How does TV advertisements get buyers?

Just asking. Why would anyone buy for ~50% over current prices?

It seems to not be fair to new buyers?

 

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By preying on the uninformed. TV sellers don't care.

 

When I was managing a coin shop years ago, one of my best customers was a war vet who liked to drink and watch home shopping coin shows. He said he never remembered ordering anything but packages would just show up on his doorstep. He had a whole safe full, he said.

Regarding the actual question, retail is what it is. Why do people pay $15 for a draft beer at a baseball game?

 

A huge part of modern society is convincing people that they want things, then getting them to spend money on them. In fact, you can probably strike the word "modern" from that sentence.

 

The best salesmen in the world are the miracle ear people. They can take something you can't see and sell it to someone who can't hear.

 

This certainly doesn't apply only to coins or television either. The internet and tv has certainly replaced by a huge margin the door to door marketing.


My wife just told me she had 4 or 5 spam calls today. She answered none, but would bet they were related to us buying something.

 

One of the men I admire most in my church is a coin junky like me. He buys almost exclusively from Rick Tomaska….. And I just don’t have the heart to tell him…..

 

This chariot was driven only by a little old lady going to the Temple on Feast days.

 

@Doc J you ask, "How does TV advertisements get buyers?"

Business colleges and universities don't limit their advertising courses to single classes. They offer not only complete undergraduate degrees specializing in Advertising and Marketing but Masters degrees in those fields as well. Part of the coursework in those degree fields includes psychology. I'll let you figure out the rest of the equation.

 

Not only that, the platforms most use are indicative of controlled speech.
Call me crazy. Uninformed, uniform, and controlled speech is not Free....
everyone needs to remember your neighbor Ted.. That He voted for the restriction of free speech.

 

Of course TV ads are controlled speech. The whole point is to control what info the potential buyer gets, in order to make a sale.

 

It has to do with “the gift of gab.” I used when I was a dealer. I would tell stories about history and I gave out a monthly newsletter for free that featured stories about various coins. I stayed far away from the “You are going to make money if you buy this nonsense.” Although most all of the coins and tokens I sold would be money makers for the people who bought them today, if they still have them.

The TV hucksters have more overhead than you might think. They also have sell items they can get in quantity. That means nothing that is scarce or rare. You can sell really scarce items on TV because usually you have only one. They also are put to make strong returns. All of that leads to high selling prices for so-so material.

 

@johnmilton of course you mean "you can't sell really scarce items"

 

I'll watch those guys on TV for a minute or so but I get sick of hearing them say the same thing over and over again.

 

They prey on ones weakness, lack of knowledge.

 

Short answer.......they are ignorant as to what numismatic items currently sell for in the open market. Quite simply, they don't do their homework, and I will admit that I was one of them. Back in 2005 I bought a full set of ASE's from the Coin Vault. At that time I was just getting back into the hobby and wrongly assumed I was getting a good deal. Hind site is 20/20 so I just chalked it up to tuition paid for the numismatic school of hard knocks.

 

I have posted this before but the problem is that all of us here have a kind of distorted view of what level of the food chain we are in. I view magazine and tv ads as "retail" for our hobby. Most of us here know better than that, and we go to specific dealers and shows to buy. Those avenues would be considered "low retail" to wholesale club pricing. You are not wanting to pay for education or fancy frills, just the item. Then you have wholesale, selling to dealers or dealer to dealer. Trying to sell your coins to collectors yourself would be somewhere in between wholesale and wholesale club pricing in most instances.

We talk about the "coin market" from our viewpoints, ignoring there is a higher priced market out there where the sellers educate people what is available, how to buy, and its very expensive to do that via tv so they must charge more. Nothing "wrong" wit it, and more there is something "wrong" with a high end grocery store pricing items much higher than wholesale clubs or direct from wholesalers. Time and place utility is a massively underappreciated value firms can offer to consumers. Sure, we feel bad if new people do not do the work to move on from these sellers as they gain more information, but that is on them as consumers.

 

Even if you paid double spot price in 2005, you're still doing alright on them.

 

But you could have done a lot better.

Spot price doesn't always rise.

 

That's true. But it's risen a lot since 2005. And fallen and risen. As spot often does.