I went to my local LCS for the first time since May (A new job and new baby have kept me busy). As soon as I walked in the guy told me someone had just bought their entire foreign junk bin. This was a disappointment of course since I hadn't been there in months and the junk bin search is my favorite thing to do. But in the past few years they have started to show me unsorted stuff from behind the counter and that is often more exciting than the junk bin. Today was no exception. I went through a few boxes that were just massive quantities by country of German, British and French, and I bought a bunch of stuff mostly to resell. Then I got to some better stuff in different boxes. Here's some of the highlights, aside from stuff I posted in other threads already. First group starts with a 1699 Brandenburg 1/12 thaler and includes some Conder tokens, 1870 Ceylon 5 cents and a few nice Austrian silvers.
In the next group there are a few nice Mexican coins whose luster doesn't quite show up in the scans, but trust me, the 5 centavos is amazing and the 10 centavos is quite nice too. The 20 centavos isn't as good but it's a good date and only cost 15 cents (as did the other two Mexicans). Also a Bonn notgeld, 1926 Afghanistan 1 afghani, really nice Latvia 1 lats, 1934 Mauritius half rupee, and 1938 Hungary 2 pengo which unfortunately has a spot.
This last group is interesting too, with a few countries you don't see coins from often. 1945 c France aluminum bronze 5 francs, Somalia 1 somalo, 1953 Southern Rhodesia 1 crown, 1966 Ivory Coast 10 francs, 1966 Lesotho 50 licente, 1968 Swaziland luhlanga, 1972 Iraq 1 dinar, and a really nice Japanese 1 sen that I need to look up the date on.
First it depends on the prices. If the price is right I'll take anything from before the 1940s or from more unusual places (colonies, Africa, Polynesia, etc.) But it's also the condition, if I have the coin or have seen it before, if it fits into one of my areas of interest, things like that. This time I felt like the guy working might give me a break on some of the prices so I took a chance on asking for some coins I might not have otherwise. I had mixed results at this but can't complain overall.
Seems like you did well regardless. It always amazes me that people running a small business will tie up cash in inventory they 'just can't get to' to inventory and resell.
Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts about this sort of thing. Like when you ask to buy a coin they have to look it up and see what it's selling for on eBay and everything. You know they didn't do that when they bought it, so why not just mark it up a little from what you paid for it and take your profit? If you've spent any time in a coin shop though you know that most of their business is buying and selling bullion. I was there for three hours and spent less than $500. While I was there some guy came in and bought $5,000 worth of silver and was in and out in ten minutes. So I guess they prioritize what makes them money.
I hear what you're saying at the end, but how much of their time did you actually 'cost'? Seems like some reasonable back end work makes the front end transaction(s) easier and faster.
Apparently this one half penny that I got is quite a good find: https://coinquest.com/cgi-bin/cq/coins.pl?coin=17450
the Mauritius and the Lesotho are my faves. African coins are my latest interest but i dont see them often around here.
I'm really interested in African coins too. They also had a Mauritius 1 rupee from 1934 but he looked it up and wanted $30 for it. The half rupee I think he just guessed at the silver value, so that was a good deal.
And many of the bronze as well. People who don't focus on the series may not realize it but there are many better dates.
And many of the bronze as well. People who don't focus on the series may not realize it but there are many better dates.
