Perhaps those of you who dabble in modern-issue, non-US coins could share your favorite places to shop, or simply to look? Online, BAM, best coin shows, etc. I'm thinking mostly 1940 and later-dated coins. I'm just having trouble filling out a modern series, and I don't see the coins I'm looking for very often, if at all. I know the search is part of the fun, but I've been at it for a few years now. Time for better-informed opinions.
Depends on where you are. Since I'm in Germany/Europe, most of what I buy in terms of coins I get from European sellers. Either dealers I know, or sellers that list here http://www.ma-shops.com ... Guess that eBay is another option, but I don't buy there. Obviously a dealer or coin show near you would be great, but I suppose you have already tried that. Some dealers will, especially once they know you, even keep your want list, and try and get what you are after. Christian
It's hard to fill modern series. I have a bunch of holes in my Italian series, mostly in the 1980s and 1990s because no one feels like they are worth selling on eBay. I check on eBay and my local dealer's world coin value bins. There are a few other sites I check sometimes like Webstore. Your best bet is to find someone who has a bunch of the coins you need and offers cheap combined shipping. If you buy them online unfortunately you will have to pay more than they're worth. Many times there's only one or two people with the coin you want and they are charging $3-$4, and it's really a coin with no value. Then you have to decide if it's worth it for you. For example, I spent way more building my modern British set than I'd ever be able to get for it if I sold it, but I wanted the coins so I went for it.
Perhaps it is just the series of coinage I collect but I have always felt coins in Europe are much more pricey than here in the United States. I am being completely honest when I say that I don't believe I have ever seen a coin available on MA Shops that I did not think was overpriced
Yeah, I just looked at the MA shops. Silly expensive. Based on the internet resources that I have come across, I get the sense that many of the better-grade world coins that I am looking for are actually more available, and lower priced, here in North America. I'm just not coming across them right now(!), though... To fill out my South Korean collection, there was this guy in Korea who ran a now-defunct webstore called "koreancoins.com". He had saved, or acquired somehow, BU rolls of all the years for all six coin types from 1970 on and was selling them as singles, and that's where I got 80% of the coins in my six S. Korea albums. I just need to find that same person for Japan now.
Keep in mind that I am in Europe, collect primarily European coins and buy from European dealers. Buying from a seller in the US just does not make much sense for me - and it's the other way round if you are in the US. And no, MA-Shops/muenzauktion is not the cheapest place on earth. It's just a platform for auctions and sales by a variety of different sellers after all. Christian
I primarily collect European(Albanian, Italian) coinage as well and I have to say that prices here in America are much cheaper than in Europe but perhaps the exchange rate deludes me to a certain extent I must say though for whatever reason the cost of silver britannias are much cheaper than they are here. On several occasions I have had my relatives in Dusseldorf pick up older date Britannias at a coin shop for much cheaper than anything I could obtain here in New York
Its important to keep in mind that it's very difficult to maintain an online store and sell low value coins from a financial point of view. There are immense problems involved such as slow inventory turnover to profit margin relative to time involved and so on. Sometimes you can get lucky and find a store such as the "koreacoins.com" you listed but for the most part they don't exist or as in your example cease to exist. I collect to a limited degree 20th century proof foreign silver. These coins in themselves are extremely hard to find as the only ones typically available are selling for more than 3x what they are worth. These in themselves aren't cheap; typically $30-$40 a coin so I can only imagine how tough it might be to find lower value modern coins online. From a practical standpoint the best thing to do imo is to invest a software or something of the like that sends you instant alerts of when new auctions occur on ebay with the specific words you had requested. While this isn't a particularly great way of obtaining what you want you would be surprised as to how many auctions happen on ebay that you miss.
That's what makes it so hard to find modern coins is that when you do locate them, the prices tend to be so much higher than they are actually worth. This is often the case at a coin show too. The truth is that no matter what the price guides say, there really is no premium for condition on modern coins. You can find an uncirculated version of most modern coins for the same price as a circulated one. Many sellers try to price the coins as if a better quality coin is worth a significant premium, but don't fall for that.
Guess that one "problem" with dealers in the US is that there aren't that many who sell non-US coins. Once you have found one (or some), they may well be less expensive than dealers here. ("Problem" in inverted commas as most of the dealers sell what most of the customers ask for. So ... not really a problem. ) Christian
You got that right! There are a lot of people involved in coins in the USA, but not a lot of them ever go all-out "foreign". Most money is made by selling all other categories of coins first, and probably at the bottom of the dealer's list of money-makers are the non-US coins. I can always find as many, or more, people selling tokens at my local coin shows than world coins. But because world coins is considered "the homely half-sister" of all the coining that goes on, one can get really good buys, especially at coin shows. I never got into instant alerts, but I suspect I had better try that route...
This is also what I was going to say. You can find great deals at coin shops looking through world coin bins because many dealers view them as "something for the little kids to look through" and not as something with real value. If you know what you are doing you can find some great bargains.
It was not so long ago that it was hard to find US dealers who were selling modern US coins, in fact it still is difficult. Yes you can easily find US coins from the '40s and '50s, but from the '60s on, not so much. So if it is hard to do that, then it should be easy to understand why it is even harder to find dealers selling modern foreign coins. For the OP, give this a try - http://www.cointalk.com/threads/mints-of-the-world.13998/
Thanks for the link, and yes, I've looked through the "official mints" links. They have some information on the history of their coins, but little in regards to sales, unless its for their current sets or commemoratives. In fact, the link to my own research (see below) has much more information on S. Korean coins than the official Bank of Korea museum in Seoul or the Currency Museum in Daejon has to offer their visitors. The KOMSCO (Korean Mint) webpage (either the English or the Korean version), has little background on their coins, and nothing about the designers or history of the mint. All of that I had to find on my own, getting most of it from an arcane title that was written by one of the former currency designers himself. That kind of thing interest me, too. I guess what I'm looking for are other geeks who are into numismatics that don't make the register ring. Geeks that will sometimes pull out their nice examples and put 'em up for sale(!)
If I were a modern world collector in the US, the first thing I would do would be to get a copy of world coins news. Many of the US based foreign dealers advertise there. That is where I would start at least.
I live in NC and most of the dealers don't sell foreign coins. You can find modern and minors in most the bargain bins , however I collect European crowns pre WWII. I do see few good coins very now and then in coin shows mostly from the dealers from further up north. So I have been mostly buying my coins online from ebay, ma shops , vcoins and Harlan J Burks. Normally all sites are expensive than ebay. But you tend to get fakes from ebay. I have gotten about 3 fakes out of about 60 purchases I made there. Also I have seen some type coins ( Thalers) sells higher than in MA shops there. If you are patient and willing to look in ma shops you can get some decent deals. Same for vcoins and HJB.
Older stuff is much easier to find, and the older the better, to a point anyway. But from WW II on things get more difficult. But if you like older world coins, there are plenty of dealers in the US and at the coin shows.
Something else that might be worth a shot is if you find a seller on eBay or another site in the country you are interested in, contact them privately and see if they might be able to supply you with coins that they don't have listed. I got a bunch of Canadian coins very affordably from a seller in Canada.
