Sometimes it pays to have competitors!

Today I received an interesting call.....it was from my business competitor!!!! Not so much my enemy, but I still compete against him fro business. He is a good guy and we often give each other a hard time when we see each other in our customer's offices. Often he will sneak a peek over my shoulder and catch me on Coin Talk all the time. So today he was on his way home from his family's house in Virginia and gave me a call letting me know that he grabbed some coins that were given to him by his family that he forgot about. We are going to try and meet up tomorrow, but from what he tells me there is nothing more than common, circulated stuff. Most was from the early 1900s, so we will see what happens. I better bring along my price guide and a few bucks.

 

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Good luck Joe. Some of the best things that happen are by chance and luck, you know you just "fall into something".

 

So here is the follow up....

I pull up to work and I see this guy. He pulls out a baggy full of coins and starts shaking it as he was so excited that I can see his coins. This is what he had....

16 Wheaties..... a 1911 which was very badly corroded with verdigris, a 1920 in good condition and the rest in the 40's and 50's.
1 Liberty Head Nickel in good condition (Liberty on head not readable) - 1912
1 Barber Head Dime in good condition
2 Mercury dimes in good condition (42 and 45)
2 silver Roosevelt dimes in good condition (46 and 63)
1 1951 Washington Quarter in good condition

Basically all pocket change pulled from circulation.

After looking over the coins carefully and verifying that there was nothing valuable, I determined what I would pay him and offered him the money.....

So what would you have paid for all that? Keep in mind, silver at the time was around $15.60/oz. I would like to hear some offers and then I will let you all know what I ended up paying him.

 

$1 back of spot plus a dollar?

 

So whats the total you think?

 

.96¢ -- face value, [IF i counted correctly:whistle:]... since he's an acquaintence/competitor and was shaking them like junk

 

Thats what I would have liked to pay him.

 

About $8.00 ? Unless there was a 55 ddo

 

5 bucks. Up to 7.

 

just with nothing else going on, 15 for the lot, but I wonder why a competitor would offer me family coins, hard times? I might if I felt that offer him 100 with a caveat that he could buy them back when things ease up for him. I know that is almost ten times what they are worth but sometimes values are more than just what the market happens to be.

If I were more flush and it would not pinch me I might even offer more with the same caveat of him buying them back.

 

Does he want to sell them or just find out what they're worth? I'm surprised he would sell them if they were given to him by family...unless the family doesn't know they were given. :whistle:

Many folks think their coins are great treasures. Personnally, I wouldn't want the junk, but if it was a guy I had to deal with on a day to day basis, I would try to handle the situation gracefully.

I would encourage him to give them to his kids or young family members. If he still wants to sell, I would show him the Red Book and offer the Red Book price.

True, I would be way over paying, but this may be one of those times to stay focused on the "Big Picture" and not sweat the small stuff. Of course, if you don't care about that, I would say $8 max.

 

$12.00 would be a generous offer.

 

I assume you told him that they weren't worth anything much and that you offered him $10 just because he was anxious to sell. Then, you offered to buy him lunch because he's a good guy.

 

I'd say $15 would be pretty fair. You probably can't get the dimes from a dealer for less than a couple bucks a piece. The quarter's probably worth 4-5.

Whatever you gave him, I'm sure he thought they were worth much more.

 

First of all I apologize if I made this sound like these coins were passed down over generations from this guys family and he sold them in desperation for some money. This was not the case. His family had them, he didn't want them, he knew I collected coins and figured I would buy them from him for a fair price. Simple enough.

The bag also contained some bicentennial quarters and halves along with some 1950 nickels which I took out and gave them to him and said spend them. The coins were really all junk and I normally would not have gone after something like this or if I did, I would offer the bare minimum. But this guy was nice enough to think of me and I wanted to offer him something he thought would be a fair price. So like I do with all my coins that people give me to evaluate, I took them home and put them in excel by date followed by grade then by price/value. I also have an excel spreadsheet that a CT member created for us a few years ago to evaluate the value of silver. In the end, I had two really nicely typed out spread sheets with values for all his coins.

In the end, I offered him $10 which in my opinion was about $2 more than what I would have offered someone. So when I presented him the spreadsheets and the offer he was kinda taken back by the price. I guess he figured he had a million dollars on his hands....I don't know. I don't know what he was expecting and I didn't ask. He did say that he thought they would be worth more. I explained to him that the value of a coin depends on many factors, one of which is quality. For instance, he thought that the 1911 Lincoln would be worth a lot. And I told him that it would be worth a nice amount of money if it were in uncirculated condition and was not corroded. I could barely see the date with my loupe, that is how badly corroded it was. He thought about the deal all day and then at the end took the $10. He doesn't realize that he got a good deal and that I am the one who came out on the losing end of this....dollar wise. If he brought those same coins down to our local coin shop, he would have received a fraction of what I paid him. I even encouraged him to do so, but in the end he was satisfied with what had transpired.

So thats the story folks. Thanks for everyone chiming in. Glad to know that we were all very closely on the same page.

 

I just low-balled to face value playing the 'price is right' value and for some reason assumed from your story that this competitor somehow already knew the value of his coins, was a coin collector/dealer themselves and was just teasing you with this 'shaking' of the coins upon your arrival. So I assumed you might expect our guesses to be a lot higher on a bag of junk silver and some wheat cents but then you'd reveal an ultra low deal in your favor. I figured you got 'paid' in the deal based on your thread title and not that you did him a favor on their value and significance to him personally. Oh well, I was off and I sure didn't mean to sound off the 'same page' or that you tried to get a deal that wasn't fair for him. I'm quite impressed how far you went to be exact with use of your Excel spreads and all.

He's lucky to have a competitor like you. :thumb:

 

Did you buy him lunch?

 

That is why I don't like to buy from family or friends or co workers. You offered $3 more than I would have and your offer was fair, but not being a coin collector he thinks he got cheated even if he never says so.
Kent

 

Ohhhh, this was nothing.....the big one is yet to come. My wife's aunt says that her deceased husband left her a small coin collection that she can "retire" on. They are all locked up in a small safety deposit box and when she gets them out she will bring them over for me to look at. I told her not to get her hopes up that very few small coin collections will contain coins that she could "retire" on, but there is a possibility that there may be some valuable coins in there. She insists that she will be able to retire for the rest of her life on these coins and she is so excited. Mind you, she is 60 years old, so the funds of these coins will have to pay her expenses for the next 20 years or so. Then again, being from WV, the amount needed to retire on is probably a little different than the amount needed to retire on in California or New York or Florida.

Will keep you posted on this one.

 

Exactly what I was about to say. My experiences are to never buy coins or almost anything from a person you know well, a relative, neighbor, etc. If they showed you something worth $1 and you offered them $10, they would always think you got a million dollar object for practically nothing. This is great way to start some real problems in a family. That whispering behind your back of how you cheated a relative, friend, etc. sometimes gets bad.
In this instance I would have said what I thought they were worth but said I've got no interest in them. Best give them to a young member of your family as a gift. Then walk away happy.