Featured Bad Coin Show Etiquette

If I tried to come up with a worse analogy I couldn't. lol

 

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Why? I always haggle regarding the rotten produce........good for the sauce.

 

You eat rotten produce? Ewwwww

Silly to pay for it. Just dumpster dive.

 

For all of you that do not haggle - I have an incredible collection to sell you.


There is only one time where I will not haggle - and that is on a graded coin if I think it will bump grades and realize a significant improvement. At that point, I pay the asking price and take a shot.

I've had quite a few turn out pretty good. I've had a few home runs.

 

Thanks, not interested in that collection. And no, I do not haggle. If the price (and the coin of course) is OK in my opinion, I will pay that price; if not, I won't buy. Might be different if I saw a coin at a show that I know is rare/hard to get. But most of my pieces are not in that category ...

Christian

 

Sometimes I haggle, sometimes not. When I bought my 1913 Type I Buffalo, it was at a show. I asked the dealer his price, he told me, I thought it was very fair, so I bought it. IMO, it was the nicest of the ones at the show and the most realistically priced.

There have been other times that I have negotiated for a price I felt was fair.

 

There is an art to haggling, and you have to know what you want to spend, and what's a fair price for that item. I do this all the time at flea markets, where almost everything is overpriced with the expectation that you'll haggle with the seller. My approach has always been to examine the item, make an offer, listen to the counter, accept or counter that offer, and either accept or walk away. This take less than five minutes. If I think the item is way overpriced, I'll simply ask "What's the best you can do?" and if the best is not even close to what I'm willing to pay, just thank the seller and walk away. When I hear "I paid more than that..." to my offer, i usually just say Thanks and walk away. It's not worth the aggravation to tell the seller you think he overpaid. Making multiple trips to the same vendor, looking at the same items, I would imagine, just diminishes any credibility the buyer may have, and turn the seller off as a waste of time.

Coin buying is no different, especially at a coin show. You again, should know what's fair, expect the dealer to make a profit, and go from there. If the price isn't right, thank the dealer and move on. You will never accomplish anything by badgering a seller.

I think too many people go into this with a "what can I make on flipping this" attitude, not realizing that the seller is a retailer, not a wholesaler, so expect to pay near retail pricing for most of these items. Expecting to haggle for the sake of leaving yourself profit room, while undercutting the dealer's profit, instead of haggling to get a better retail price, is the root of the problem.

 

I was at a tag sale one, my neighbor told me about some coins there.
I stopped in and saw some plastic sheets of common Indian head cents (all around Good) and some Buffalo nickels, plus some other stuff.

I asked what he was asking (a common tactic to determine a starting point).

He told me that he had turned down an offer of (I forget the exact amount) say $200.

I knew they were worth about $25, I looked at him and said: "You should have taken the offer", and walked away.

 

Only time you want to skip haggling would be when making a purchase online when you know that the inventory is new, that it is already priced reasonably, and if you ask for a better price in all likelihood someone else will buy the piece before the dealer has an opportunity to reply (this is especially true over weekends).

In person at a show, only an idiot skips asking for a better deal. The easiest way is to have a standard phrase that is always is used so you don't have to get creative every time you buy a coin. Mine is simply "What's the best deal you can give me on this one?". Also, when purchasing more than a single coin, it is far better to lay out all the coins then ask "what's the best deal you can swing?" rather than trying to negotiate a price on each coin individually. If the dealer doesn't come down at least 5% it's time to say thanks but no thanks and move on. Of course there are some exceptions, for gold coins priced near melt for instance. But generally, if the dealer doesn't take at least 15% off then he really doesn't care if you buy the coins or not. Which is fine, of course, but it's also fine to smile and say "I'll think about it" and move on, which interestingly enough will often times provoke a better offer from the dealer just as you are walking away from his table.

Incidentally, the origin of the word haggle is Norweigan. Would have never guessed that without a wiki search!

 

I buy 95+% of my items online from two dealers. You are 100% correct with this comment. I have lost several items because instead of sending an email saying "I will take it" I asked for the best price. It helps when you buy a lot from the same people. Now I just email "I will take it" and a small amount is automatically taken off the price.

 

I'm going to a coin show this afternoon. Who knows what adventures await?

 

If it is like the last show I attended the dealers with high prices will complain that nobody is buying. The dealers with fair prices will have a lot of activity and will say the show was good.

I was at a table early on and the dealer looked over at the guy next to him and said "well now that the public is in, we might as well go to sleep". As with most shows many of the great coins get traded back and forth between dealers before the buyers are allowed in.

 

I wonder if there has ever been a incident were one of the "public" has jumped over the table to get at a rude or smart mouthed dealer.

 

My local coin show is always nice. They're a few people with high prices but I know a handful of the dealers and they always work with me. Everyone is really nice though, I've never had a negative experience at a show.

 

I get that people here think you are a respected collector but purchasing counterfeits and reselling them for a profit sounds like something a hobo might do.......And you getting mad about the dealer asking to much is nonsense.....The dealer can ask whatever he wants.....He wants to try and get what he paid for it.. Can you blame him..If you came to my table with those smart azz remarks, " asked him if he had paid $400 for it would he ask $400 for it" i would have told you to get lost

 

I have been very tempted.

Several times.

Ask Ken (Green) about Ira.

 

I think it goes both ways sometimes - I have seen some incredibly rude buyers. My local coin shop people are a lot more calm and patient than I would be with a few I have seen.

 

That guy's a real jerk. A few years ago I was looking through a dealers junk bin and I was stacking some of the coins I wanted to buy on the side and (unbeknownst to me) on Iras' table. The tables were right next to each other so who knew? I thought they might be working together. This guy starts throwing a fit about keeping stuff off of his table. What was really p/oing the guy was that I wasn't looking at any of his stuff. Why should I? It's all over-graded and over-priced.....

 

and cleaned.

 

Try rereading the OP with an emphasis on comprehension. Thanks