I often see many 'investor' sites selling coins to would be investors, marketed towards them and not collectors. I also often see the prices are inflated highly or sometimes even "call us!". I'm guessing they try to make you call them to rope you into more. When I was looking for a coin for myself recently (20 franc gold), I was looking around many websites and was surprised how many of these so called investor sites there were. All had prices wayyy above what they should be. They also tend to be more advertiser savy. For example, advertising the history of each coin, how it relates to the market, etc to try and sell the fact. When as collectors already know this (or some do, anyway depending on the coin).. What do you think of this ? Is this a new trend with the price of gold going up so much? Is this going to continue or has it been going on for some time now? A couple i Know...austin coins (Not sure if this is investor site per se, it may also be aimed towards collectors but their prices on foerign and US gold seem pretty high) amergold.com (This is one of the better investor sites IMHO. I've ordered from several times and been surprised each time with the quality. Prices arent too shabby either.) Heck just doing a simple google search for gold coins or gold bullion... http://www.monex.com/prods/gold.html http://www.goldline.com/gold
This has been going on for a while now but seems to be increasing over the past few years with the increase in PMs. Also, APMEX significantly reduced their numismatic offerings in 2009 and focused more on bullion. Much of their non-bullion was on sale for about a week until it all sold out. TC
Bullion and investment coins are two distinct markets. Bullion operates on volume and investment operates on margin.
Coins are a retail, hobby related business like any other. The more expensive advertising and operating costs are, the more markup is required to make a go of it. I generally takes a markup of 35-40% above cost to make it in the coin business. So if you can't buy it right then you have to sell high. My question about the investor sites is what degreee of success are they having? Obviously someone thinks its a good business idea. What kinda startup costs, etc?
