I'm a low-budget collector... I've yet to pay more than about ninety dollars for a coin. It was my birthday a couple weeks ago though and I was like.. OK.. I'm going to bid uncomfortably high on a couple coins, and I did--like $120ish each for two coins (including the auction fee and what I assumed shipping would be, more or less). Last night I finally looked up what shipping was (for why I didn't look it us BEFORE bidding, see the title of this thread) and shipping was THIRTY DOLLARS. I know for some folks that's a rounding error but for my coin budget that's huge. I spent the morning checking in, hoping to get out-bid, on tenterhooks, already in my head drafting an explanation to my wife--not just for the thirty dollars but for the whole three-hundred dollar shebang. I only got outbid in the last seconds of each auction, and one of them only barely. Anybody else here dummies? How do you cope?
Exactly like you .... I pre-bid on a few coins at a single auction once when I first started... watched the live auction and see that I've won the first 2. Then spent the rest of the auction praying to get outbid on the others. All worked out but its ridiculous to put yourself in such a position (there is no need!) but live and learn. I can laugh at it now.. but the sweat was real at the time! How do I cope now? I double and triple check the auction terms.. and include the buyers fee, currency conversion and shipping into my calculation prior to bidding... but saying that the vast majority of my purchases are from VCoins. Less stress!
I hear you about bidding on too many items. When I was a teenager a local guitar store was having a write-your-bid-in auction on a bunch of guitars and saxophones and stuff and my friends and I bid on every auction involving a guitar. The owner, who was more of a classical music type anyway and didn't like us long-hairs loitering in his store all the time, came over and asked if we were ready to pay for twenty guitars if we won all those auctions. Of course we weren't. We were fifteen and any money we had got spent at Taco Bell. I guess in the end though the owner won because I don't think we ever went back in there we were so afraid of owing him thousands of dollars. I guess at least as an adult I was ready to pay for my excited bids .
You got lucky. Higher education can be expensive. I used to advise people to buy from coin shows and fixed price dealers but Covid stopped that. I stopped bidding in auctions which means I stopped buying coins. Your hobby may be different.
I sure did. I've only been to two coins shows--Santa Clara a few years back and Santa Clara again a couple years before that. It is really hard to resist the temptation to be a looky loo at those. Is my forty-dollar purchase enough to justify occupying table space ogling $800 coins beforehand? This is anxiety-inducing for me. In the end the coins shows were a lot of fun, and I think the enjoyment of talking coins IN PERSON with other people who care about coins is worth the stress of hoping I'm not wasting anyone's time.
In June 2020 I won about $200 in coins at an European auction and shipping was about $18, FedEx. That's pretty normal. In the same firm's April 2021 auction I bid and won $40 in coins and the invoice came with 40 GB pounds for shipping! (More than the coins!). I looked in the terms of sale and there is was, 40 pounds shipping to the US. I wrote and complained and said they had shipped for much less the previous time. After a few emails back and forth, they revised it down to 20 pounds. I paid, but was not happy about it. Now I read the auction-sale terms. I make sure I know what shipping will cost. Also, in my records, I keep track of shipping costs, buyer's fee percentage, and anything else (e.g. 1% insurance fee) that makes the cost higher than a simple conversion of the hammer price to dollars (e.g. PayPal fees charged by the firm and PayPal's poor exchange rates). When I pay, I compute the ratio of my actual total dollar cost to the hammer price (in euros or pounds) and it is usually 1.6 to 1.8 dollars per euro (lower for higher totals). When the euro is at $1.20 and you bid on low value coins you can end up paying $1.70 per hammer euro. That's a big difference!
That's the trouble with buying lower-end coins.. shipping is a decent chunk of the budget. Also: I'm an English teacher. Your method uses a lot of decimals. Is there any way I can keep track of all of that using a poem or something similar?
Well, over time, we've all been snookered on some & made out like bandits on others, & hopefully it evens out (& I am not referring to just coins!). The key to enjoying the acquisition process is when you finally realize that you don't need the coin! Sure you want the coin, we all want them, but do you NEED it?...NO! Once you come to this realization, you become more focused on the objective ("wanted" coin) & the process really becomes more enjoyable (plus, you're much less likely to have buyers remorse!). How many of us truly get to that point?...very few!
Don't sweat it - if someone comes over and you're obviously interrupting a sale, perhaps walk away and come back later, but don't be afraid to look at coins you won't buy. I always try to look at as many of the coins I'm interested in as possible when I'm at shows. I've even told dealers I can't afford the coins I'm looking at, I'm just interested in looking because I've never examined an example of that type close up before, and most are happy to oblige. I certainly wasn't about to make Aaron Berk an offer on this Eid Mar that hammered for $300k earlier in the week when I went over to his booth to see it at NYINC 2020, I just heard he'd won it for a client and I wanted to see it, and he was happy to let me have a look. I'd never actually bought a coin from Berk at all before that, I'd just had a few conversations with the guys there over the years at shows and online. Since then I've bought a couple of coins from them, but nowhere near 1% of the value of this denarius. That said, I did make sure I wasn't getting in the way of any customers who might actually have something to buy, and I did make sure to actually look through their coins when I was done in case there was something for me.
Funny story and it's happened to me before! I mean where I was praying I would get out bidded on something as I had over stepped my budget! Glad it came out okay!
That distinction is the key to just about everything in life. Of course, once you strip away all the wants you'll be sleeping next to a fire and wearing a camel-hair tunic. That's so obvious I should have thought of it . Also is that your hand the EID MAR is in? That capsule almost looks custom-made. The advantage of a low coin budget is that even a coin-budget catastrophe is relatively low-stakes!
That is my very dry-skinned hand. I think that's just a standard cointain capsule, but I am not sure, I didn't try to open it due to my past history trying to open such capsules
The fun thing about ancients is my big thumb-like fingers don't have to deal with capsules. Of course, that may be offset by dealing with rice-sized coins..
If I don't walk away with a little bit of new knowledge or wisdom I will be prone to repeat my blunders.
I have learned how to somewhat control my desires and wants of bidding on coins..I check to see FREE shipping, if it is NOT there i look elsewhere. Sure has saved me from buying lots of coins I really don't need.
Everybody needs to screw up at some point and lose a bit of money, as it helps to provide a better learning experience. In time it should encourage personal due diligence rather than relying on the opinions of others such as cataloguers or TPG labels.
For what it's worth, mailing abroad from the US via USPS has become very pricey. The least expensive option, 1st class package international, with limited tracking and no insurance begins at $16. For most things of significant value, I use priority mail international which begins at $41 but includes insurance and decent tracking. It wasn't so long ago that the postage on most of my outbound international packages was less than $3!
I think in the not too distant future, postage and shipping rates will have an effect on online purchases, especially auctions. Why buy online when I can get the coins I want at a show and take them home myself? I've been buying less online and more at shows. Plus buying at shows helps out the local dealers that I buy from.
You're only a dummy if you do it again (not check on shipping...must have been from over-seas for $30)...for now you're LUCKY...
You learned an important lesson about shipping charges. I'll help you avoid some future pain. Be sure to inquire about shipping before placing a bid at an auction in France. I won something that could fit in a FedEx envelope. The shipping charge was 429 Euros.
