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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Barfly, post: 1826683, member: 57721&quot;]Hi everyone,</p><p><br /></p><p>This is a rant. If you don&#039;t like reading rants, I think you should stop now.</p><p><br /></p><p>I bought a coin collection from a friend&#039;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&#039;d be happy to look through it, but would most likely only be interested in buying it for the value of the&nbsp; 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&#039;s happy.</p><p><br /></p><p>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.</p><p><br /></p><p>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.</p><p><br /></p><p>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.</p><p><br /></p><p>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&#039;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&#039;t deserve grey sheet prices because I wasn&#039;t a coin dealer myself.</p><p><br /></p><p>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&#039;m finally going to get a deal that isn&#039;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&#039;m looking for a fair offer for the collection. If he could make me one, I&#039;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&#039;s working through the list.</p><p><br /></p><p>He hasn&#039;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&#039;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&#039;s a lot of not so special pennies in there, but he hasn&#039;t even gotten to the good stuff. I tell him check out the 20 cent pieces. He looks directly at the 1875 CC (that&#039;s the rare 20 cent piece) and says he&#039;s got lots of those in better shape and it&#039;s nothing special. He looks at a mint condition Susan B. Anthony wide rim near date and says &quot;That&#039;s face value.&quot; This guy is just a total <span style="color: #ff0000">edited</span>. His kid was great. He&#039;s a jackass. Then he says, &quot;I don&#039;t want my son spending any more time on this unless you are going to sell this to us.&quot;</p><p><br /></p><p>I said, &quot;That&#039;s a nice trick. How about I will sell you this collection if I like your offer?&quot;</p><p><br /></p><p>He looks at the list and says &quot;Let me see that Indian Head you were going to offer $50 for.&quot; He picks up the coin and says &quot;no, that&#039;s a $1.15.&quot;</p><p><br /></p><p>I say, &quot;I can tell your not interested.&quot; 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.</p><p><br /></p><p>And in the hopefully very far away future when I inherit my father&#039;s collection that he has accumulated over many, many years, I know an auction company that WILL NOT have the opportunity to sell it.</p><p><br /></p><p>Jerks.</p><p><br /></p><p>It is my opinion that investing in &quot;numismatics&quot; 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 &quot;dealer.&quot; Sure, it&#039;s a great hobby. It isn&#039;t any kind of investment vehicle. You are virtually guaranteed to NEVER recover anything near the value you put in because of coin dealer&#039;s syndrome.</p><p><br /></p><p>Coin dealer&#039;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&#039;t have to pay you anything for yours.</p><p><br /></p><p>End of rant. Hope you enjoyed it. Free advice is welcome.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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