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<p>[QUOTE="red_spork, post: 7807172, member: 74282"]Not everyone has time for the auction consignment process. It can take 6 months or more from the day you decide to consign your coins to the day you get paid and there's also always some amount of risk. The coin market goes up and down like anything else, locking in a specific price one day could turn out better than putting everything up at auction in some cases for instance, and it's certainly not unheard of for dealers to lose money in that regard. Plus, not all dealers buy collections to put up at auction, many of them buy collections to sell retail or they'll just take coins on a consignment where you pay a pre-arranged fee and consignment can for some coins get a collector more than they'd get at auction even after fees. Some dealers I've spoken with offer lower fees for selling than auction houses too, which can be especially good if you have a lower value consignment since auction houses aren't usually willing to negotiate fees for those.</p><p><br /></p><p>You could sell the coins yourself but you'll need, at a minimum:</p><ul> <li>Photography, self explanatory. Better photos mean more money. Most eBayers suck at photography. I'm not good at it myself, but my coins usually sell with my photos</li> <li>Ability and willingness to ship quickly and efficiently, even for lower value shipments. Are you willing to run to the post office every other day to ship out the latest coin you made $3 on? You can wait until you've got a few to sell but buyers have limited patience</li> <li>Ability and willingness to deal with fraudulent buyers, returns, buyers who freak out because the shipping takes 2 days longer than USPS estimated, etc.</li> <li>Accurate descriptions of the coins. Again, better descriptions can equal more money - a lot of people leave money on the table here by not accurately identifying and describing all the coins they sell(and I love those sellers)</li> </ul><p><br /></p><p>I'd also point out that dealers buying group lots at auctions and breaking them up provide a pretty valuable service in my book. A couple years ago a large Roman Republic collection was sold at auction as a single lot for several thousand dollars. Most of the coins were junk, honestly, and that's why the collection was sold as one big unphotographed group, but perhaps 10% of the coins were worthwhile and there were a few real gems in there. A few collectors who saw it in-person bid pretty aggressively, but they were all bidding basically what the worthwhile 10% of the coins were worth and ultimately got beat out by a dealer who was willing to buy them all and try to sell the whole thing retail. I managed to later buy one of the most desirable coins in the collection, along with a couple really nice bronzes, for a few hundred dollars straight from the dealer and several other collectors managed to pick from those coins as well at decent prices. That dealer is still trying to sell the dregs of that collection and has had the work of photographing and cataloging every single coin.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>
[QUOTE="red_spork, post: 7807172, member: 74282"]Not everyone has time for the auction consignment process. It can take 6 months or more from the day you decide to consign your coins to the day you get paid and there's also always some amount of risk. The coin market goes up and down like anything else, locking in a specific price one day could turn out better than putting everything up at auction in some cases for instance, and it's certainly not unheard of for dealers to lose money in that regard. Plus, not all dealers buy collections to put up at auction, many of them buy collections to sell retail or they'll just take coins on a consignment where you pay a pre-arranged fee and consignment can for some coins get a collector more than they'd get at auction even after fees. Some dealers I've spoken with offer lower fees for selling than auction houses too, which can be especially good if you have a lower value consignment since auction houses aren't usually willing to negotiate fees for those. You could sell the coins yourself but you'll need, at a minimum: [LIST] [*]Photography, self explanatory. Better photos mean more money. Most eBayers suck at photography. I'm not good at it myself, but my coins usually sell with my photos [*]Ability and willingness to ship quickly and efficiently, even for lower value shipments. Are you willing to run to the post office every other day to ship out the latest coin you made $3 on? You can wait until you've got a few to sell but buyers have limited patience [*]Ability and willingness to deal with fraudulent buyers, returns, buyers who freak out because the shipping takes 2 days longer than USPS estimated, etc. [*]Accurate descriptions of the coins. Again, better descriptions can equal more money - a lot of people leave money on the table here by not accurately identifying and describing all the coins they sell(and I love those sellers) [/LIST] I'd also point out that dealers buying group lots at auctions and breaking them up provide a pretty valuable service in my book. A couple years ago a large Roman Republic collection was sold at auction as a single lot for several thousand dollars. Most of the coins were junk, honestly, and that's why the collection was sold as one big unphotographed group, but perhaps 10% of the coins were worthwhile and there were a few real gems in there. A few collectors who saw it in-person bid pretty aggressively, but they were all bidding basically what the worthwhile 10% of the coins were worth and ultimately got beat out by a dealer who was willing to buy them all and try to sell the whole thing retail. I managed to later buy one of the most desirable coins in the collection, along with a couple really nice bronzes, for a few hundred dollars straight from the dealer and several other collectors managed to pick from those coins as well at decent prices. That dealer is still trying to sell the dregs of that collection and has had the work of photographing and cataloging every single coin.[/QUOTE]
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