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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Valentinian, post: 1950677, member: 44316&quot;]A dealer can ask any price he feels like. Whether it will be sold at anywhere near that price is another matter. </p><p>&nbsp;&nbsp; Any experienced collector will have stories. For example, at one show I saw a dealer I know walking the floor and I asked if he had any portrait coins of Julius Caesar. He said, &quot;I just sold sold one to X for $2000.&quot;&nbsp; So I went to X&#039;s table and asked if he had a portrait piece of Julius Caesar. He showed me that coin and asked $4000. </p><p>&nbsp;&nbsp; For another observation, possibly relevant, the background is that I occasionally sell used books on Amazon (Amazon&#039;s system is really easy to use). Sometimes a book is available in only one copy for some high price (over $100). It might be because it is in high demand and sells quickly at high prices. But far more often it is just some lousy book that didn&#039;t ever sell many copies and few are for sale, so the first person who lists one on Amazon thinks &quot;Rare book!&nbsp; Valuable!&quot; and lists it for some high price. Then, seller number 2 comes along and lists it for 1 cent less. Later there will be more copies for sale, all priced only slightly less than the ill-informed first price. None ever sell. But, how would you know?&nbsp; I would love to see Amazon have one more bit of information: &quot;The last one sold in xx condition for yy dollars on date zz.&quot;</p><p>&nbsp; Now, that last paragraph was about books. But I&#039;m sure there is a parallel with coins. If vcoins has no examples of a coin that a dealer is about to list, his list price could be anything, including too high to ever sell. (Also, some dealers new listings include common coins at prices much higher than other examples already on the site, a practice I still don&#039;t understand.)&nbsp; </p><p>&nbsp; I liked it when vcoins used to allow the potential buyers to see the date the coin was listed. (Now you can arrange search results by listing date, but not see the actual date.) A coin listed long ago has not sold, so one might expect, ask for, and get a discount. </p><p>&nbsp; The problem is scarcity. If they have it and you want it, you just might pay the price.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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