People never cease to amaze me...

My 99-year-old uncle is famous for walking around the main indoor mall around here, to get some light cardio in, and observing, "Not only don't I see anything I'd want here, I don't see anything here I'd trade for anything I have."

 

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The mass marketing of gold and silver is nothing short of a racket. If informed individuals want to stack PMs, that's a totally different thing. But "convert your IRA to gold" and buying PMs on margin is a tragic accident waiting to happen.

 

Yet Littleton Coin remains in business and employs 350+ people.
check out these recent "reviews"

"High quality coins delivered to your door, who else does that?"

"The coins I received were fine, a little over priced, but exactly as advertised."

"Always great service, great product."

 

Littleton is okay if you know what you're doing is engaging in a strictly consumption activity, and have no expectation of ever turning even a small profit, like having a beer or two every once in a while.

 

Considering Littleton sells new ASEs for 34.99 right now, Id say he picked a bad time to buy.
Yeah they're over priced and I won't defend them but silver has had wild swings in just the last 5 years and he was buying from a source that's over priced compared to other sources anyway. He obviously seems like the type that pays so little attention to anything that it only dawned on him what they were worth by walking into a LCS. So the idea that this guy or his mother got burned shouldn't come as a surprise. If you invest blindly in anything, you have a very low chance of success. How much was there? What was he hoping to walk away with? Even best case scenario would it have made much of a difference in his life?

 

There was a day when Littleton's model was how you bought coins. Some collectors haven't left that day behind, and some of them raised their children in the tradition.

We sometimes complain about how many newer collectors want everything handed to them. What cleaner manifestation of this phenomenon? And prices aside, if Littleton calls it XF, it's XF. At least they're getting what they thought they were buying.

 

The biggest downside to these "retailers" of coins, whether TV or Littleton, is that the majority of the people who find out the truth about their overpriced purchases will never return to the coin collecting hobby again. So it's profit for the vultures now, and one less person interested in numismatics later when they are forced to sell some of the coins due to an emergency, or want to liquidate some coins so they can expand their collection into higher end coins, etc.

 

That pretty much hits the proverbial nail on the head.

 

The bad taste in the mouth never goes away...and those who have visions of silver (or gold) sugar plums dancing in their heads are sadly disappointed.