For collectors who are also dealers, when/how do you decide a coin is a 'keeper' or to be flipped?

Can be both modern or ancient coins,
I follow some ancient coin pages on FB and come across various dealers showing off their recent acquisitions and after a few days I see them listed on ebay or Vcoins. But to me almost every coin that they post is a 'keeper' that I'd never think of selling if I have them. Maybe it's just a part of the business?!

 

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When I was a dealer, I flipped coins when I got upgrades.

I also flipped them when I lost interest in them. I had a variety set of half cents that had hit wall. I could not get any more varieties because they were rare and unavailable. I knew who owned the coins, and none of them would be selling for at least a decade. So I sold the set, in pieces, from my show booths.

I also fiddled with a couple date sets of Morgan Dollars. I lost interest and sold them too.

 

I think the best way to make money (dealer) and enjoy coins at the same time (collector/dealer) is to sell anything for a profit that can easily be replaced. Knowledge is power. Keep much of the "best" stuff untill another knowledgeable person makes an offer that you must think about.

 

This is the key to me. I am a part time dealer. If I can imagine not owning it, then it is probably going to be sold. I have way to much stuff right now that I can't bring myself to sell.

 

I have thought about this many times myself. I have about 20 or so coins I should sell, but I always convince myself to it next year.

 

I list for sale almost everything I buy, even my "keeper" coins. I just price those ones high enough that I get to hang onto them for a while, and if they do sell then I get to turn a nice profit.

 

Interesting approach.

 

Almost any time I sell is for the purpose of raising funds for something better. I've had a few regrets in the past, but am comforted in knowing someone else is getting enjoyment out of the coin. I simply line everything up and go one by one and decide if i could live without it. There are some I'll likely never sell because the possibility of upgrading is slim. I'm currently in a transition period going from raw to certified coins. I've certified many of the raw coins in my collection I wish to keep. The others are lower grade and if I find a better example I can send in for grading or an already slabbed one, I'll sell the lower one to offset the cost. My goal is to collect as many different German States as I can. I'm currently at 82.

 

The only flaw with that strategy is that you don’t want to get a reputation for being a dealer whose prices are too high. Generally when a dealer tries to “stick me” with a price that way out of line, I generally avoid them in the future.

 

I wouldn't have ever referred to myself as "a coin dealer," but maybe I would've once qualified as a low-end "vest-pocket dealer."

I make the mistake (double-mistake, as johnmilton notes) of putting my "collection" coins online with outrageous prices alongside my "inventory" coins.

Then one day some buyer from one of the little Persian Gulf kingdoms clicked "buy" on almost my entire inventory. So I pretty much had to sell a couple coins that I really didn't want to. I still miss one of them (my first or second coin, an Alexander Tetradrachm bought when I was 6-8 years old). And feel guilty for how much the buyer paid for it.

If you don't mind giving a coin up, though, when someone calls your bluff, you have to hope people don't think you generally inflate prices. Tom Cederlind I seem to recall was known for sometimes putting "i don't wanna sell it" prices on certain coins.

Also, it was a minor glimpse into the terrifying risks that full time dealers must cope with regularly: If that FedEx shipment had been stolen, or told PayPal it was empty (I shouldn't have accepted such a payment from an unknown buyer by PayPal at all), it far exceeded any insurance I was able to get, and I would've taken a hit of like a year's income.

 

This is an interesting topic as I consider myself to be strictly a collector as I have no desire to become a dealer. However, as a collector I often find myself with multiple copies of the same coin due to purchasing group lots or when I upgrade a coin. I therefore have a need to sale or trade these coins. I would consider “keeper” coins as being rare or difficult to replace. These don’t necessarily have to be valuable. For example, Alexander III drachms and tetradrachms are expensive but easily replaceable. While Bronze Roman Provincial coins are relatively cheap but very rare and difficult to replace. Therefore sell what you won’t miss and can easily replace.

 

Im almost exclusively a collector and I wouldn’t even remotely consider myself a dealer. I do however sell coins fairly often. Most coins I sell were part of my collection for several months or many years. Some coins I do buy having the intention to flip them.
I think with a lot of collectors their interests change over the years and they decide they don’t care to own certain coins anymore and would rather sell them to put that money into other areas of coin collecting that they now find interesting.
I think collectors taste can also be refined. I personally have been collecting Franklin halves for at least 12 years now. In those 12 years I’ve probably bought and sold 200 or so Franklins. A lot of those coins I bought early on I thought were “keepers” but as I refined my taste I realized a lot of them were just average, so over the years I’ve sold most of them.
Now I have my core registry set that is still missing 6 coins, I have about 5 graded franklins that aren’t part of my registry set and 20 raw franklins.
So over the years I’ve whittled down about 200 coins to approximately 50.
Even now I could probably get rid of 15 more and wouldn’t miss them.

 

Fair point, though I only ever have a few of them for sale - maybe 1-2% of my total inventory. And I'd say my prices even for those are still less than coin show "retail" prices, as I'm an online-only dealer.

 

I buy coins for the express purpose of selling them...they are not going into my collection...ever. Here's an example--



Nice coins; but they don't interest me, so I will sell them.


I collect mainly Tetrarchic through Constantinian (RIC VI- VIII); so I look for those as single coin buys or multiple coin lots. The group below interested me because of the Constantine from London.



Here's the coin--



I didn't have RIC VI London 103 corr. yet, so it goes in my collection. The other coins, though they are in my collecting range, don't particularly interest me, so they will be sold.