Heritage's "Make offer to owner" program

Is there any coin you wouldn't be willing to sell at a high enough price?

 

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My whole Roosevelt set!! I have some much time and energy invested. The only way I will sell is if I get a better coin!!

 

No, as a dealer I tell myself I have to have a price for everything. Only thing I'm married to is Mrs. VDB and she is priceless! Having said that, I do love assembling sets of the coins I love, and I know that my customers appreciate that and buy the same kinds of coins I do.

 

This is quite correct. We're still working out a few of the kinks (it is in Beta, after all ), but this feature was a common request from people who owned such items (not just coins -- Make Offer to Owner is available for pretty much everything we sell).

 

Do you know what the biggest differential has been in price between the original hammer price and the resale price through this option?

 

I really don't, although someone here might. Keep in mind that in many cases the markets have changed substantially between the time the item first sold and the time it resold through this program.

I do know that we've sold more than one six figure coin this way, and the dollar amount increase would have had to be quite high to even merit an offer.

It would be extremely unusual, although not impossible, to have the price drop, simply because of the way the program is set up. You can't receive offers for your coin at less than what you paid for it unless you specifically choose to.

 

Thanks for the feedback. Certified coins are not pure investments, but their demand increases or decreases based on the desire of people with enough $$$ to spend looking for that sometimes elusive rarity. I remember Eric Sloane the landscape painter who I met speaking about how colors that he painted would catch the eye of a customer and remind him/her of something in the buyer's memory. Same thing with wonderfully toned coins. People will spend $$$ on a coin that catches the imagination as the coin sited at the beginning of this thread.

 

But doesn't it seem like in last couple auctions, auction price seem to be easily breaking their esestimated values'.

 

Yes, for super-rarities, CAC stickered desirable coins. No for common stuff. I am not an expert on how auction companies can hide auction results, my guess is they all do it. They do not want buyers or sellers to know that some of their prospective coins may lose a lot of value.

 

Stewart,

Since you work for Heritage, I would like to make a suggestion for improving this program. In a nutshell, Heritage needs to make it part of their procedure to notify the seller when they have received the coin since the time between when the coin is shipped and the time the seller receives payment is so long.

It would seem from the responses in this thread that nobody else has ever used this function. Since I just used it, I would like to share my experience. First, there is eligibility requirement. If you purchase a coin from Heritage value over $400, it would automatically be added to their "Make Offer to Owner" program. The default price is set 20% above the price realized at auction. This default price would provide a 10% profit to the seller as Heritage takes a 10% commission. The owner of the coin has the option to disable the offer program or change the price, but this must be done manually by editing the coin in your Heritage "My Collection" feature.

If you are taking offers on a coin and a buyer submits an offer to Heritage, you will receive an e-mail from Heritage explaining that someone has made an offer which looks like this:

If you accept the offer, Heritage sends another e-mail asking you to confirm the fact that your are willing to sell the coin which looks like this:

Once you have confirmed that you truly want to sell the item, Heritage sends a final e-mail confirming the sale of the coin and providing shipping instructions to Heritage and that e-mail looks like this:

I have to say that the first several steps of the process worked flawlessly. The offer was received and explained very clearly and it was very simple to complete the sales transaction. However, I received the final e-mail on 2/11/2012. I mailed the coin fully insured with delivery confirmation on 2/13/2012 but I never received an e-mail from Heritage informing me that they indeed received the coin. Heritage claims that they will collect payment and pay the seller within 30 days. I received my check for the coin on 3/19/2012 which was a little over 30 days, but I was getting nervous since I had not had any contact from Heritage since mailing the coin.

In the end, the process works very well, but I think Heritage either needs to send an e-mail upon receipt of the coin or provide a way for the buyer/seller to check on the status of the transaction online.

 

Thank you for your feedback. In fact, we do send such an e-mail, and in this specific case it was sent on 2-17. It looks something like this:

Unfortunately, it sounds like this particular e-mail may have been put into a spam folder; we have no control over that kind of thing. (I can forward you the original should you be interested.)

I like your idea of making it easier for the buyer/seller to check on the status of the transaction, and am pretty sure something along these lines is in the works.