Buying at shows vs. the internet

Not necessarily. Some states don't charge sales tax on coins or bullion. Some charge tax just on coins but not bullion. Some dealers might include sales tax as part of the marked price.

 

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Last time there was a show nearby me was around 4 years ago,been mostly an ebay buyer and occasionally visit the shops.

 

I do like that eBay has their envelope option that has tracking so delivery can be verified. A one ounce envelope is 53 cents, next ounce is 73 cents total. I can ship small amounts of junk silver in those and that keeps shipping reasonable or even free. Otherwise paying $4 or so to ship a $20 item is usually a losing proposition.

But buying and selling in person is always my favorite way to go.

 

Coin shows are nice and I’ll certainly buy there. But I also buy from my LCS when I can get there. However most of my buying is from a few online coin dealers. Hardly ever had a problem, always treated nice and any problems are taken care of to my satisfaction. One dealer, I can call and without giving my name they know my voice. Excellent customer service and good prices.

 

It's called caller ID
Welcome back Mr, Jones How may I help you spend today.

 

I do both. There is a decent show about 50 miles from me that I go to nearly every month. I also like ordering a coin off the internet once in a while. I love waiting for the mailman to deliver the coin.

 

I would prefer to buy in person at shows, but as others have said, the local shows in my area tend to have very limited selection and I rarely find anything that made it worth my time to go.

When I did attend local shows regularly, I probably left empty-handed more than 80% of the time. Plus, the nearest show takes about 40 minutes for me to get to. Given all of that, I decided to stop attending, unfortunately.

When I buy on the internet, I seem to buy from a lot of smaller shops as well, though not ones local to me. Seeing the coin in hand is a huge advantage, but shopping online gives you the time to research prices and do more shopping around. At in person shows, I usually feel a little bit of pressure to buy faster because dealers have people surrounding them and sometimes other people are waiting in line behind me, etc. I've made some bad purchases in such situations. I've also learned the hard way that the lighting at a show differs greatly from the lighting at home, so I also need to bring a loupe to detect things that I've missed in the past.

So in-person and Internet purchases both have pluses and minuses. One chooses between tradeoffs. In my experience, I've regretted more purchases made at in-person shows than those made over the Internet. The atmosphere at a show doesn't work as well for me, apparently. I have more than a few coins that I picked up at shows that, once I brought them home, I wondered what I was thinking. The shows that I attended don't have easy return policies, if any, either, so I'm stuck with my bad decisions. More than 90% of the time Internet vendors have return policies, so this also works better for me. Yet I still do enjoy the excitement of a live show.

 

They don’t have caller ID and we’re on a first name basis.

 

very very few dealers include it as part of the price but yea that’s possible. But if you look at the comment I was responding too it is a state with tax and the comment was there’s no sales tax with cash. 99.99 percent of the time if they’re only charging tax on credit cards some tax fraud is going on

 

Basically every phone in at least the last 20 years has caller ID and every cordless phone has it. You’d have to have only a corded wall phone basically not to

 

True but there are cases where a business doesn’t. Cordless desktop phones don’t either.

 

Ive honestly never seen a cordless phone ever that doesn’t have it.

 

Going in person is always the best, there is nothing like being there, and yes will
cost more but your paying for the experience.

 

It was a joke hence the smiley face
I'm terrible with names, takes me a long time to get a name to face to memory.

 

You’ve never worked in the government offices that I have. Some of their phones were rotary dial, not push button.

 

Sorry but I didn’t catch that. Shame on me.

I wondered why you were picking on me. Lol

 

Ooh, fancy, bet you didn't even need to turn a crank to ring the operator.

 

Rotary has nothing to do with cordless phones. Cordless phones have caller ID

 

In PA there's no sales tax on coins, but there is on paper money and collecting supplies. Why? Who knows. Who can fathom the ways of our great leaders?

 

No, they managed to upgrade from that.