An opinion and some free advice

A quick glance tells me that the prices assigned to some of these coins, in these grades, are far too high and are not realistic.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

The '32 D Washingtons in good have been going for 60- 70 dollars recently. And those are in PCGS slabs. Raw you're looking at even less. So your $129.00 value is at least double what they actually sell for.

 

Agreed, but it is still better than a price guide, IMO.

 

If you want the most money, your best bet is to auction them on E-Bay and pay the 13% fees charged by E-Bay and Paypal. However, you will probably find out that your time is more valuable than achieving the most money you can for this large collection of low grade coins. And you will almost certainly understand why the dealers don't really want to buy your coins. I also agree with the opinion that your prices are very optimistic.

 

I could address the Eisenhower Dollars if you'll post pictures of the Type 2's. I do not know what you're referring to regarding "Raised Letter" though as I have never heard that used in reference to a 1972 Type 2.

As for the MS60 1974 IKE, don't bother with a picture as that coin, in that grade, IF its accurate, would sell for $1.25 and is better off just being spent (given overhead costs and what not). A Coin Dealer would give it out in change and only pay $1.00 for it.

 

Yes. When I priced this out, I looked up the red book value and used an auction website dedicated to coins. I used the higher of the two. I wanted to use that as a price basis because I figured I wanted to negotiate from a perspective of being able to find the best price on the best day. Yes, they are very optimistic but, I know I'm not off by a factor of ten.

Actually, I had a conversation with a mentor of mine who has helped me out with past enterprises. I described my interaction at the coin show to him. He gave me a fail and gave the old man a fail. Neither one of us mentioned a number. When I was given the ultimatum, the next words out of my mouth should have been $6300. At least then, we would have been into negotiating a price. Since we never got there, both of us failed. He also told me that an acquaintance of his retired from being a coin dealer and that 6%-%10 of book value was a common offer.

Unfortunately, I think it's going to be another 10,000 headaches if I want to achieve any sort of realistic dollar value out of this collection. It might just be easier to buy some binders and put it on a shelf, which is far more appealing than getting raked over by a bunch of (insert non-approved derogatory label here), like my buddy from the coin show.

edited

 

If that is the entire list and your grades are accurate and the coins are problem-free then there is significantly less than $6,300 value in the total collection. I don't know what "book" value means, although I have been full-time dealer for many years, and I am also not familiar with folks who pay only 10% of the value of a collection.

In my opinion, it appears you want full retail on everything and the only way to do that, even if you are a dealer, is to work like heck and sell each piece individually to the right collector. That is not an easy task and it is not a short-term task, either, which is why dealers offer a bit less than full retail when they buy a collection of "stuff", which is exactly what this listing appears to represent.

 

Unfortunately on most of the extremely common stuff you have listed you would be better throwing the price guide out the window. This most of this stuff simply doesn't sell for anywhere near what the Red Book lists, and if I as a collector wanted to I'm sure I could purchase the similar items from a dealer for a fraction of book value.

 

Save yourself the headache and put them in binders and keep them. Then after awhile, take two or three coins in different price ranges, and concentrate on selling just them. That experience alone, will give you a basis to sell the others with realistic expectation. The coins themselves will attract true market value. With this many coins you need to average your sales opposed to what each one may sell for. You will be much happier for it.

 

They are NOT FOR SALE. First, people say I must have graded them wrong. Second, people say I must have priced them wrong. Thus, the only way to explore those issues would be to list the coins for what I priced them out at and post pictures of them. That way, collectively, those that are interested in doing so could point out how wrong I am about my grading and pricing and the reasons why.

But, since that is apparently against the rules around here, this truly is a pointless exercise.

The only thing that I can conclude is that your forum and those like it are not a useful tool in either evaluation or price discovery. This would leave no clearly objective third party tools at the disposal of anyone looking to make an evaluation of a particular coin or collection. It is little wonder numismatics is dying as a business.

This business is a con-artists' wet dream.

This explains why there are so many topics around here about people being taken for ride. Heck, apparently even this John Ford character was a known prolific fraud. This kind of censorship only facilitates a poor reputation. Run your forum any way you want, but know you are contributing to your own problems, not helping them. You have only reinforced the point of my original posting.

 

you could always post photos of some of the coins in the what's it worth forum. people would give a grade and value opinion that you could then compare to your previous assessments instead of people just telling you how far off you are.... there are rules in place for a reason and if you learn how to work within the rules instead of insulting people you might just learn something

 

I have followed this thread as it went along, and NO I did not go back and read every post to verify the impression I have, so forgive me if you can show where I don't recall a detail.

The impression I recall is that he was relating to us his attempt to sell (to others in the past) and how that went, NOT that he was putting them for sale here. The list was a necessary tool to discuss the values, nothing more.

I agree that it would be nice to see some in the grading and values section(s), and perhaps later in the for sale area.

 

Still waiting for photo's of those "Type 2's"

 

That is the thing. You can't sell for max profit to an established dealer. He has to make a profit and that means he can only pay retail minus his costs (includes rent on the shop and the kid's college fund) and minus a small profit. If you want max profit you have to be selling to collectors and they will compare your prices to those of the competition (i.e., other sellers of all kinds) and consider the convenience of not going to a show but just buying it on line and getting the coin in the mail in 2 to 9 days. Find the most expensive guy on Ebay with the same item, then drop your price by 10% of his. Set that number as your auction starting point. Remember Ebay will take about 12% and Uncle Sam will want the capital gains tax at years end.

 

Thank you, AWORD, I'm glad that my intent was clear to at least some people.

 

I may not be able to recognize fair, but I have a pretty good gut feel for when someone is trying to sucker me. And I haven't lost a dime. Losing would mean I would sell them to one of the ripoff artists that spew BS at me and think I'm going to magically believe their offer is "fair" afterward. I asked one guy for a mirror so I could check and see if I had "sucker" tattooed on my forehead.

I'm comfortable that I reached a fair price when I bought the collection for both my buddy's wife and myself. I bought the silver for melt, gave her a premium for any numismatic value, and gave her back the face value of all the clad I took to the bank. I'm quite sure at this point she would not have realized any greater dollar value for it given the "fair" offers I've heard so far (like the $1.15 for that Indian Head).

I didn't necessarily buy the collection because I was purely driven by the idea of making a profit, although, I thought, that might be a possibility at some point. And it still might, I haven't really reached a conclusion about that yet. I just know I'm done messing with that for the time being. I got to learn about the coin business and that was certainly something I wanted to do given my father is a collector. I got to spend time with my old man and let him teach me what he's learned over the years. Making the deal helped my buddy out paying for his daughter's college. So have I lost anything?

And I wanted to say I know I probably seem like a pain, but I appreciate your patience with me. I just call things like I see them. It seems we're probably on the same page about the business side of numismatics in general. There's a challenge getting to the other side of that 99% line. I'll read the rules carefully and if I have the time I might post some pictures in the right forums. It still might provide some interesting reading at some point.

 

Ahhhh Barfly, you have hit upon some truths, but these truths are not necessarily universal. I remember our moderator doug once posting about a friend of his who was offered LESS than face value for a collection, from more than one dealer in a certain locality, I believe he said it was salt lake city, but maybe it was somewhere else.

When I first started collecting I mentioned my newbieness to a dealer at a show, he proceeded to usher me to his collection of problem details slabbed coins that were going at more than greysheet.

One local Brick and mortar place gave me the "these coins do not sell, I have too much inventory of them" when I showed him some coins, (that I was not thinking of selling, just showing) When I then asked to see some of his , since I might be buying, all of a sudden those coins were popular coins that command a premium.



Yes there is a bit of cronyism in the hobby, and good to see your BS detector was working, so you did not take the dealer at his word, but red book prices? really?

 

My inclination of what is going on here is there's lots of different price levels here.

In order from lowest to highest:
Ripoff prices, which the OP was offered and most would scoff at.
Fair prices, which the OP was probably offered and scoffed at.
The price the OP expects to get and would accept although he wouldn't be thrilled at.
The price the OP would like to get, or probably thought he would get before he started this escapade.
Book prices.

I think the major problem here is the book prices. New coin person opens book, sees $X, figures ok I can sell for $X minus 10-15%. Sweet I've got like $X on my hands! In reality, they don't realize that coins are often really worth around 40-70% of book prices. And that dealers aren't going to offer 90% of whatever that price is. And that doesn't even account for the general overgrading by new collectors.

Very very similar to sports cards back in the day. You'd buy a card from a dealer at $2.50, Beckett said it was worth $2.50. Take it to another dealer to sell, and you'd get offered $.50 if that. That's the nature of a collectibles business where the items being sold don't have any intrinsic value. The price is based merely on demand and since dealers can't create or count on it, they can't afford to give 80% of "book."