Considering becoming a flea market coin dealer. Any advice?

You might create a niche for yourself at a flea market, but a better bet might be local coin shows. To do that, you might need a sales tax account with you state, and maybe a business license although the local show promoter might make that unnecessary. As for record keeping, with an accounting degree, I was able to keep my own financial records.

If you are going to get serious, you are going to need the expertise to grade coins and spot counterfeits. My perception is that the counterfeit problem is worse now than what it was when I was a dealer. I imagine that Morgan silver dollars in circulated condition are more popular than ever for small buyers, which are the kind of people you would find at a flea market. You had been be able to spot the fakes on the fly, or you could get into big trouble fast. Buying fakes or selling fakes can sink your business quickly.

As a further piece of advice, I can’t imagine selling coins at a yard sale. You might as well put up a sign in your front lawn which reads, “Coin collector here! Come and rob me!”

 

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The flea market I'm looking at I'd be collecting the money myself so it makes it a little easier to know what i sell.
For all the record keeping I have a really old version of coin manage. I try to use it to keep track of how much i spend on each coin and after the sale I can see whats not there anymore.
It also lets me keep track of what i sold things for and what my profit was on the coin.
For bulk coins that's a little harder but personally as long as I can get the book keeping to come out close I'm happy. I'm hoping it would be close enough for the government too.

Coin shows I would love to do but right now my inventory is nowhere close to the coin show guys. I'm hoping if the flea market goes well I could grow my inventory and sometime down the road reach the coin show level.

I started out by helping a part time coin dealer who set up a shop at his house. Kept everything locked up and never had any issues after years of sales.
I do yard sales both at my place and at other peoples sales. There are repeat customers who know me but I don't know if they know where i really live.
So far I've never had issues

 

I did a stint once at a flea market. I used to build fancy wood toys. Build all year and 3-4 weeks before Christmas I would set up a table. I am an OCD type guy and the stuff I would offer was pretty detailed. A furniture house bought everything I had one weekend and put me under contract to build toys for his furniture store. Would have been great but it turned out I would work my office eight hours and then in my shop another six hours. Talk about burning the candle at both ends….. I finally bailed out of the furniture store deal…. But the whole point being, if you deal fairly and offer a good product, you never know what can happen.

 

I know. I was always timid with that stuff. There was no way on earth I could justify the number of hours I would put into them. The finishes were all hand rubbed three times. I did it because I enjoyed doing it and making sawdust was great therapy for my professional life. It became additional stress when I was doing it for that furniture store so I had to stop. I made stuff like the piece below that was a wood creation of the missile system I worked in the Army.

 

That looks great.
When i was younger i got a copy of "the great all American wooden toy book" and used to make the toys out of it. As I got older I tried making toys to sell but there wasn't much interest at that time and no one wanted to pay enough to even cover my expenses.

 

My advice...

Keep your day job.

 

What if they work nights?