An opinion and some free advice

Hi everyone,

This is a rant. If you don't like reading rants, I think you should stop now.

I bought a coin collection from a friend's wife earlier this year. I may post the inventory and the grades later on in the thread. She had inherited this collection a decade or so ago and it had been taking up space in her attic for many years. I was talking one day about roll hunting and she pulled it down and showed it to me and asked if I was interested in buying it. I told her I'd be happy to look through it, but would most likely only be interested in buying it for the value of the silver in it. There was about 50 ounces. I also offered her $500 for any numismatic value that might be there, as I had a much lower level of knowledge about the subject back then than I do now. In fact, most of my knowledge has come from investigating this collection. I felt like I made a good deal. She felt like she made a good deal. All settled up it was about $1500. She paid for a semester of college for her kid with the money. Everybody's happy.

I take the collection home to my old man, who is a very experienced and pretty astute collector. He and I spend three days (about 20 hours total) going through the box and all the binders. He graded the coins according to the ANACS grade book. We had a ball. Quality father/son time. One thing about collecting coins is that you must have an iron butt, because mine hurt from sitting down so long grading all those coins.

To make a long story short, I total out the notable coins in the box at a red book value of $6300. I take out the cull and put it in the junk silver tubes. The clad and face value coins I take to the bank and my buddies wife is made happier later on when I returned $350 to her from the bank run.

So far, so good. Now, I think it might be worth investing some time to explore how I might go about selling the numismatic coins. So, I start shopping it around over two states. This is where I really start to learn about the numismatics business.

It is my firm opinion that collectively speaking, numismatic dealers represent some of the worst, most unethical, and sleaziest specimens of humanity one will ever encounter. I have learned their play book. The first page of the play book states very clearly that the way to low ball someone on their coin collection is to start talking BS. When a coin dealer starts talking, it's a sure sign he thinks you are a sucker who will give away your collection to him for a few percent of the retail cost. I have walked away from eight dealers to date. Eight. One offered me less value than the melt. One told me that I didn't deserve grey sheet prices because I wasn't a coin dealer myself.

Today, I went to coin show. I sat down with someone who was recommended to me by the auction company present when I approached them about putting the collection in the auction as a lot. They said this company had a great reputation and would make me a fair offer. I thought, great, I'm finally going to get a deal that isn't a complete insult. So I go over and wait a little while on the guys to show up because I got there early. A guy, who turns out to be the son of the owner show up and sits down and we start chatting. He starts looking through the bag and I offer him my inventory. I tell him that I have been to a number of dealers and my experiences with them and that I'm looking for a fair offer for the collection. If he could make me one, I'd be happy to sell it to him. He starts with the pennies, looking through them, checking the grade, checking his charts, writing on the list his offer. Two hours he's working through the list.

He hasn't even gotten to the nickels when his old man shows up. His old man, who has glasses that are broken and admits to not being able to see very well starts grabbing coins off the table and BSing about these are nothing special and he's got tons of them and he buys all these key indian head pennies for a nickel a piece and expects me to believe that all the rare dates just rain from the sky on his shop all the time. I tell him that yes, there's a lot of not so special pennies in there, but he hasn't even gotten to the good stuff. I tell him check out the 20 cent pieces. He looks directly at the 1875 CC (that's the rare 20 cent piece) and says he's got lots of those in better shape and it's nothing special. He looks at a mint condition Susan B. Anthony wide rim near date and says "That's face value." This guy is just a total edited. His kid was great. He's a jackass. Then he says, "I don't want my son spending any more time on this unless you are going to sell this to us."

I said, "That's a nice trick. How about I will sell you this collection if I like your offer?"

He looks at the list and says "Let me see that Indian Head you were going to offer $50 for." He picks up the coin and says "no, that's a $1.15."

I say, "I can tell your not interested." I pack up the bag, ask the kid for a card because I had mentioned if this deal went well, I might pick up another collection in the future and I might send it his way and I wanted to be polite. I later threw the invoice he gave me with the company name and contact information in the trash.

And in the hopefully very far away future when I inherit my father's collection that he has accumulated over many, many years, I know an auction company that WILL NOT have the opportunity to sell it.

Jerks.

It is my opinion that investing in "numismatics" as any kind of a store of value is a losers game. You will never realize the value of your coins dealing with anyone who is a "dealer." Sure, it's a great hobby. It isn't any kind of investment vehicle. You are virtually guaranteed to NEVER recover anything near the value you put in because of coin dealer's syndrome.

Coin dealer's syndrome simply put is a phenomenon whereby coin retailers will tell you that it is impossible for them to get retail value for coins and therefore don't have to pay you anything for yours.

End of rant. Hope you enjoyed it. Free advice is welcome.

 

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Oh really? What about John Ford, his collection went for over 60,000,000.

That's a lot of zeros.

It's said by one of the most well known coin authors that if you want to break even on your coins you have to wait as least five years, never mind if you want to make a profit.

For coin dealers being dishonest I agree that there are many bad eggs out there, but I know many of them to be amazing people.

Knowledge is power, I've been collecting for four years and I've barely scratched the surfaced. I doubt that I'll make a profit on any of the coins I bought in the first six months of collecting, and I got them from a great dealer, but on many recent pieces I will.

I wish you luck on selling your coins.

 

Im confused, his offer for your collection was 1.15

 

No, that was just for a certain IHC.

 

You'd be better off selling the collection piecemeal. By not doing so you'll be banging your head for a long time into the future. Slow and easy......all ahead 1/3.

 

Since you seem to have a value in your head that you feel the collection is worth why not try selling them to collectors on your own? Thats really what I do when I have some coins to sell. I mean its the only way you're gonna make money and don't get take this the wrong way but most dealers have bills and expenses to cover. Not to mention they have to put in the actual work of seeking out buyers, like I said collectors aren't really that hard to find and would give you offers closer to what you're looking for. There are good coin dealers out there just dont expect your gonna get anything more than half retail often times less its the nature of the beast......

 

Barfly meet Nightfly......

 

Most of us realize numismatics is for learning and having fun . If you buy at retail you'll more than likely never make your money back , especially factoring in inflation .

 

I'm sorry to hear about your experience. As coinguy and a few others have noted, sell the coins to collectors. By selling on the internet, you will need to invest a little time writing out an honest description and take good pictures, but by doing so you will have the best opportunity to realize fair market prices. I'm sure there are more than a few folks on CT that would offer you good deal.(I've bought and sold on here and have been very happy.)
If not on here, Ebay is an easy outlet. Auctions always attract a lot of interest. If you're worried about achieving a specific price, make it a fixed price auction. (It's free to list on ebay.) You can do some investigating and see what they are selling for and price your coins accordingly. If you're patient and know what fair market value is, the coins will sell. By doing this, you can cut out the frustration of dealing with the people that need to get your coins at major discounts.

 

So am I right in saying you paid $1500 for coins that are retailing for $6300? Plus you got to spend tons of quality time with your Dad? If this is all true then... well.... yeah. Stop and smell the roses or something.

 

I'm sure if you posted the coins on ct you may be able to sell them if their quality and your prices are fair I've sold coins here in the classifieds and bought quite a few too it's hard to get top retail unless you have something rare but if you price them to sell (greysheet buy price) they should sell you even mentioned something that made my ears perk up

 

And what a beautiful world it would be if not for.....

 

This is the part that got me. The coin stores I visit sell at greysheet bid. In my eyes a fair offer would be 10/15% back of bid. The red book prices are higher then real world values in my opinion. Also keep in mind that a decent amount of dealers inventory sits there for years before it is actually sold.

 

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hypocrisy

 

Duplicate.

 

Oh, don't get me wrong. It's been a win/win for everybody involved. If nothing else, I'll buy some nice new coin books and put the collection in a bunch of binders and have a great conversation piece and a teaching tool for all my nieces and nephews. It's just frustrating dealing with people who think they can take advantage of you.

 

Sure man. Guarantee you I have returned more value to her for that collection than she would have ever realized from any dealer I've been to. And if I ever can get a decent value for the numismatics, I'll split it with her. Call me names if you want, but my friends come out better for knowing me, not the other way around. Probably why I'd never do very well as coin dealer.

 

That guy deserve a roundhouse right in the kisser.

 

Thanks. I don't know this John Ford guy, but I've got to admit that's impressive. I'd like to know what he put into it, though. And for practical purposes, I'll likely never achieve a level of expertise necessary to pull that off.

 

I'm an dealer, primarily online. I pay 68% of the value of a collection based on eBay's completed auction results. I lose about 12% to eBay, PayPal, shipping supplies and shipping costs right off the top. So I'm making about 20% for my time and efforts. I'm still in my first 1.5 years of doing this, so the numbers might change in the future. And yes, almost everyone I do appraisals/offers for wants and expects me to pay them full value for what they have... which is why I only actually make a deal on 1 of every 3 appraisals.