Debating on selling my stack

How much you paid for it is completely irrelevant to what it's worth today, and to what it will be worth at any point in the future. (One caveat: your cost basis determines whether you incur a capital gain or a capital loss, and you do need to report gains, and pay tax on them.)

If you need the money today, or if you think it'll be worth less when you do need to sell, sell today. If you don't need the money, and think it might be worth more later, hold.

 

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Good point, I've only done "buy it now" maybe 4 or 5 times in the collectibles category and it worked out well, it could be risky to list coins auction style there unless you start it at a price you like.

 

I walked into a Palm Desert dealer yesterday and asked what their buy price was for 40% Kennedy halves. The lady behind the desk said $1.50 each. Melt was $2.53 at the time. I told her to have a nice day and then went to Arby's.

 

They got the MEATS !!

 

It's hard to find buyers for 40% these days. At our local show and at this price, I'd expect to find maybe one guy offering $2, and others offering less.

For 40%, your best bet is almost certainly eBay or Craigslist. There are still lots of people out there who either don't realize 40% trades at a heavy discount, or don't care.

 

Do it.

If I was you, I wouldn't waste additional time trying to squeeze out another $150-$200 from this.

This is simply part of the system.

Collectors need dealers for liquidity and supply. Dealers need collectors for inventory. But collectors need dealers more for the hobby to function well.

Therefore, collectors must understand dealers need a healthy gap between buy and sell on their end for them to function correctly to do their crucial part in the system.

I realize this and accept it as a 'law of nature' in this hobby.

 

I understand. Much appreciated.

 

My thought exactly. Some shows have tables for $40.

 

If I were you and not in a hurry:

1) I would get a table at a coin show. You'll get the most money.
2) Sell everything individually. The ASEs you could put in 4 tubes and sell that way getting premium.
3) Ebay is great but the 10% seller fee blows.

I would avoid Craigslist like the plague, unless you're selling like a dining room table or something.

 

I completely agree that this appears to be the current reality, but this is one reason that my interest in this hobby has waned drastically. We're supposed to "understand" that dealers need to make a living and accept that we have to buy high and sell low for the hobby to continue. If we applied this kind of thinking to other kinds of buying, we'd all have gone broke (though we probably fall into this situation often without realizing it).

The hobby has presented the buyer/collector nothing more than a lose-lose proposition, but we're just supposed to accept it. I'm getting tired of accepting the fact that I need to put up with getting ripped off to continue pursuing this hobby.

I'm very close to pulling the plug. I've already reduced my purchases by more than half from last year and I can no longer imagine spending more than $100 on a single coin anymore. I utterly hate buying a coin that I enjoy only to find out that I overpaid for it and to get rid of it I have to "accept" a loss. Though the losses are, of course, much less than many other hobbies, they are still losses. Then to be told that I should understand the situation really doesn't help. It makes me wonder why I ever started in this hobby.

 

When was the last time you sold a shirt back to Walmart or sold a two year old car to a car dealer? How would those sales go?

Perhaps the system could function with nonprofit dealers, but then that just becomes a trading system and may not provide the depth of supply for the collectors. I'm not sure how that benefits the hobby.

 

What sort of markup do you suppose a grocery store imposes on the stuff they sell? A jeweler? An appliance store?

 

You're talking about something that has zero relevance to what this thread is about. You are talking about coin collecting. The OP is talking about bullion.

 

And the meats were delicious.

 

The OP is talking about selling bullion to a coin shop. I'm not having any trouble at all seeing the relevance here...?

 

You can list it here and go through the PMs to see if someone you feel is safe is replying as this is not ebay , you can choose a buyer you have good trust feelings rather than the first one. Jim

 

He referred to it as a hobby at least three times. He also compared it to other buying and said if we accepted the proposition that dealers have to make money in other areas, we'd all go broke.

But what he's talking about are transactional costs related to buying and selling bullion which is typical for any form of investment buying and selling. Buy a house, someone has to pay the realtor's commission. Sell a house, you have to pay the realtor's commission. Buy a stock, you have to pay a fee (although less so nowadays, which is awesome). Buy bullion, a middleman has to hold all that heavy gold and silver somewhere, so expect to pay a few percentage points over spot at his shop or website. Sell it back, expect to not make back that premium you paid when buying.

Those premiums on bullion are all perfectly acceptable to me because of the nature of the investment. Just like when buying stock or just like when buying/selling a home.

The OP says we'd all go broke if we had to do in other forms of buying. But that's a very unrelated comparison, because in most buying that we do, we never sell the item back. Groceries? Clothing? Cleaning supplies? Those things are called consumables because the transactions move in only one direction. Cars? Furniture? Those are depreciating assets that are used in some form and lose value from that use. So other buying is simply not related at all to bullion buying (or investing).

He's comparing investing (buying something hoping it will gain value) vs other forms of buying (to consume) or to collect (like numismatics). But there's just no similarity.

I suppose the one concession I would make is that if we want to treat bullion investing as bullion collecting, or a hobby, we can. We can buy/sell/trade among ourselves without dealers and never deal with fees or prices above spot. However, most people don't deal bullion to each other. Just as most people don't sell houses without realtors or trade stock without a broker. It's just not safe when we're talking about that kind of money.

 

I sold it all to the 3rd shop. $7,617 (check). The check option gave me the additional $17 over cash. Some of my quarters, dimes and a handful of WL halves were under weight. I received $13 per Peace mainly b/c they were beat up and tarnish (inheritance of loose change from my grandpa a few years ago). He was going to do $12 each but I got $13 per. I tried $14 hahaha. Anyway it ended up being 95%. I also had 2 1/10 Platinum Eagles but they only wanted spot for them. I did not sell them. Just wanted to see what it would add to the lot.

 

If I were to ever get back into silver stacking I probably will just to do 1oz Buffalo/Generic Rounds and 90% '64 Kennedy (b/c the vast majority are at wgt).