Monday, June 12, 2023

Bad Timing or Underperformance?

  June 12, 2023      Past Expiry

Pair 05395256 sells for $3002   




I think the final bidder got a deal


After a flurry of FIVE auctions in which the average selling price for a complete pair of Duplicate Serial Number 2013B star notes was $5787, the pair above sold for a disappointing $3002.   The prior five auctions fetched an average price of $5,287 and took place between April 9th and May 17th; 76% more.

The next busiest flurry of auctions was back in the March-May period of 2022.  Those auctions were erratic fetching the owners $9301, $3705, and a 'No bid'.

Price of Convenience?

Great Collections has only auction 2 completed pairs, with the first fetching $4300.  If you take the average of the 2 grades for the two bills, the average grade for the SN 05395256 pair was a 48 (out of a perfect 70).  This was actually a higher average than the preceding 5 auctioned pairs whose average grade ranged from 27.5 to 47.  

A contact at Great Collections told me the delay between them getting the pair back from the grading company to the auction date was intentional as they felt their auction might be too close to a prior auction  ( I assume he meant the one that took place at Heritage ).  On the other hand two pairs sold on Ebay for a minimum of $4899 with the two auctions separated by only 10 days.

Before jumping to the conclusion of, "Awwww man, Great Collections sucks!" keep in mind that prices for completed pairs is still erratic.  I tried graphing the price realized versus the average grade of the bill, and there was no rhyme or reason to the graph  (and I used to work a lot with graphs, curve-fitting, and looking for cause-effect relationships).  See graph below.  For non-math nerds, a value of less than 0.5 means that half the time the variability observed in the target variable is explained by the regression model.  Look at me, using big words!




With what I would estimate as about half of the registered bill owners at Project 2013B being non-collectors, Great Collections is still my go-to suggestion for a one-stop shop as far as cases where both owners just want to sell their bill for cash.  Each bill owner sends their bill to Great Collections by registered mail, and Great Collections handles the rest; combining the two bills as a complete pair, having those bills graded as a complete pair, followed by the actual auction.   The alternative, for a non-collector is the daunting task of having to possibly buy the bill off of the other guy (safely), getting the pair graded, then putting it up for auction, and deciding which auction house, and so on. That's a lot of processes that the average person on the street would never have experience in dealing with.

It's hard to say if the next Great Collections auction will also under-perform.  When two people are informed that they have a matching pair, the negotiations begin was to what they want to do.  More often than not, they both want to sell.  There are several cases where negotiations end in a total standoff.  So what is worse?  A possible under-performing auction result, or zero?  Ebay has been good as of late, but it was only back last year that there were two auctions where a pair did not even get a bid; and those 2 auctions were 4 months apart.

For a complete list of known auctions of 2013B matched pairs refer to https://project2013b.blogspot.com/p/auction-history-for-2013b-matched-pairs.html
Useful Links
Serial Number Submission Form:  https://bit.ly/submit2013b
Project 2013B Database:  http://bit.ly/3KNpX3I
Collector Resources and Supplies: http://bit.ly/3DPo2Y7
My store (currency themed items):  https://rdbl.co/3Ms0Jp8
My store (general themed items): https://1zin.short.gy/2013store