Message:

<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Valentinian, post: 7810767, member: 44316&quot;]If you consign ancient coins to a CNG electronic auction, the minimum seller&#039;s fee is $40. If the coin hammers at $100, the buyer will pay $100+18% = $118 plus shipping, and you get $60. That&#039;s 51%. If anyone knows, <b>from experience</b>, how to get 70% of what the seller pays in a major auction, let us know.</p><p><br /></p><p>You may have heard that some sellers negotiate to get a cut of the buyer&#039;s fee or a reduced seller&#039;s fee. Offer to sell with an auction firm numerous coins worth $50,000 each and that is likely. The effort in selling very expensive coins is similar to that of selling regular coins, so the dealer does not need as big a percentage. Offer one hundred $500 coins and it is not likely you will get a break on fees. Those are just &quot;regular coins&quot; to a high-quality firm like CNG.</p><p><br /></p><p>When discussing the value of coins and venues, I didn&#039;t notice anyone mention the value of the time of the buyer. If you want a great Byzantine coin, you can look at the next CNG auction and expect to see some, but not many. You can look them over in a few minutes. Now, if you try that with eBay you can search on &quot;Byzantine&quot; coins and get page after page of junk and very rarely see a high-quality coin. I know collectors whose time is worth hundreds of dollars an hour. Is it worth their time to search eBay for bargains?&nbsp; No. Bid on a great coin on eBay (if you can find one actually being auctioned, as opposed to being offered at a high fixed-price) and you won&#039;t be competing with many collectors who would bid it up if were offered by CNG. No wonder CNG prices are higher.</p><p><br /></p><p>Several posters above have noted that selling coins one-at-a-time with eBay is a hassle. Selling coins one-at-a-time is a hassle, regardless of how you do it. Several posters above have noted that dealers provide a service that has value. I think many collectors (usually those who have not attempted to sell many coins themselves) undervalue their service.</p><p><br /></p><p>Let&#039;s run some hypothetical numbers. Suppose profits are to be 10% and a dealer wants to make $50,000 a year. That&#039;s $500,000 a year turnover. A year of 50 weeks of 5 days a week makes 250 days. That makes a turnover of $2,000 a day. You can&#039;t do that selling $20 coins (100 photos and up to 100 e-mails with orders, payments, and mailings a day, and some of them are bound to go wrong!).&nbsp; And, there are very many expenses and hassles I won&#039;t enumerate. I haven&#039;t even mentioned the time it takes to find $500,000 worth of coins that seemed to you to be enough underpriced that you could sell them for much more than you paid for them (and that no other dealer snatched up first).</p><p><br /></p><p>There are innumerable collectors who thought selling would be a good way to make money whose businesses soon folded when reality set in.</p><p><br /></p><p>Dealers earn their fees.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

Your name or email address:

Do you already have an account?

• No, create an account now.
• Yes, my password is:
• Forgot your password?

Stay logged in