American auction house headquartered on the grounds of Dallas-Fort Worth airport, where its premises span 330,000 square feet. It began in 1976 as a coin dealer in a shared office in Dallas, founded by Steve Ivy, who started collecting coins at the age of nine and was advertising and selling them at 14. He and a partner who collected comics incorporated as Heritage Auctions in 1982.
Heritage credits its early adoption of online sales in the mid-1990s for much of its success. The internet gave buyers pricing information that had previously been the preserve of specialist dealers, removing the information asymmetry that gave dealers their edge. It also gave Heritage the revenue to acquire around 50 smaller operations over a 15-year period, absorbing their expertise and customer lists. Today Heritage has 900 employees and offices in five American cities and eight other countries.
Most of what Heritage sells is consigned: the firm takes a cut of the transaction rather than buying low and selling high. Around 75% of its customers buy across multiple categories. Mr Ivy calls coins, comics, sports cards and entertainment memorabilia "the big four"—their markets are broad, deep and enduring. The firm broke its own sales record for the fifth straight year in 2025, with $2.16bn in total sales. That is less than Sotheby's ($7bn in 2025) or Christie's ($6.2bn), but enough to make the grand old houses take notice.
Heritage sold Dorothy's ruby slippers from "The Wizard of Oz" for $32.5m in 2024. At a 2022 benefit auction it sold the Nobel medal of Dmitry Muratov, a Russian journalist, for $103.5m.
An education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on