacklustre auction offering, or overbidding?

[Rob]

Do you mean a lacklustre auction offering, or overbidding?

The feed is screwed up most of the time. Not only people on this forum, but others too. Here's an email sent to me shortly after the sale finished.

Hello Rob

Thought I would have a look at Scottish James V groats (653/654). The software stalled. Then I thought I would maybe have a bid on the Anne 1702, plumes and VIGO shillings (863/4). Guess what, stalled again. As far as I'm concerned I would never trust Spink Live Bidding if there was anything I really wanted. They're getting worse by the minute.

Did you have any luck bidding on anything?

Best wishes

So you see. There are no plus points but a lot of negs. There wasn't a huge amount of material for me in the sale, but it would have been nice to actually manage to bid on the pieces I was interested in.

[Nicholas]

I placed some pre auction bids on some common but interesting coins and won the CH II ducaton.... Nothing that needed live bidding...

[Coinery]

I placed some pre auction bids on some common but interesting coins and won the CH II ducaton.... Nothing that needed live bidding...

I guess the success rate of pre-auction bids will have been greatly improved if they were operating a flawed Live Bidding system.

Shame on them if they don't resolve this issue smartish, they have a responsibility to the consignor, if nothing else!

[Nicholas]

Oh yes I guess. I can't imagine the frustration after researching and preparation a coin you like, then missing because of technical faults. Shocker!

[Coinery]

Oh yes I guess. I can't imagine the frustration after researching and preparation a coin you like, then missing because of technical faults. Shocker!

Heartbreaker for sure!

As an aside, that's a fantastic crop you've got as an avatar, Nicholas, is the whole coin to that standard, it looks amazing?

[Rob]

Good to see that Spink have abandoned their in house bidding system in favour of The Saleroom. Took a punt today that it would work - and it did!! So well in fact that the internet frequently got ahead of the room, so that Richard would be taking room bids at 500 say, when the internet was already up to 700. But that's infinitely preferable to the inability to bid at all in the case of Spink, or the funereal pace of the last DNW sale where the parting words heard over the internet before the link was closed at well gone 7pm were - "Christ, that was...".

[bagerap]

Results 26th & 27th:

http://www.spink.com/auction.aspx?id=13013

[Rob]

Results 26th & 27th:

http://www.spink.com/auction.aspx?id=13013

Mixed bag. The better pieces flew, but anything with problems or of indifferent quality struggled. I had a good day.

[Nicholas]

Good day rob?

[Rob]

Yes, I bought the Durham House groat. Still waiting for it to arrive though. It isn't the best one available assuming that Carlyon-Britton 198 (1921) is still doing the rounds, but I don't know where that is. As they go quite acceptable with just about every example showing weakness somewhere and quite collectable for the reverse legend variety which only occurs on this groat and its rather rare companion halfgroat. The BM has a superb example. here .

One word of warning, the reference numbers and the attributions are all hopelessly screwed up in this section at least and probably elsewhere. Many Edward VI groats are in fact facing bust Edward IVs, and the museumm accession numbers are all to cock too. The coin given as 1896,0609.208 for example should be ex Montagu 827, but is in fact Huth 324 as it is plated in the 1927 catalogue. This was acquired by Clarke-Thornhill and passed to the BM in his bequest. The reference number for the coin illustrated should therefore be 1935,0401.1758. The former Montagu coin is under the reference 1935,0401.1759, which is allegedly one of those from Clarke Thornhill. The coin actually gifted by C-T is that listed as BM214, which entered the collection prior to the systematic cataloguing used from about 1830. All the others of this type appear to be wrong too.

Another good waste of public funds.