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1. Evaluation
If you have coins or medals that you would like to consign to auction, please send photos by email or make an appointment to show us in person. We accept a wide range of numismatic material, including ancient, modern and historic British and world coins, and our minimum lot value is typically around £500 ($750). If we determine that your items would be acceptable for auction, we will suggest a suitable sale venue in either London or New York in which to feature them. We will require a copy of your photo ID to keep on file and will request your preferred wire details for payment. If you are interested in consigning but would like to wait until an agreed date to sell your coins, then we can offer free interim storage services for any items guaranteed to one of our sales.
2. Commissions
Our standard vendor’s commission rate is now 0%, giving you the entirety of the hammer price realised for your lots. If your consignment requires extensive cataloguing or consists of multiple low value lots, we may require a 5 or 10 per cent commission to reflect the additional time expenditure. However, if your consignment is of significant value, we can offer you additional special terms - please get in touch for more details.
3. Third-Party Grading
Once your coins have been accepted for auction, our specialists may advise that your material would benefit from third-party grading and encapsulation (often referred to as ‘slabbing’). This is not a compulsory process as we offer both encapsulated and unencapsulated coins in our sales, but the procedure can often lead to higher prices being paid at auction and assists in establishing current market values. Our chosen grading partner is Numismatic Guaranty Company (NGC), and we have helped numerous clients to have their material certified before offering it in our sales.
4. Estimates and Reserves
The most effective means of generating strong bidding and maximising prices realised is by offering coins at conservative estimates. After all, the more collectors you entice at the start, the more will be left bidding at the end. As such, we aspire to place estimates that are in line with current market values, conservative enough to encourage bidding, and yet are still satisfactory for our clients. We are happy to place reasonable reserves on our clients’ coins and we aim to strike the balance between protecting the value of your coins whilst also making them appealing to potential bidders. Prior to a sale, each consignor will receive a full pre-sale advice that lists all of their consignments alongside their estimates and reserves, so you will be kept informed every step of the way.
5. Cataloguing
Sovereign Rarities boasts an expert team of numismatists with experience cataloguing some of the greatest collections of the recent numismatic era: Slaney (part 1), Samuel King, the Douro Cargo, Shuttlewood, Selig, Manville, Kaufman, Rees Jones, Mantegazza, Van Roekel, Karon, Marshall, Adams, Bentley, Hemisphere, Williams, Cook, etc. We ensure that our catalogue gives a suitable historical and numismatic spotlight to our client’s’ properties, and where possible we conduct extensive provenance research. We are able to discuss cataloguing requests prior to the auction.
6. Marketing
We send regular marketing emails to our client base in the run-up to each sale as a reminder of the closing date and most noteworthy lots included. We will also contact individual collectors and dealers to highlight individual pieces in our sale that may be of interest to them. For significant items or collections, we will produce dedicated digital and/or physical marketing material to distribute to our extensive mailing list. This will generally be conducted at our cost. Additionally, clients may request bespoke marketing material for their consignments.
7. Auction
We hold auctions both online and in-person at our Mayfair offices, and alongside our own dedicated online sale platform on sovr.co.uk our auctions are typically hosted on Sixbid, Numisbids and Biddr. We see high-value bidders participate from all over the globe and have generated multiple world-record prices in recent years. We typically offer two to three weeks of prebidding before each sale in which collectors can place public commission bids, leading up to the auction day itself where bids will come in online, over the telephone and in person. Prices realised are posted in the days following a sale.
8. Settlement
We pay our consignors no later than 45 days after the date of the sale, provided that we have in turn been paid by the buyer. Settlement can be made as a wire transfer or as a cheque depending on your personal preference. For sales conducted in New York, we can transfer from USD to GBP at an inter-bank rate of exchange giving you the best possible conversion. However, please note that the conversion will be conducted on the day payment is made, and not the day of the sale itself.
You can visit us at our central London office, Monday to Friday, 9.30am to 5.00pm, or contact us via phone or email. For any questions about the auction procedure, please get in touch with us at info@sovr.co.uk. We look forward to being of service.
