Charles Epting Has Apparently Left Siegel Auctions

He no longer shows up on Siegel's roster, and his instagram shows him as:

"Associate Director of Posters" at Heritage Auctions now.

I noticed recently his instagram posts had stopped being about stamps, and were about general collectibles.

I was also online last Saturday for Siegel's most recent "Paperless Auction" sale, and Scott Trepel was talking about how its going to be mostly automated from now on. It sounds like maybe no-one will be calling the sale, and after each bid, you get 10 seconds to bid again, or it will automatically close out the lot. I know that Epting had been running these sales previously, so automation may have contributed to the job change.

AI and automation will replace all of our jobs sooner or later.

Sorry to hear the news. Charles was calling many of the paperless sales and some sessions from the main sales as well. It appeared that Siegel was training him to take over as a primary auctioneer if and when Scott ever retired. I think it was a good move to bring some younger generation talent into the mix. Charles's team was also good at marketing to non-traditional audiences such as publishing articles in local hometown papers to announce sales containing collections of interesting postal history from a specific town.

I can see how maybe stamps and postal history might have become too narrow for his obvious interests in learning new things. I hope that he finds new growth opportunities at Heritage.

The YouTube channel he was doing with Noble Spirit (Conversations with Philatelists) hadn't posted in more than a year, but just posted a new video yesterday "Where have we been?" and promised new content coming soon, but seemed to be entirely focused on Noble Spirit, and Epting is MIA

As for auction automation I've never understood why we still need human auctioneers. I started using ebay in 1998 and it was my first and only exposure to any type of auction for decades....I never attended a "live human" auction (didn't even realize they still existed really) until actually Siegel in 2020, they asked for references and I had to wire money to New York. How quaint. Like stepping back in a time machine. Dutch Country and Kelleher still have live auctioneers--entertaining to listen to but usually I mute it while bidding, other auctions like Rasdale do not (at least not broadcast). I'm relatively familiar with Epting's philatelic career but didn't know (and surprised to hear) he was calling auctions, I always figured he was mostly a marketing guy.

I'm a customer of Heritage (for their sports card division). They do not have live auctioneers to the best of my knowledge, even flagship lots well into the six figures are fully automated. The way it works is the auction keeps going until 15 minutes go by without a bid. Why do you need a human to do this. They will just mess things up. You don't need AI either, this is basic basic technology which could easily be implemented on an 8 bit home computer from forty years ago. ebay understood this 25 years ago and rolled it out to the masses.

I agree that for lesser material, an automated auction seems pretty reasonable.

For the higher end stuff, all I can say is Scott Trepel is good at reminding people when something is "too cheap". He works the prices up considerably sometimes very effectively.

I figured I would just chime in myself rather than let people speculate without having reached out to me. My foremost love has always been collecting in general. Philately was merely one component of that, but I am passionate about a great many other things including movie posters and memorabilia. As my wife and I await the birth of our first child, I decided to make a change to an industry that would provide more longterm stability for my family.

It is definitely a loss to the hobby, but thank you for everything you've contributed to the "Hobby of Kings".

Congratulations, Charles, on your "new" love/passion, and glad you will be continuing to pursue your many other passions. As you can see, many of us don't want you to leave us!

Charles, thank you for clarifying, and good luck!

Movement is not new as shown by his first of two posts : https://goscf.com/t/66987&whichpage=1#585410

I wish a hardy good luck to you both in the new job, congratulations!! It will be a change beyond expectations.


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Oh yeah, of course, enjoy the move to the new company. I almost forgot.