any thoughts on buying coins? what are recommendations on e bay, flea markets, dealers.. where would one expect to find the best prices with the "least" risk of getting taken for a ride?
local dealers, they rely on their local base to keep coming back and to do that they need to be fairly priced and have good merc. You can find deals at ebay and flea markets, but you can also get ripped off. Now this can happen at a local dealer albeit with a lot less frequency
If you want something they is a great chance you can find it on ebay. Saying that there a a few tings you need to look out for such as feedback rating, return policy, quality of pictures and trying to not get caught up in all the fancy words they use to make their coin seem like a 1913 V nickel. If you still have a bad feeling about a coin you want you can always post it on the site and the friendly people here can help you out
Hi John and Welcome to CoinTalk. If you're new to collecting coins, I'd avoid flea markets and ebay. Those places are where you have the greatest chance of getting ripped off in my opinion. Now, once you know what you're doing, to each his own. Everybody here will tell you to read up and educate yourself before buying, but once you're ready, I'd recommend a good local dealer or Teletrade or Heritage. Many others here will be able to recommend other good online dealers too. Like was said before, if you see a coin online that you're interested in, feel free to post it here and ask peoples' opinions. There's lots of knowledgeable folks here!
From well over 60 years of experience I would say in order Flea Markets, then garage/yard/estate sales, then coin shows, then hobby stores that carry coins, then coin stores and last is anything such as ebay. I've found my greatest finds at garage/yard/estate sales though but find a larger and more consistant amount of coins at flea markets. Please note I said estate sales, not estate auctions because there is a massive difference. The trick at garage/yard/estate sales is you have to ask about any coins. People just won't put coins out for the taking and I mean taking. If you ask enough eventually someone will say Oh yeah I do have this old jar full of coins. At one such place I asked and was shown a jar of cents. The bottom was loaded with Indian Cents. They said if I sat there and counted them I could have them for face value. I offered $50 instead and they took it. Face value ended up at about $35 but coin value in the thousands. At a flea market a guy sold me a black notebook full of those pages with 20 slots per page full of 2x2's. Ended up with 228 Buffalo Nickels all in at least F12, a few Jefferson Proofs and all for $80. The thing is in places like that you can see what you are buying and many people are not sure of what they have.
I think it depends on what you are interested in. Just saying coins covers a lot of ground. Are you buying to collect things you like or are you thinking they'll be an investment of some sort? Are you going to be buying slabbed coins only? Raw coins only? These can make a difference, especially when looking to buy online.
Agree. Searching flea markets and garage sales for certain coins might be pointless, while buying other types of coins would be pointless as well due to low grade, high shipping, etc.
Very good point. In my post, I was thinking mainly of the kinds of coins I like to buy. It does depend on what you're looking for. If you're just trying to fill an album by year and don't care much about buying high-end stuff, you'll likely find coins to purchase at very different places than if you were looking for high-end gold coins, authentic trade dollars, etc. There's nothing wrong with either route, but if you decide what you'd like to do, it will help narrow down your possibilities.
There really isn't an answer The answer is knowledge and education. You can get some of that by asking questions (like you're doing) and doing a lot of reading and surfing. But experience is the best teacher. As others have said, it depends on what you want to collect. If you want low cost experience, start with collecting a 1941-1975 set of lincoln cents. Nothing too pricey there and you'll get lots of experience with dealers, e-bay, shipping costs, grading, etc. Plus, I personally think lincolns are undervalued. Or if you want something more exotic, pick one of the silver-based sets like roosevelts (1946-64). You can get most, if not all of them at melt value -so you really won't lose much money - unless the price of silver drops Good luck!
