Great Collections?

Do note that the Trajan was graded as surface 1/5 and the Diocletian was 2/5. NGC did their job pointing out that the coins were bottom dwellers.

Because it makes your firm look like a fool and a laughing stock among normal ancient collectors. I clicked on the two links provided but see no reason ever to consider a coin offered by that company. Any coin they do sell should make a lifetime enemy out of the buyer and probably produce one more person badmouthing the hobby as a whole when they try to resell the $800 and $400 coins but are only offered $10 for the pair.

I am as anti-slab as most of you but you can not blame NGC for slabbing culls and marking them as such. The letter grade VF has come to mean only how much wear is present leaving the two numbers to address the eye appeal of the coin. In US terms all ancients are 'Details' coins but the degree of detail degradation is numbered. I do wish they had decided on a ten point scale instead of five but these coins would still be 1 and 2 mostly because the rules do not allow a zero.

 

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A question: Do people who buy slabbed ancients know or care what the numbers mean or do they just see plastic as a good sign that they are not buying a fake and expect anything that old to look like @#$%?

 

I used to collect PCGS graded St Gaudens $20 gold but quit about 15 years ago. I only collect ancients today.

Reviewing through some Saints on Great Collections just now, man has PCGS gone downhill in their grading since I was collecting!! MS 65 Saints today were MS 63's 15 years ago. Gradeflation for sure with PCGS encouraging resubmissions.

Ancients are easier without all that nonsense!

How much does GC charge to sellers? I used to buy my coins back in the day on eBay (graded, only) or Heritage. I sold everything on eBay. I sold a slabbed mistake through Heritage earlier this year. It was painless and they have a huge market of buyers, which I'm not sure Great Collections does.

 

Yes JBG, let us know how you did, i was going to sell after retirement but the silver and gold price keeps falling.i have a very large collection i need to start to sell off.

 

Yes! Im only consigning graded/slabbed US coins. And prices for these are well documented through the grading services and sites like Numismedia, etc. I need the cash to buy more ancients, and not from these guys!

 

They do grade the "surface" a 1 so its not that messed up. The price is messed up!

 

Yeah, the price is crazy but as someone pointed out the seller can set the opening price. Im sure its some doofus trying to get lucky.

 

For US coins I would definitely recommend Heritage for the exact reasons you mention.

 

Those not new here will recognize this as a revisit to a recurring theme on this venue. Is it OK to set up as a business with prices 10x reality and offer 'expert' advice to people who know nothing that leads them to buy these items? We all know that there is a sucker born every minute but the question is whether a person who fleeces them is a criminal or just an astute businessman. Every so often we see examples of legitimate dealers (auction houses) posting a coin with a $100 estimate that sells for many times that amount. Sometimes that means the coin was something special that two specialists both wanted. Sometimes it means that two people with more money than sense bumped heads on a coin of no particular merit. We can hardly blame the seller unless he suggested to the buyers that they needed to place those bids.

When I was newer in the hobby it was common to see auctions that specified 'no buy bids' meaning you were not allowed to place a bid defined as 'one increase over whatever anyone else bids'. Now we have the opposite where a certain class of sellers will start 10x higher than anyone would pay with the hope that someone offers them half. The question we each ask is whether we want to play their game to get that coin or whether we are satisfied to settle for the sellers who are and cater to gentlemen (and ladies) interested in coins and not games.

 

I have bought and sold through them. Great company! Got more than I expected from my sale. Quick payment to. Lowest fees around. Great service.
I use them exclusively now.

 

I don't see how preforming a service makes them a fool or a laughing stock. We do not have all of the information and I believe we should not condemn because of this. For the coins listed it is possible, if the consigner set the price, Great Collections is merely providing an avenue for listing the coins for sale and additional services such as photography. If they are not setting the prices they are simply providing an alternative to ebay where they photograph the coins and display them in an auction style format for sale. They could do the same thing on ebay and no one would really bat an eye.

At some point some onus must be placed on the buyer. If you are spending 800+ dollars on the coins you should be doing some sort of research before your purchase. I am as susceptible to an impulse purchase as the next person but even then I usually have some background knowledge on the item I wish to purchase. No one is forcing them to purchase the coins.

As mentioned before I believe that we do not have enough information to condemn Great Collections. If they are simply providing an avenue to list the coins and not setting the price/asked for advice there is no more reason to condemn them then there is to condemn ebay for some of the high prices listed there.

That being said, would I list my ancient coins there? Unlikely, as there are many better avenues to sell ancient coins. Would I potentially purchase an ancient coin from them. Definitely.

 

I agree the whole business of buying and selling coins lends itself to those who have an advantage of knowledge over the other in the transaction. But, this is the world of buying and selling since the beginning of this activity.

But what I'm doing is unloading some US coins so I can buy some more ancients.

I'm going to try Great Collections first. I have 7 coins that I estimated values from Numismedia. These are reasonble compared to what I paid for them. The total is $2249. This total is slightly below my outlay of cash to acquire these coins.

3 Morgans, a shield nickel and 2 Seated Liberty quarters and 1 Seated Liberty half. My God, Seated Liberty coins are mud-ugly!

If I read the fine print properly this auction house charges $5 "listing fee" per coin in this price range and a 5% sellers fee. So who knows what I will reap from this but I will keep you posted.

 

I'm there with you Steve.. Haven't had my second cup of coffee yet.

 

To get back on track from the ancient I hate slab rant and not answer you question

I've been dealing with Ian for years, well before hes started Great Collections.
I would have no problem sending him any coin to auction for me.
Check is in hand usually as early as 2 weeks after sale, compared to most its a month at earliest. You can set the value of what you want or he can or start it a .99 cents.
@greatcollection

 

Update: I pulled the trigger and these 7 slabbed (and now I'm glad they are slabbed) coins are in the registered mail. This postage is $25.60. Recall, my optimistic appraisal is $2249 minus $5 per coin and 5% of the sale price. I will "click heels" if this comes out anywhere net $2K.

I assume GC will contact me as this saga unfolds. I will continue to report.

PS I am letting them set the opening price.

 

Best of luck!

You should announce the auction in the appropriate area to help dirrect possible bidders there, once they're posted.

 

Good idea!

 

I did not realize that Great Collections was a competitor to eBay rather than a dealer. I suppose that frees them from criticisms if the seller set the prices. I just looked at the 45 ancients they now have listed. How many will sell? How many have one bid? I do see that they offer a discount to normal slabbing fees and return coins at your expense that do not sell after two attempts so I could see someone using them to get their coins slabbed and setting a price that would guarantee their return.

I will point out that this is the ancients section of Coin Talk. An advertisement of a source that has only 45 coins to offer is more likely to appeal to people who read CT areas where the venue has a following (slabbed US). Certainly the two coins shown as examples were not average or typical but they were not the worst there either. Is there search tool that would show closed sales that actually received bids? Paying $3 to $10 to list coins to be seen by few collectors and only being allowed one relisting for the money seems like a way of getting your coins submitted for grading. Whether it is a way to sell ancients returns us to the question of how many of the 45 lots actually draw a bid.

http://www.greatcollections.com/Coi...05-AE-Double-Antoninianus-Cyzicus-ANACS-AG-03

I can hardly wait to see the photo and result for the above lot. An AG coin that can be identified to mint is special enough but one worth $20 + $5 minimum buyers fee + postage is one we need to see in a photo.

 

I've bought a couple world coins from GC before. There are great coins on there sometimes, but a lot of dreck as well. They're trying to build up to selling better quality material, but they also need to make enough to stay in business. I had no problems with either of my transactions, and they shipped quickly.

 

Here is a link of over 700 Ancients that have sold in GreatCollections ancient category....big range from $20 coins up to a few around $10k. They clearly do a lot more business in U.S. coins (you can see they have sold 270,000+ certified coins in their auctions and 250,000 of them are U.S.).

http://www.greatcollections.com/CoinPrices/SeriesCoin/120/Ancient-Coins