Prospecting for rare and/or valuable coins

Its OK, everyone else will lose. And then I will invite you to the poker table to take your winnings away.

 

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Very interesting thread.....

I'm not anyone who should claim the moral high ground about anything at all, so I'll get that out of the way.

About 3 years ago I returned a bag of halves the the bank. I'd sorted a box, kept a few, replaced them from a cull pile I have, and took them to be sorted for cash. The count (my count) was exactly $500.

After sorting the coins the teller returned to the window and said it was $514 and some odd cents. I told her no, that it was exactly $500, that I had counted the coins myself. She asked me if there had been any dimes in the bag. I told her no, that it was all halves. She went on to explain that there had been a lot of dimes in the sort and, if they weren't mine, they must have been in there from the previous teller's transaction. She, the teller next to her and the head teller all insisted that I take the money. I didn't want it and told them so, but they were extremely adamant that I take the $14 plus dollars because of the problems it would create for them if I didn't.

About 2 years ago I found a $100 bill in the public parking lot at work, sitting on the ground in plain site not near anyone's car. I kept it, but have often felt funny about it. Was I wrong to do that?

 

For some reason this thread makes me think of that Community Chest card from Monopoly that says, "Bank errors in your favor collect........."

 

Exactly, it is a huge headache when you don't balance. It creates a ton of paperwork...banks don't want to deal with it. They don't care about a few dollars. Those coin machines seem to always get some money stuck in them and they come out in the next run...it's just the way it is. I can't tell you how many times I ran change through the machine as a teller and when was finished heard a sound...so I opened up the machine to find a bent up quarter in there. I would just throw it in the trash. Did the customer lose $0.25? Yes. Was it immoral...no, the machine wouldn't take it and I didn't want to deal with it. It's common practice.

 

I'm always looking down for money wherever I go. Most I ever found was a twenty, but I pick up change almost everyday. Sort of like metal detecting... just "found treasure" as far as I'm concerned. I think if I found a $100 bill in the parking lot at work I would keep my mouth shut and see if anyone posted a "lost" memo. If you tell anyone you found it, you'll have half a dozen "owners" coming foward to claim it.

 

to each his own bliss

 

I'm not sure where you went to business school or how long ago it was but you are mistaken. In the normal market place, prices are determined by fair market value and what your competition is selling the exact same product for. You want to be competitive and maximize profit but if you price to high, no one will buy.

The coin business is an exception. No two items that you offer for sale are the same and prices are not determined by any reasonable manner. The coin dealer grades high and the buyer under grades as a part of doing business. It's a barter transaction therefore all bets are off.

Chances are, one of the two parties will be more knowledgable than the other and will try to use that knowlege to their advantage. It's only natural as no one wants to be taken advantage of.

When a buyer asks how much, the seller always high balls in the hope that the buyer bites. If he doesn't bit, let the dance begin.

In my opinion, it's not ethical to sell a $15 coin for $35 but it happens all the time. Ofcourse you can quote caveat emptor blah blah blah ..they get what they deserve...I just don't agree.

 

Good for me indeed!! Well, it is my money being taken from me so yes, I will probably be more concerned about getting it back, after all it IS my money and the person most responsible for my money is me. I would not blame anyone but myself if I left that building without knowing how much I should be walking out with. Either the bank messed up or the previous customer didnt count or confirm, possibly didnt even know how much he was supposed to have after the transaction.

I would not assume how I feel on the subject simply because I made a comment about the judgment on high. If someone gave me more money than they owed me, I would inform them whether business or individual. If I see a person drop money I will pick it up for them. If I am given more money and I inform them and they say they dont want it or nobody claims it, I will be more than happy to hold on to it for them. Within reason I would look to return anything found.

What I would do with found money or objects all depends on the situation. One can make up 'what would you do' scenarios all day.

 

I didn't go to business school, I didn't even finish college, but I do own a business that does quite well. I am a car dealer. However, you will need to forgive me, my judgment must be clouded from buying and selling 50+ used cars per month on a wholesale level, at an average sales price of $30k. It's similar to coins in that the publicly available price guides are rarely an accurate guide of actual market activity.

I buy cars as low as possible and sell them for as much as possible. When I say possible I mean as much as possible within market conditions. I have one car that I picked up that I am being greedy with, a 1994 Mercedes E320 Cabriolet with 22k miles. Black/Black 1 owner perfect. In car terms, that's an MS67 Red 1909 SVDB.

However, the marketplace is competitive, and if I asked for full book retail I would die with my inventory, likewise if I offered thousands under actual wholesale I would never buy any cars.

Does this mean that I offer my inventory for below market? No, because that would be stupid. Does this mean that I pay over the odds for stock? No, because that would also be stupid.

Are there dealers out there who don't disclose previous damage, bad title history, mileage discrepancies and the like? Of course. Are there coin dealers who misrepresent coins and act unethically? Of course. Does this mean that everyone in the business is unethical? I don't think so by a long shot and I certainly would not paint every coin dealer out there with the same brush, it would be far from accurate I seem to think.

 

You are forgiven, I agree, that your judgement is probably clouded.

I think you must have misunderstood my original statement. At no time did I say that every coin dealer was unethical. I'm not naive enough to make a sweeping statement like that. I can say that 90% of the coin dealers that I have met/transacted with over the past 20 years have been of questionable ethical standing. I, of course, can't speak to the ones that I don't know.

The reason that I know that the ones that I have met are of questionable ethical backgrounds is that they brag about their conquests. It's call coin shop talk. Most coin folks are braggards and as selllers, they are either bragging about selling a coin for far more than it's worth or bragging about low balling those less knowlegeable.

This is just the way business is transacted in the coin buisness. Either you know the rules when you get it or you learn quickly and hope that it was not a very expensive lesson.

There is nothing wrong with a reasonable mark up we all need to run a business but it's the purposeful deception that I don't like.

I'm afraid that as our econmic situation deepens over the next 12-18 months, this business practice will expand as fears increase.

As we all know coin shops/dealers have experienced a boom over the last 5+ years as state quarter folks are getting into other coin series. It's also been a feeding frenzy worthy of a shark week special for dealers as these new collectors cut their teeth and learn the way things are done around here.

While the novice collector gravy train is drying up, a whole new source of fresh meat is on the horizon. Folks who are getting laid off and quickly running out of money will start to sell off their family collection to pay the mortage and put food on the table. Most will not know the value of what they will be selling and will chum the waters.

 

Whether or not the current economic downturn is going to affect the coin market remains to be seen. I would think that it may well depress it as a lot of people spend discretionary income on coin collections, and discretionary spending is the first to go. If demand drops, prices drop. I'd like to keep this on topic...

That's what I took task with originally.

You said, verbatim, coin buy/selling is far from an ethical business which I disagree with. Selling Cocaine is an unethical business, being a fence for stolen property, a thief, a hired hitman, those are what I would consider to be unethical businesses.

Your dealings with specific coin dealers cannot logically be used to paint an entire industry with the same brush.

 

I would consider those illegal businesses!

 

Yes, I did say that and I stand by that statement. Coin buying/selling is a far from an ethical business. It is also perfectly logical that my personal dealings in this hobby and conversations with other collectors are more than enough proof that I'm stating a fact. Many of us know the truth but few have the intestinal fortitute to state so in a public forum.

We will just have to agree to disagree on this and that's fine. We each are entitled to our own opinion and while I disagree with yours, I respect your entitlement to express it.

Have a nice day.:eat:

 

There are a lot more measures of ethical business behavior than just the trade in illegal substances. The use of superior information in order to exploit a buyer or seller is the measure of ethical markets and business practices. In addition, the exploitaation of sellers or buyers who are placed in demand or sell positions due to a physical threat is also another form of unethical businessness practice.

In fact you can write a whole encyclopedia on this topic and never mention th drug trade.

Your comarision is just flatout invalid and has ZERO factual basis.

However there is a lot of unethical business practice in the coin business and it has plagued the hobby up and down for over a century. This is common knolwdge written about extensively and covered in the support and discussions of third party grading and market pricing.

So why is this being treated like a hypothesis or a theory, or a matter of opinion when it is a documented, anotated and known truth.

Ruben

 

Amen brother.

 

The bank or I should say credit union I deal with all the time, has a coin star counter in their lobby. I buy bags of coins from them at least every two weeks. 50 for a bag of pennies, 200 for nickels and 1000 for dimes and quarters. I have found many coins other than the stated denomination in the bags. I have found up to 4 dollars in quarters in the nickel bags, dimes in the penny bags etc. I have talked to the head teller about this, and they have told me, well that is your good fortune, when I asked them if they needed the extra back.
They informed me that it does not effect their bottom line as they just take the bags of coins out of the machine, label them and send them off to the Federal Reverse. The person that is getting ripped off for the most part is 1. the customer who is getting the coins counted. 2. The owner of the counting machine aka Coin Star.
In the end the Credit Union dosn't care so I no longer do either.

PS. Last bag of pennies I purchased I found 3.00 in wheaties and one 1979-S Proof

Dave aka Digenes

 

No problem. I absolutely agree that there are plenty of people in the coin business who are crooked, often beyond comprehension.

However I still maintain that the very action of either buying or selling coins is not inherently corrupt or unethical and I have yet to see a post on here that comes close to proving that it is. As such, since nobody is able to demonstrate that purchasing a coin or selling a coin is, by default, an unethical act, I will disagree with you.

Best,

Bill

 

I find it more fun to walk into a antique/jewelry &coin shop locally, ask to see their world coinage, which they usually do have a binder or cases under the counter collecting dust and pick out a 1909 Italian 1 lire in Unc. condition and only pay twelve bucks for it. ;-)
World coins will be on the rise over the next 10 years, I guarantee it and most shops are only focused on bullion and U.S. Stuff. Big profits to be made where shop keeps do not know the value of what they have. I pick out 4 Mexican silver peso's out of one stores 10 cent bin, all in EF shape.

P.S. that AWESOME $12 one lire is my profile pic in case you want to see it.

 

Of course Bill. The act of buying and selling is of course not inherently unethical. It is anthropologically as vital as sex and sometimes the two are completely confused until the ops arrest all the johns...

What was that movie with Richard Geer?

Ruben