Coin collecting is dying?

Just wanted to share a convo i had yesterday with a seller. While this one instance doesnt prove anything it does prove theres at least one seller who is not desperate to sell.
Hes got an attractive AU-55 listed for MS-63 money. I really wanted it so I politely made him aware of a few things and asked if there was any negotiating room, (as in alot...)

Was told that "mid grade examples are really tough to find anymore" and "the price guides are way behind the times. " So were saying NGCs price guide was a good $400 low! Isnt the buying and selling game fun?

Meanwhile theres a PCGS slabbed example above his auction in the list thats far nicer for $7 more.
Just thought id share. Best of luck to him but i think Ill keep the 63 in my watch list.
It just amazes me that so many people claim coin collecting is dying and prices are falling yet every time I go to buy something it takes an act of Congress if its possible at all.

 

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What coin is it? He's right that sometimes demand blows away retail price guides. Go look at the 1850 half cent for example...

 

It is hard to respond to this without knowing what the coin in question is. Some coins are “too cheap” relative to their rarity, and you can’t find them for the prices in the price guides, if you can find them at all. Some are “a drug on the market” and have come way down in price.

One thing I will say is that things can be quite different when a seller is selling and he’s buying coins for inventory. Some of them will have a story about how something is undervalued when they are selling it and how “the market is dead” when they are buying it. It’s part of the game.

As for the market, it’s been down for a while, but there are multiple forces at work. A few days ago I was looking at an 1873, Open 3, Type II $20 gold, in PCGS MS-63, that I have in my collection. I bought this coin a few years ago at auction from a large auction house. I looked at the Graysheet and was shocked to see that it’s down to less than half what I paid for it. Then I starting looking on Heritage site to see what the coin had brought recently.

Yes, the prices realized were lower, but the coins for the MS-63 grade were also lower quality. Grade-flation raises its ugly head again! Now, to get my money out of my coin, I’d have to send it in for a regrade. If it comes back MS-64, I’ve won re-grade lottery. If not, I’m out a few thousand dollars. This is part of the grading game, and it’s hurting the hobby.

Yes, it seems that a lot of hobbies are now populated with “old white guys” who are going to be leaving the scene before too long. It makes me wonder who our replacements will be.

Creating “one way markets” where dealers charge high prices, but won’t pay commensurate when they are buying is hurting the hobby. Dealers need to make a living to stay in business, but it needs to be a two way street. Perhaps one of the reasons why there is so little good material at the shows is because the dealers are not paying what they used to for good material. More and more I see most of the good coins going to the big auctions.

Here my 1873 double eagle. The Type II Liberty Head double ("In God We Trust," value spelled out as "Twenty D.") is a tough coin in strict Mint State. The cellectors could not afford to set them aside back in the day, and there have been no massive recoveries of these coins from ship wrecks as there has been for the Type I double eagle.

 

Does this work the other way if youre looking to sell back to the dealer? lol That grey sheet is the end all be all. Doesnt matter what you have.

 

@johnmilton

What worries me the most is that some day in the future, all of today's dealers could be replaced by the "professionals" from BoobTube.

Chris

 

Like I ran into at a coin show, he may be overpriced in an effort to recover what he paid for the coin. Meaning the dealer bought the coin and the price has dropped and he wants his money back.

 

I'm not sure the hobby is dying, but I can't see a good prognosis for the "buy super-low, sell super-high" dealer in the face of online auctions.

Raising your margin to make up for decreasing volume doesn't work very well for any business that faces competition.

 

I guess my point was I could offer $600 for a coin listed in the price guide at 450 and this guys going to turn it down. He may hold that coin for years. If I pay what he's asking and then for some reason wanted to sell it for a different one, I'd be lucky to get 300 for it. This is what turns collectors off. That's too much spread.

 

If the market has dropped, the smart thing to do is sell it, take your lumps and put the money into "live inventory" instead of "dead stock." If you don't want to take the loss, and think that it will come back, put it away for a while. Quoting a potential customer over the market prices can really hurt you in the long run. Some potential customers never come back.

 

Sounds like a "pass" situation to me. If this is a U.S. coin priced at $600, it's not very rare at all. There should be more of them out there.

 

I need 2 coins to complete a collection that I've been working on for years. I saw both of these in the grade and condition I want. Both were graded by the company I want. They would have filled my collection perfectly. The going price was $600 a piece. The dealer wanted $800. What did I do? As bad as I wanted them, with the driving need to complete my collection, I did what was sensible, I walked away.

 

I agree whole heartedly. I have an antique business. Nothing more than a hobby out of control. I buy for myself and sell the rest they comes with it when I buy in lots. Done dealers keep things for 15 plus years trying to get the price they want fir the item. Not me. If it hasn't sold in a few years, reduce it and get it out of there. I want something in that space that's going to make me money.

 

The online market is almost wholesale, and prices for common stuff has dropped precipitously as it is now seen as far more common than before. This includes low/middle-grade type coins, low-grade key dates, and BU post-1940 coins. A lot of dealers, as well as the greysheet, have failed to catch up, so they have a bunch of dead, overpriced inventory that sits and gets lugged around to shows.

 

Coins have the same market volatility as any other collectible. Those containing precious metal are somewhat shielded from boom and bust, but who wants to sell their rare coin for spot? No one knows the future, though many claim to or act and speak like they do, and the market could collapse for many reasons. It could also continue unabated for many reasons. The risk of loss remains for coins, just as it does for anything from stocks to collector's plates. You may win, you may lose. That's the nature of any purchase. Anyone who tells you differently probably has ulterior motives, i.e., they want to buy something from you or sell something to you.

 

One used to be able to follow seated material offered by the main auction houses and see it sell for well above even what the more optimistic guides list. Then a week or so later one could often find some of the same coins listed on JJ Teaparty for sometimes double or more the auction price including BP. Does this mean such material was overpriced and buyers were being duped, or is it an example of why it’s so important to understand the true market for our interests instead of relying on some paid guide to do it for us?

Take as you will.

 

Your example has very little to do with coin collecting, and everything to do with the coin market. These are not the same things. There are many times more collectors than dealers, and they would go on collecting even if there were no dealers.

 

Now that is just bloody scary Chris, but you may be on to something.

The hobby isn't dying, it's thriving, as evidenced by all of the Noir professors on that venue........

 

The only true price can be found in an auction. Real price discovery. That is the problem with the current stock market - artificial price fixes with free money.

 

If that happens, we'll all be collecting Lincoln errors. Everything else will fade into obscurity.

 

And when that happens Congress will pass a bill to stop production of the Cent.