Dealer business antics

Well, heres how it works in my city. There are about 10 coin shops, and not a single owner of said shops sets up at the monthly coin show. Only 1 of the 10 coinshop owners sets up at the bigger annual show. Oddly enough HE owns the ONLY shop that I will step foot in. The other 9 dealers are crooked con-men the way I see it. Im not gonna go into too much detail about these guys but put it this way, they will only look at the dates of the coins you sell them after you have left. Then they go through and pick out all the key dates and high 5 each other.

 

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I have not attended many shows - but out of the few I did visit only one had a cranky dealer and he may have just been having a bad day. I have more good stories than bad stories - but you seldom see a praise the dealer thread. The worst part is one of my best stories was talking to two older large cent dealers for like 30 minutes - and I did not get their names.

 

Male PMS?....

 

I am a fairly young guy for the hobby, but I have a very youthful appearance. I learned to accept that not every one is going to treat me seriously and fairly as a result, but I have learned to use that as a way to disguise my knowledge. I have been able to cherry pick a few from dealers who were more interested in only focusing on the old guy haggling over individual, no-date buffalo prices.

Anyways, I was at a show in December. One dealer only seemed to try to sell me junk out of his junk bin for a nickel; he would not show me the $300-500 coins I wanted to see. I asked to see one particular coin that was four figures and he refused to show it to me. He would also completely turn away in the middle of my sentence if another one of his buddies walked up and would openly brag about how he just way under-bought a coin. He turned away one more time and started talking to another buddy in the middle of my sentence paying me no attention, and I walked off. He lost a good $1,000 sale.

However, I went around the corner and saw a dealer with nobody at his table. Nicest guy I'd ever met at a show. I talked with him for over an hour. (Before Doug or anybody else says I was wasting his time, note that no one else walked up to his table in the mean time as it was near the end of the show). Very friendly, we were showing each other cool coins we had picked up there or over time. Talked about our favorites. He thanked me for visiting with him after and we parted ways. I got his card and continue to visit his site to this day.