Got to the flea market this past Sunday and noticed a gentleman with Jars of Pennies on his table. I knew I had never seen him before so I went over to see what he had. We got to talking and he told me he had been collecting coins since he was 16 years old. He is now in his mid 60's and this was his first attempt at selling anything he had. He had jars of wheat pennies from the 40's and 50's with 1250 Coins in each jar. He was asking $75 a jar for them. He also had boxes of Wheat's in screw top tubes with 50 rolls in each box. (I didn't ask the price on those). All of these were from the 40's up..no early dates and had been well searched. He had rolls of liberty nickels avg Circulated for $40 a roll and rolls of full date buffalo nickels with dates in the 20's and 30's for $18 a roll. He had a set of Silver Eagles (BU No Proofs) he wanted $1,300.00 for and a set of circulated Franklin Halves for $375. I purchased 3 rolls of his full date Buffalo's for $45..I figured that wasn't too bad of a deal. I watched during the day...He had a lot of lookers but I don't think he made many sales. I wonder if he will be back or if he got discouraged by his slow sales. I also wonder what kind of goodies he has packed away at home. scmedic
Buyers at a flea market are looking for a good buy. Even on nice coins. Selling isn't hard as long as your prices are good. I've seen a dealer sell over a $1,000 worth of coins in less than 30 minutes after he got there.
I have known a few people with collections of old wheat pennies and buffalo nickels who were certain their coins were worth a small fortune because of how old they were/how long the collector had the coins. Trying to tell these people otherwise is like trying to convince the silver crowd that silver is not being oppressed by some grand worldwide conspiracy.
The one that stands out to me in that list is the set of ASEs. I have several complete sets (I add one to each, each year) and so I follow the prices on them. Last time I checked (several weeks ago) APMEX was listing them for around $1100 but were out of stock. Still, to me that is a good deal because my average price is around $650 for the set of 32. But $1300 is totally unrealistic unless he is trying to cash in on the uninitiated. How many people will pay that much for an impulse buy?
During our talk he told me he really didn't know what to ask for the coins he had. But he also said he wasn't going any lower on the silver coins. Had the wheat cents contained earlier dates and not been searched for key dates who knows. But he made it clear that he had gone through all the coins and their were no pennies earlier than 1940 in the deal. Same with the Buffalo's. I went through all three rolls I Bought and while the coins were in nice condition and had solid readable dates most were very common dates from the 1930's with a few 1020's mixed in.
I went to the fleamarket about 10 years ago to sell a bunch of accumulated junk. I decided since I was there I would put some coins out to see how well they would sell' I had a couple of bags of wheat pennies each bag contained 500 wheats ranging from a few in the 20s up through 1959. I was only asking $15 a bag at the time. Even at that price people thought I was asking too much. Like the one member said people come to buy things at a bargain price. Every thing else I was basically asking retail price for, in my nice little selection of coins I have a 10th ounce gold eagle along with the rest of the coins. That 10th ounce gold eagle was basically the only coin I sold all day, and I sold it for above retail just a little. And also had an order for a nice gold chain holder for the coin. I told the gentleman it would take me a couple weeks to get it. Two weeks later the gentleman came back to the fleamarket and purchase the holder. He explained to me he was going to give it to his wife as a birthday present. You know 10 years later I still have a bag of wheat pennies I basically will have to give them a way to get rid of them. USMC60
.03 cents each is fair for Wheat cents...But his price was twice that for all late date pennies which I felt was too high. I have bought a 1/10 ounce eagle before at just below melt at the market. But you don't find many deals like that. scmedic
