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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;mlov43, post: 2842069, member: 16729&quot;]I filled out most of my collection around 10 years ago from a dealer who had an online store that was open to us non-Koreans and PayPal called &quot;koreancoins.com&quot;.&nbsp; It is now defunct, but it was the source of all of my non-key date, low Krause catalog price South Korean coins, but coins that were still the impossible-to-find-outside-of-Korea kind with mid-1970s to 1982 dates.&nbsp; Especially the 50-Won, 10-Won, Five-Won, and One-Won coins.&nbsp;&nbsp; He was selling them for peanuts, not knowing (probably) just how hard it is (was?) to find such coins in North America.&nbsp; Otherwise, he would have jacked up his asking prices; I especially think this is the case since his key-date pieces and mint sets in crappy condition were astronomically priced.</p><p><br /></p><p>In other words, I just got lucky.</p><p><br /></p><p>Since that time, I&#039;ve established a purchasing relationship (via PayPal) with Mr. Kim Jung-sik of the online South Korean retailer, Sujipbank.com.&nbsp; His prices are not the lowest, but he has the most consistently decent-quality coin inventory of any Korean online seller; and what you see at his site is what you get, and that&#039;s definitely a feather in his cap.&nbsp; I have also purchased from sujipmol.com, G-market.co.kr (South Korea&#039;s eBay), narauction.com, mirinemall.co.kr and powercoin.co.kr; but I&#039;ve had to use Korea-based friends to purchase from these sites, since they only take funds drawn from Korea-linked bank accounts.&nbsp; In fact, I cannot even access narauction from the internet here in the States.&nbsp; I have to ask a friend to take screen shots of the site&#039;s pages and have him purchase things for me using his own Korean-based money (which I reimburse of course).&nbsp; I&#039;ve only done this several times. The Korean numismatic market is pretty hard to access, and rather closed-circuit for some reason.&nbsp; Probably as an effort to keep foreigners out, and prices in South Korea high.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>I have not really actively collected S. Korean coins for a while now, I just mostly write about them nowadays.</p><p><br /></p><p>Most of my own key-date, Gem-condition pieces were purchased at eBay and at coin shows, actually.&nbsp; The problem is, nowadays you just don&#039;t see such coins offered for sale on eBay very often for some reason.&nbsp; The coin shows in my area, well, I drained the frequently-attending dealers of all of their really nice S. Korean coins long ago, and they don&#039;t seem too interested in replenishing their stocks of those coins very often. </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Long story short:</p><p><b>The best way to &quot;trust a dealer&quot; is to know your coin series better than the dealer who is selling the coin to you, and to see the coin being offered in-hand. </b> Knowing my series and cherrypicking dealers has NEVER been a problem in the past, but it is getting harder because dealers are starting to get wise to the popularity of S. Korean coins and their hike in asking prices.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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