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Re: Tonight's Auctions 

By: De_Composed in GRITZ | Recommend this post (1)
Sat, 09 Nov 24 7:24 AM | 21 view(s)
Boardmark this board | Grits Breakfast of Champeens! 		Msg. 00453 of 00702
(This msg. is a reply to 00391 by De_Composed)
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There was another auction tonight, and we won four of the fourteen lots we tried for. That's typical.

Early on, we won the lot shown on the right.

All we had to go on was this ONE photo and the lot description: "5.4 OUNCES STERLING". That's pretty weak. We'll often get ten photos of something like this, and there will usually be a photo of the weighing, revealing whether the 5.4 ounces are Troy ounces or Avoirdupois. A Troy ounce is about 10 percent heavier, so it matters.

Then there's the fact that the jewelry includes stones that obviously aren't sterling. An auction house isn't supposed to weigh such items. An auctioneer with integrity wouldn't. So, did they? I don't know. They didn't say. I was forced to make some assumptions:

I assumed that the 5.4 ounces includes the stones and that the stones don't weigh very much. Then I assumed that the weight given was in Avoirdupois ounces. After all, they didn't say they were 5.4 TROY ounces. So I went with caution.

5.4 ounces = 153.1 grams = 4.92 Toz.
Spot on silver is $31.29 today.
4.92 x 31.29 = $153.95 which would be the value IF the merchandise was pure silver. But it's sterling, so...
$153.95 x 0.925 = $142.40 . That's the value of the silver in the lot.
The auction house charges 16 percent, so I have to take that out of the price to determine the max to bid. $142.40 / 1.16 = $122.76

I like to get things for less than they're worth, so I set a ceiling at $102 and wound up winning the lot for $100. Not bad, but not great either.


















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The above is a reply to the following message:
Re: Tonight's Auctions
By: De_Composed in GRITZ
Fri, 08 Nov 24 4:01 AM 		Msg. 00391 of 00702

There were two auctions tonight and we mostly lost out. I was willing to go $152 on a sterling silver pitcher, but two others were bidding and it went for $227. C'est la vie. It was the same story on the TV cabinet, the computer desks (yes, there were two) and the geode bookends. We were priced out.

But we did win two LG Blu-Ray players ($6 and $11), a batch of nine couch pillows my wife liked ($1), and the science-fictiony painting below.

The painting is described as "OIL ON BOARD? FRAMED, SUPER COOL 80'S LOOK AND COLORS!" If it's really an oil painting on wood then it's an original and we did extremely well, imvho. Even if that's incorrect - and you can see from the "?" in the description that the auction house isn't sure - it still looks great and will fit in beautifully next to all the SF books I'll soon be bringing out. But at $31 we would have paid more for a non-original than I would have liked. (Still far less than it would be at a store.)



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