A billion dollars is a lot of money.
Heritage Auctions of Dallas knows that better than most as it has announced that 2014 was its best year ever with sales of over $969 million.
Two-thirds of the number was generated by auctions and one-third derives from private treaty sales.
American coins have a great story to tell in this set of results, though not the only story.
Auction results for U.S. coins surged by 53 percent to over $334 million.
This represents 62 percent of the $536 million U.S. coin auction results in 2014 as measured by the Professional Numismatists Guild survey, Heritage noted.
Growing even faster were sales results in the world and ancient coin segment of Heritage’s business.
Here growth of 65 percent took auction sales to $61 million from $36.9 million the year before.
“The popularity of world and ancient coins has skyrocketed in the last few years,” said Steve Ivy, Heritage CEO.
Numismatic results are not full story of Heritage’s business.
“As a company we continue to be impressed with what we see across all 39 categories we specialize in, culminating in our best ever year,” said Ivy.
The comics and comic art category brought in $31.2 million. Sports registered $29.7 million.
There was nearly $50 million in fine arts and decorative arts and $12.3 million in rare wine.
Vintage luxury handbags brought in over $9.3 million.
A new luxury real estate category recorded sales of over $8.2 million.
Heritage said it is the largest auction house founded in the United States and the third largest in the world.
This article was originally printed in Numismatic News.
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