1921-D Walking Liberty at PCGS

I guess one of the things you still need to learn is that there are no "rules" when it comes to buying and selling in this hobby. But there are plenty of generalizations. One of them would be that the Grey Sheet is a wholesale price guide which means that it only contains Bid and Ask numbers for dealer to dealer transactions. Not dealer to collector transactions. So there really is no reason for you to ever expect to be offered Bid for a coin, let alone Ask.

That said, just as there are plenty of dealers who will not sell to you at Grey Sheet prices, or buy from you at Grey Sheet prices - there are plenty of others who will do both. You just have to find them. It's part of the educational process of this hobby.

And, you also have to learn that this does not always apply to every coin. It applies to some and does not apply to others. For there are plenty of coins that dealers cannot ever even hope to buy at Ask from another dealer. In fact they may have to pay multiples of Ask just to obtain the coin from another dealer. Conversely, there are also plenty that are bought and sold for well less than Bid.

And you might be surprised to learn that the above can apply to 2 or more coins, all of the same date/mint and grade assigned by the same TPG.

Beginning to understand now what I mean by there are no rules ?

This is a very big part of why even seasoned collectors often are of the opinion that dealers are low balling them when said dealer makes an offer on one of their coins. When in fact the dealer is making a very fair offer, sometimes even more than fair.

Now while all of this may sound contradictory and you may not believe it, many don't, I can assure you that it is true and it is not contradictory. But before it can be understood and accepted as being true a person must have a certain level of knowledge and experience. And never have I ever seen anyone achieve that level of knowledge and experience without first spending many years doing so. Some never achieve it. And so they spend their entire lives believing that dealers are always trying to rip them off, when in fact they are not.