Many of you have the desire to hit the bargain scene and see what happens, so lets take a moment to reflect on the bargains available in the coin market. Most people believe that Bargain means getting something under the current value. Looks good on paper, but seldom is this the case. First you really must know what the current value is. This is where the learning curve begins. While it is possible to rough idea a particular coin, it is not a price set in stone. You search through the various coin price guides to see that many have a wide range of prices for a given coin in a given grade. The sole purpose for any price guide is to give you a basic idea of value. Even the fabled greysheet is just a guide. Here is just an example. 1903-P Morgan Dollar in MS-63 Greysheet value $66.00 Bid $72.00 ask CoinWorld Trends $85.00 PCGS website $90.00 Heritage Index $39.00 Current Dealer network buy offer $44.00 So you can see how hard it is to know what to pay for this coin. So you are off on the internet searching for your 1903-P Morgan and you see one for $60.00 Is this a bargain? As you can see by the prices given it could be. All MS-63 1903-P Morgan dollars are not the same. Some may be weakly struck, have ugly bag marks, be very weak for the grade, or strong for the grade. May be toned or blast white. May have fingerprints or a scratch. Could be cleaned. Could be the coin has sat around collecting dust on some shelf for a long period of time and the seller just wants it gone. So how do you find a true bargain? First you must do the research on prices. Second you must know how to grade the coin. Third you must know how to spot cleaning and altered coins. Fourth you must be patient. Lastly you must know yourself. As mentioned many times here on the forum a dealer or long time seller can spot a sucker. Do not convince yourself that you are better than you are. There are no coin fairies giving away problem free coins just for the sake of making you happy. So now that you have searched your soul deeply and you have figured out that you do need help, how do you go about it. READ all that you can. Become involved in your hobby. Join a club, attend seminars, read some more, practice grading coins, talk with dealers and collectors, visit many shows, visit the local coin shop, read again, subscribe to a few coin magazines, look at many coins on the internet, read a lot more, ask many questions to as many people as you can. Last of all, when you think that you have learned all that can be learned, start the process over again. No one can know it all, and if anyone tells you that they can, run away. The only true bargain: Any purchase that you make based on what appeals to you will be a true bargain. If it brings you joy, and keeps your passion for the hobby high, it is a bargain. If you buy the coin because it has touched you, the value is priceless.
Very well stated, and very informative. Your commitment to the hobby and sincere efforts to help, especially help for the beginner, earn my respect and admiration. In a world of sharks it's reassuring to find a white knight. Or, a better metaphor, you're the 1916 SLQ found in the middle of a roll of clad '90s quarters. I wish your store was in my town instead of Delaware.
ND is moving to Michigan??? Great !! You forgot one resource for learning about coins, THIS FORUM. As with any item for sale, it's value is determined by the buyer. I attend a lot of antique auctions and I have seen similiar items at different auctions sell for varying prices. It all depends who is in the audience, I've seen 2 collectors battle over an item until one comes out the winner, sometimes long past where I stopped bidding. I have also found things at garage sales for cheap that the person was just wanting to get rid of and I would be willing to give anything for. Bargins are out there to be had, just not every day.
I humbly take my bow. The members here really know how to make a dealer feel appreciated. Just glad to be of help!
The variations in value with different price guides is indeed interesting. How do they determine the value of a coin? Do certain guides tend to always highball or lowball prices? Any info on what Krause has for a 1903-P Morgan Dollar in MS-63?
Thanks for the topic, ND! How does one measure "bargain"? 1. Selling it for more than you paid for it -- accounting for inflation, time value of money, etc. So, basically, it has to be a "flip" i.e., you have to sell it quickly. 2. Getting it for less than you expected to pay for it. This is most commonly what people mean. This is why Coin Prices and Red Book are favored by dealers. It sounds so much better to take 20% off Red Book than to charge 40% more than Greysheet, even though the price might be the same. 3. There are people who make money walking the floor at the ANA, paying careful attention to inventories and prices and knowing when they see something they can walk across the floor for a profit. 4. The most subtle, difficult and enjoyable bargain is when you identify something not identified by others. At a local coin show, I tried unsuccessfully to talk a dealer into joining the ANA. "Not worth it," he said, minutes before being cherrypicked by a collector who spotted a variety. Almost every ANA convention has a report of someone finding a Large Cent or Bust Half, rare, two known, nine known, unique, or unlisted, or whatever. As you say, you have to read and learn and know. The people who find those newsworthy items have invested man-years in the hobby.
That cuts both ways, of course. Dealers often complain that they are forced to be generalists, while collectors specialize. Of course, "specializing" in Morgan Dollars is a tough row to hoe for a new collector. Everyone is in that game. 3-cent nickels offer more opportunity. For that matter, hardly any area of US Numismatics is as over developed as "coin" collecting. Specialize in the wildcat banknotes of your hometown. You still won't be alone, but you won't have 50,000 people with the DLRC book of Hometown Notes looking for the same signature pairs you are. And no area of US Numismatics is as overdeveloped as US Numismatics itself. People in America collect American money. John J. Ford has taken a lot of criticism in his later years, but the sales of his holdings are at the multi-million dollar marks for the very same reason that the auction catalogs of John J. Pittman's estate sale became a must have for any serious researcher. Both men bought things that other people did not understand or want. In Ford's case, he was big fan of Indian Peace Medals (among other things). He had the field to himself, more or less. With time and patience, he bought what he wanted.
mmarrotta makes a great point. Too often collectors follow the trends blazed by others. Morgan Dollars, Lincoln Cents, and Walking Liberty Halves make up the mainstream of the market today. One area of the "Bargain" market that I did not touch on is the scarce mintage or surviving rate. In earlier posts I made referrence to several coins with mintages of a few thousand pieces selling for common prices. Here are a few examples: 1873 Proof 3 Cent Silver Mintage 600 Price $1000 1872 3 Cent Silver Mintage 2900 Price $600 in MS 1878 3 Cent Nickel Mintage 2350 Price $600 1873 2 Cent Mintage 1100 Price $2000 in MS or PR I could go on and on with examples being overlooked. Some Civil War and HTT have surviving examples in less that a dozen selling for a few hundred dollars, and I did not even get into the ancient or foriegn market. Now the lowest mintage of a Morgan Dollar is 12,880 and this issue the 1895 Proof sellls for a minimum of $15,500 in VG and in PR-60 topping the scales at $35,000 So the bargains are all in what you know.
You are right about the 3-cent "fish scales", ND. Both silver and nickel are cute little coins, but no one seems interested. Another over-developed area is Large Cents. Of course, it is just those coins that make the headlines when another uncatalogued variety or rare example is tagged at an ANA convention by an observant numismatist. Recently in the news is the "Strawberry Leaf" large cent. I would have to double-check the details, but it is legendary that Henry Chapman and Eduoard Frossard got into a wrestling match, tussling each other to the ground at the Parmalee Auction over just that coin, the Strawberry Leaft large cent. I am pretty sure that was before 1920, because the Chapman Brothers were young turks in 1880 and they both worked for Frossard before going out on their own. So, people have been chasing these coins for a while. I have never seen any "edition" of the standard Newcombe reference on Large Cents that was not a reproduction of the hand-engraved book. There are bargains out there, but your knowledge of Large Cents has to be 150 years deep.
Bowers touched on this subject a little bit in his book 'the Buyers Guide to the Rare Coin Market', which I just finished a couple days ago. He called this person the Bargain-Seeker, and told a quick story about a man who wanted to invest in the rare coin market, but wanted to get in at a discount. What he eventually ended up with, were slabbed coins that were, in Bowers' opinion, graded a couple points too high, or (in some cases) the worst examples of those grades possible. Of course, the buyer was purchasing for future profits, and when he attempted to resale, dealers turned him down and he was forced to rid them at auction - where, as he put it, he did not fair well. I think that the coin market is already a highly self-regulated field of business. Unlike used cars, where the market is wide-spread and the mark up is usually quite shocking - that is a result of the pool of demand being fairly uneducated in what they are buying - some take their potential purchases to experienced mechanics, others don't even do that. I think, by and large, most coin collectors have invested some amount of time into their education in the field, and know what they are probably going to pay. Sure, sometimes the blind dog finds the bone... That's always a nice feeling, but I doubt the blind dog expected it.
1: Then the bargains are in those areas of missing knowledge. If you cannot find a specialty club serving a segment, that is a clue. If you cannot find a book on a subject, that is a red flag, siren, bells, and flashing lights. 2: The most mature markets operate on "perfect knowledge." Everyone knows what everyone else knows and communication is instanteous. (Of course, we are limited creatures. We both "could" read Van Allen & Mallis, but I have not; have you?) With weekly coin newspapers and especially internet forums such as this, news travels fast. Coin dealers have their own networks, personal, print, and electronic. 2a: Numismatics is an ideal marketplace for two reasons: *It is a hobby.* So, we are all idle, mentating philosophers here, not sweating laborers happy not to starve to death while validating Adam Smith. So, this is a platonic ideal of human interactions. *We buy and sell money.* It is a meta-market, where the norms and expectations of capitalism are distilled and taken neat.
You stumped me with this one sir. Self regulated? I wish. Some amount of time invested in their education? Again I wish that this were the case. Both of your statements are wishful thinking at best. If they were true, we would have a much better system for grading coins, and the companies that grade them. We wouldn't have private mints milking customers with misleading ads. We wouldn't have TV and mail-order companies charging 400% above retail. The ANA would be the filled with active members. Sir I could go on and on. While I hope that one day we as a group will live up to your statements, we are a long way from there today.
I think that you are being too hard on the hobby. The recent case of the WTC priivate mint Mariannas issue is a good example of how the hobby responded to help stop that program. Education via the ANA continues, as always. In support of that, people like you always encourage collectors to read before they buy, to expand their education. From your perspective, as a dealer, you wish that all other dealers were as interested in education and submitted to self-regulation. Again, I think that your higher standards are laudable and important. Successful dealers are those that do. The others are either cherry-picked by knowledgeable collectors, or else shunned by them. That mediocre dealers succeed well enough to stay in business for decades only underscores the fact that the market is open and flexible. I liken this to the choices we have in food. You can choose McD or BK or "Organic Foods" or grow your own: all choices are available; none precludes the others. There is room for minority, for individual preference. Dealers (and collectors) who take the easy way out are not driven to the boards and excluded. They merely reap what they sow. Message boards like this (and coinpeople, and rec.collecting.coins) draw new readers and participants all the time. I cannot disagree with what you wrote in black and white terms. I agree that the higher standard is always the better one. Dealers like you raise that bar, set the level of achievement higher. That process has been going on for a century or more. I have mentioned the antipathy between the Chapmans and Frossard. They competed with knowledge in their catalogs. In the 1940s, Wayte Raymond led the pack. Then New Netherlands (owned by Charles Wormser, the son of numismatist Moritz Wormser) brought on John Ford and Walter Breen. Now, we are at the point wher Q. David Bowers is the "dean of American numismatics" but we have hundreds of people like you in support of his pursuit of excellence. Are there problems? Indeed, there are! It is all dark and drab and dreary? No, it is not. I agree that much remains to be done. I only counsel that we curry the gains and cut the loses.
Well said sir. I am the first to admit that this is the most wonderful hobby in the world. I understand that sometimes I allow my posts not to fully reflect that attitude. Because I believe that this is the greatest hobby, I do wish for bigger and better. I push education at every point. I am always more satisfied when I sell a book than a coin. It is others that understand and act on the education principles that keep my view of the hobby so high. Thank you for your efforts.
