Scotsman hires auction director

James Garcia has joined Scotsman Auction Co. as director of auction operations.

“James has been consulting with us for a number of years, and even with his help on only a part-time basis, we have been able to implement vast improvement to the quality of our catalogs since 2005,” said John Woodside, Scotsman vice president. “By having him come on board in a full-time capacity, we are primed to really push ourselves to that next level.”

Prior to joining Scotsman, Garcia was employed as a senior programmer/analyst by a major manufacturing firm in St. Louis. It may seem unusual to some for a professional in a technical field to switch from researching and writing computer programs to researching and writing numismatic descriptions.

“But I’ve written literally thousands and thousands of auction lot descriptions already,” said Garcia. “And if you think about it, technology has been at the forefront of the modern auction landscape. Much of the action happens online anyway, and that means an understanding of computers and their capability can only benefit our growth.”

Garcia has collected coins since 1979 and has set up at numerous shows throughout the Midwest. All together, he estimates he has described 25,000 individual coins for several companies over approximately the past seven years. He will now work exclusively for Scotsman and will lead future projects to enhance the Information Technology operation.

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Scotsman has reconfigured its office space to reflect the strengthening of the auction resources. A new office has been built with room for two full-time catalogers, a new photography lab has been installed and operations will be streamlined to take advantage of the new talent on board, according to the firm.