Heritage Auction Galleries, the world’s third largest auction firm, has announced that their free Permanent Auction Archive has just surpassed the 2,000,000 level for collectible lots. The PAA includes every lot sold by Heritage for more than a decade, complete with full-color, enlargeable images, lot descriptions, and prices realized.
“Our two millionth archived lot,” calculated Michael Weems, Heritage’s Vice President of eCommerce, “was Lot #63160 in our Weekly Internet Auction of Rare Coins closing on October 5, 2008. The coin was a Gem United States 1923 Peace dollar, graded MS65 by the NGC certification service. The dollar was a special variety, known as the “Bar Wing” due to a die peculiarity, and is more technically known to coin collectors as a VAM-10, is one of the “Top-50″ varieties pursued by collectors. It realized $299.”
“Heritage first began archiving our sold lots in 1993,” noted Heritage Co-Chairman Jim Halperin, “after recognizing the incredible research value that such an archive would have for potential bidders. The ability to easily search for historical pricing records from similar items that sold in the past, especially when coupled with our superlative images – and they are incredible – meant new levels of assurance would be possible for future bidding. In fact, we attribute many of our world record prices to our past prices, because bidders are able to trace trends and easily compare quality. Our clients had traditionally kept home libraries of our old catalogs for time-consuming manual searches, but now they could efficiently and easily do the same thing online, from wherever in the world they found themselves.”
“One month ago,” added Weems, “HA.com passed another milestone when we registered our 400,000th bidder-member. It is not a coincidence that these two numbers have climbed together, as we immediately recognized the importance of the free Permanent Auction Archive in attracting and keeping bidders. Of course, we offer other free services to our clients at HA.com, but the PAA is definitely a bidder favorite! In fact, including every lot, regardless of price realized, shows our tremendous dedication to transparency in all we do. Our commitment to technological innovation and our reputation for dealing with integrity underlies all of our achievements. This is an incredibly exciting time for the auction business, and Heritage’s leadership position – including the PAA – has made the market more vibrant.”
Heritage Auction Galleries currently presents specialty auctions in the following categories: Air & Space; American Indian Art; Americana; Ancient & World Coins; Arms & Militaria; Rare Books; Civil War; US Rare Coins; Comics and Comic Art; Rare Currency; Decorative Arts; Fine Art; Illustration Art; Jewelry; Historical Manuscripts; Movie Posters; Music and Entertainment; Memorabilia; Natural History; Photography; Russian Art; Silver and Vertu; Sports Memorabilia; Stamps & Philatelic Rarities; Texana; 20th Century Art & Design; Watches & Fine Timepieces; Western & Texas Art; and Western Artifacts & Photography.
Heritage Auction Galleries is the world’s third largest auction house, and by far the largest auctioneer of rare collectibles, with annual sales over $600 million, and 400,000+ registered online bidder members. For more information about Heritage’s auctions, and to join and gain access to a complete record of prices realized, along with full-color, enlargeable photos of each lot, please visit www.HA.com.