Baldwin's St.James - shambolic, unprofessional bunch

+1

Over a 30 year span of my career starting in the late 80's, I averaged 3x per year visiting China, and upwards of 6-8 weeks a trip. I did not go "just to Hong Kong". Rather, I have been to most of their provinces and MANY (hundreds) of their towns and cities. I have also traveled similarly in Europe and The Americas. Personally, I agree. I find that Chinese "Capitalism" was much more robust than in MANY of the several countries that I have done business. They have a saying, roughly, "The Capital is in the North", kinda implying that although they have a system of government, in reality most of China is a VERY free market approach. Deng Xiaoping changed to a Free Market approach starting in the late 80's.

I always found there is a "reality" vs. what everybody talks about.

 

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This thread illustrates clearly what I have always said about coin collecting. Coin collectors (or maybe more correctly coin sellers) always talk about getting new people into collecting and the importance of the young numismatist. I have never thought that was important. Mainly because coins aren't cars, computers, etc... and the ones I look for, you often cant just go to another dealer or another auction and find the same exact thing for a better price. More collectors means more buyers out there, more competition for the coins I want and certainly higher prices. And how many of them or going to want to try their hand at flipping coins?

Less buyers means more competition for those buyers and probably lower prices and better selection.

Of course I am a small fish...I have never sold a coin and look for the best quality for the lowest price only for my own collection. So to potential new collectors I say...why collect coins? Pretty boring hobby don't you think?

 

Cant agree more. So VCoins also admit the selling a coin with much higher price is against code of ethics. But as I said there are dealers in VCoins who are doing that

 

That's wrong a Chinese company like Huawei is 100 percent aligned and controlled and operated by government which is great. It ensures enterprises can not monopolize the market and drive prices crazy up. Govn interference in market always worked and we see it clearly in Chinese system

 

Just out of curiosity, can you cite any reliable sources or documentation for the claim that dealers "...can get their coin from hoard finders..." and help collectors understand how this could possibly be a significant and reliable source for hundreds of dealers' coin inventories?

 

I am bemused by much of what I have read in this thread.

I am a collector and not a dealer.

I would normally expect a typical collector to outbid a typical dealer almost every day of the week as the collector is usually used to paying retail and retail is typically what a dealer could pay at auction plus a markup (whatever markup they want to ask for).

Why would a dealer be prevented from asking whatever markup they want on a coin they buy? They are using their knowledge of their market to know what to buy at and what to sell at. They make mistakes too and can make a loss on coins bought this way.

I read the rule of theics oulined above differently to some others in this thread. The dealer should not tell you that your coin is worthless junk and offer you $50 if they know it is a $1,000 coin. The dealer should not claim that a coin they are selling is a $1,000 coin if they know it is worth $50. Neither of these have ANYTHING to do with how much they paid for a coin.

If I buy a coin from a dealer at a fixed price, let's say $50, knowing that they have mis-identified the coin but I know it for what it is, let's say a $500 coin then should I not buy it? Should I notify the dealer of their mistake and allow them to sell it for the $500 it is worth? By the logic above I should not tell the dealer because if I did then they would not be able to charge the higher price for it anyway as they are only allowed a nominal margin. If I do buy it then I am somehow obliged to ONLY make a 20% margin if I flip the coin at some stage.

I am confused about much of the logic in this thread.

 

A collector bidding against dealers is the least to say condemned to lose money. Let's take as an example that I want to bid 2000$ on a coin. If I win it will cost 2400$ with a 20% buyer's fee. If for some reason I don't like the coin anymore and want to sell in an auction I will need to pay another 15% seller's fee. This means that if I want to break even, the coin needs to hammer 2823$. If a dealer wins it, he can break even by just hammering 2000$ in his own auction. Furthermore on several occasions dealers waive fees when they buy from each other. Dealers can also skip import duties by having offices in different countries. Furthermore, dealers are professional sellers which means they will be able sugarcoat any coin and resell with a profit to people with deep pockets. They have client lists and want lists of their clients. Like they don't have access to direct sales from their clients, they also have urgent need to purchase more coins from auctions. And since I saw so many people refer to old auctions, may someone could explain to me why did the fees double or triple when photography and catalog production costs have dropped at least 10 times in the past century?

And to quote my favorite article by Mike Marotta:

In the drug world the dealer is never your friend. At the tavern, the barkeeper is a good listener - at a distance, and as long as you keep buying booze. Dealers and collectors live in different worlds. Dealers have only one use for collectors and if a collector stops buying, then the relationship stops.

Addicts associate with others of their kind and coin collectors enjoy each other's company. However, collectors do not become emotionally involved in each other's lives for two reasons: they are not interested in people but in objects; and, being addicts, they are emotionally dysfunctional and cannot empathize or sympathize with another person. Numismatics a lonely hobby.

 

Oh my, there must be a lot of ancient Greek coin trees planted in Munich, I should try to get one.

 

In your example, the collector would have to have his or her coin sell for $2,823.53 to break even with the $2,400.00 purchase price. So it’s actually even worse than $2,760.00!

 

Indeed!

 

There are many examples but I just give you one such example. silbury coins has hoard coins found by metal detectors and indeed I purchased 2 such coins from them myself. Hoards are found almost every months in Europe , Israel and middle east. there was one huge dinar hoard found few days ago in Israel. I am sure dealers have access to these finders and can get the coins with first hand price and get a margin on them instead of bidding on auction coins.

 

I am still confused by much of this....

Do you believe that it is common practice for an auction house to waive fees to dealers? It is not something that I have come across in the UK. I have family members who are antique dealers and they pay the same fees as everyone else in an antiques auction and always have.

One of your assertions is that the dealer is the aution house itself. That is a different category. If the auction house decides to buy the coin for it's own coin store stock then I can't see the problem in them not charging themselves a fee for a service that they provided to themselves.

I am still confused by your statements about dealers, sugercoating and selling to people with deep pockets. I buy some coins from dealers. I don't have deep pockets. The coins I buy have typically not been sugarcoated. They have been accurately described etc. Perhaps we buy from a different type of dealer. If I buy a coin from a dealer then I am unlikely to make a profit when I sell. I don't have to pay a buyer's premium but I have still probably bought at retail and regardless of my route to selling the coin I will lose either through auction fees, consignment fees with a dealer or selling the coin directly to a dealer. If your intention is to make money as an ancient coin collector by trading coins then I suggest that there are better ways to make money.

 

This is probably the best thing posted in this thread. Sellers say free market and this is true and I don't fault them, it's a business for them, they do it to make money, not a charity. Do I want them to sell me what I want for less....sure...I am allowed to dream I am sure a collector can be friends with a dealer but the basic idea presented here is true.

They want to make money selling you coins for as much as they can. Collectors must know this. They might think this is a group of like minded people who love coins and history but seller and collector are not in this for the same reason generally speaking. A seller, a good one, will be nice but they aren't your friend. I work with salesmen and they can turn that on and off....good ones can make you think what a nice guy he is and that he just did you huge favor by taking your money.

 

With this attitude, good luck when you decide to sell your collection. There may be no collectors left to buy your coins!

 

I am talking about the times I have to bid against dealers and auctioneers who want to buy coins only to resell to billionaires who pay whatever their numismatic advisors will tell them to pay. These numismatic advisors are now setting/controling the market and therefore the hammer prices.

 

I did not buy them to sell them, I have never sold a coin, but I have a feeling there will be plenty of people more than happy to give those I leave them to a small percentage of what they are worth to me. I would rather them keep the coins and continue the collection.

 

It was intended to be a comedic tongue-in-cheek reference. My hope is that it came across that way.

 

LOL, you are dating yourself!
And, then I thought,
“naw, he just read that news article the other day about the celebrity PINK, that was happy that she has thunder thighs...”

 

Ernstk, are you in your 20’s?

clearly you are new to collecting and don’t understand how markets work, how coins get from finders to the market etc.

New finds make up a very very small percentage of the coins on the market. Most dealers have never met a finder or the middlemen in between.

actually I’m stopping here. To many wrong things in this thread to reply to them all. I don’t have time to reply to them all.

Barry Murphy

 

LOL, oh PLEASE don’t stop!