Today a friend and I met with an older collector and we spent around 7 hours browsing and trading coins. It was a great day! And I am very happy with how it turned out The highlights, for me: Traded a raw AG3/G4 1916 standing liberty quarter for a PCGS slabbed FR2 1916 standing liberty quarter. Both were no date. The AG3/G4 was a slight upgrade for him, and the slab means I will be able to sell this one with much less hassle in the future. Traded an 1895-S morgan dollar in F8-VF12 condition for a 1911 $2 1/2 gold indian. I believe the morgan was FV12 after asking dealers previously to take a look, but he placed it at F8. Either way though, I am happy with the trade, because despite it's supposed value, it's hard to do anything with the 1895S - every coin shop seems to have several lol. This 1869 Indian Head made me want to cry - better date, but OUCH the condition! He offered it to me for just $8 trade value though, and I just couldn't resist it after all. At worst, it's a filler. At least the date is clear as day. Another coin that makes me want to cry - 1867 three cent coin. Holed. The older collector offered it to my friend for just $10 trade value, because of the hole. He of course jumped on that. Later, I traded him $70 trade value for it - not sure if it is worth $70 at this point, but I am happy with the trade, as is everyone else. I also picked up a decent large cent (1846) for $20 trade value, and a nice 2 cent coin (1864) for $16 or so trade value. Happy with these. And finally, there was a lot more value the older collector wanted from me - mostly AG3-G4 barber quarters and halves and a few better date morgans to fill holes in his collection - so I filled out the rest of the value with basic morgans I can sell easily later. Fun note - when I mentioned I did NOT want his 1921 morgans because I see way too many of them, he offered them to me at about $1 over spot - $18 value each. At that point, I took all he had. 14 of them. And then another 16 common date morgans at $30 trading value each. All in all, VERY satisfied and happy with my day - and so is my friend, and so is the person we traded with!
FYI: Fine condition is either F-12 or F-15. VF can be VF-20, VF-25, VF-30 or VF-35. Neither can be F8-VF12
Right, I knew that... lol. I wrote this post at like 4 AM just before finally falling asleep - my brain fumbled that one Thanks
Well, I am happy to share I like to trade things when I get the chance - bartering is always so much more satisfying than buying and selling for cash, plus if I DO want to sell something, it can often be better to trade one more expensive item for several smaller, easily-sellable items, instead of taking a large hit on the value of the single item. For example, taking one $600 book value coin that I could likely have only sold for $400-$450 cash, and only after a long time searching for a buyer, and trading it for 20x common date morgan dollars, which I can sell locally for $30 each any time without hassle immediately through craigslist. I personally, when trading, will agree on one single book or website to get values from, and just try to make sure values come out even according to that single source. As long as only one source is used, even if their prices are skewed or out of date, they will *all* be skewed in pretty much the same way, so you are still comparing apples to apples and trades should wind up pretty even and fair for everyone
