What are some hard coins to sell?

I don't mean to derail the discussion but the post by VistaCruiser69 reminded me of an experience I had.
I was on the NGC forum site a few years back. The topic was a cherrypicked coin. A fellow poster claimed that in the previous 6 months he had made over $500,000 dollars using a copy of The Cherrypickers' Guide (4th edition Vol 2.)
Claimed the whole process had become boring but he was willing to sell his book for $500. Too funny. I already owned the book anyway. James

 

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I’ve heard of Lear Capital but never used them. I would think they are much like other places that sell similar items. The thing is, I’d deal directly with them but never from anyone they claims to use them, especially when willing to sell so cheap.

 

I used to wonder why I saw at coin stores and even some coin shows, so many slabbed Roosevelt dimes that were worth less than it would have cost to grade them. I then figured out it's because people like competing online to try to have the best registry sets, and Roosevelt dimes is a series it's really cheap to compete with. So people were submitting several dimes in the hopes of getting the highest grades. Doesn't come back at least MS67, dump it anywhere that will give them any amount of money for it. (Some will even reject MS67 if it doesn't get full bands.) Where then it's almost impossible to give them away. They command no more money than if they were raw.

Silver Roosevelt dime (1955) in my Dansco 7070 I got from a store, graded by PCGS as MS66; I broke it out to put it in the album.

 

Going to the original post, I'd have to agree with the "Clad Proof Sets" being hard to sell... Figuratively speaking: I can't 'give' them away. And it's a shame, too. They can be quite inexpensive, make neat little gifts for birth years, and tho' most of them don't carry a lot of value, they are still decent/fun to look it.
I suppose dealers as myself (and other small-time dealers might agree) could stand to move the boat loads coming through the door. I, too, have stopped buying them for the most part.

 

The last time I went to a coin show, about a year and a half ago, I sold several certified coins to dealers on the floor. The easiest one to sell was a CAC approved Barber quarter. The only one I didn’t get an offer on was this NGC MS61 seated dime. I paid high retail for it at a coin shop in the late 90’s, and thought it wasn’t too bad of a deal, as it was reasonably attractive for low MS grade. Clearly not original but uniformly white with a cleaning that NGC found market acceptable.

At least a couple of dealers turned up their nose at the cleaning, and I think the fact that it is a smaller sized type coin made it even more difficult to move. There just isn’t as big of a pool of buyers for small denomination silver type in less attractive grades. I later sold it for a halfway decent price on EBay where there is a wider audience.

 

Anything that I am attempting to sell.

 

When I was a dealer, I never had trouble selling type coins. The keys were overall quality and the absence of problems.

Back in the 1960s and ‘70s, the one type coin that has hard to sell was the 1837 No Stars Half Dime. The coin listed for high numbers in the price guides, but the dealers sold them for less than that. Naturally they paid way below the published numbers when they bought them.

 

If you paid a premium for that piece back in the day, you did overpay. The close-up pictures of the obverse, which is the more important side, make it look dull and washed out from too much dipping.

You are right, however. Smaller coins are harder to sell than larger ones. When I was a dealer, I had customers who refused to even look at half dimes and gold dollars because they were too small.

 

I have also had decent luck selling coins like this and coins in details holders on eBay. I think between the wider audience, and people just looking for a good deal, you can offload them there.