Message:

<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Lehigh96, post: 2025982, member: 15309&quot;]You spent 50 years collecting coins the old way because that is all that was available.&nbsp; The combination of the internet and quality digital photographs has only been around for about a decade and you have not collected coins at all during most of that time by your own admission.&nbsp; What year did you stop collecting coins?</p><p><br /></p><p>Nobody is saying you aren&#039;t knowledgeable about coins.&nbsp; But honestly, you sound just like the old time poker pros who used to laugh and tease the twenty something internet poker whiz kids.&nbsp; Well who is laughing now?&nbsp; A twenty something poker whiz has won every WSOP Main Event since 2008.&nbsp; And while the analogy from poker to coins isn&#039;t perfect, the inability of old guys to adapt to the new world is perfectly apt.</p><p><br /></p><p>Going to shows is very expensive, time consuming, and downright inconvenient.&nbsp; Every &quot;so called&quot; coin shop in my area is a pawn shop or bullion shop with no knowledge or concern for coins with numismatic value.&nbsp; They offer ridiculous low ball prices when buying and charge higher than E-Bay retail when selling graded material.&nbsp; I would love to see you try to walk into one of these shops and try to explain to them the concept that most TPG graded coins are overgraded.&nbsp; I don&#039;t know whether they would laugh at you or just throw you out, but I do know you would be leaving the store without any coins.</p><p><br /></p><p>Buying and selling coins on the internet using photographs is the easiest and most convenient way to buy coins in this day and age.&nbsp; If you buy from people with return policies it becomes much easier to evaluate the coins for yourself using your own grading abilities.&nbsp; You don&#039;t even need a dealer you can trust, just one on E-Bay who offers returns.&nbsp; Paypal will do the rest and give you all the protection that you need.</p><p><br /></p><p>Furthermore, why is everyone in numismatics completely obsessed with not losing money when it comes time to sell their coins?&nbsp; This is a hobby, it is meant to be enjoyed.&nbsp; Most hobbies, there is no resell.&nbsp; My brother pays in excess of $10K/year for a golf membership because he likes to play golf.&nbsp; Other people collect things that are basically worthless and sell for a mere fraction of what they paid.&nbsp; The point is that a newbie with no grading experience could buy PCGS &amp; NGC certified coinage and recoup 75% of his initial investment with very little effort.&nbsp; And most of the lost would be transactional in the form of fees or commissions. </p><p><br /></p><p>I know you hate anecdotal evidence, but I have bought and sold hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of coins over the last decade without once ever going to a coin show.&nbsp; You might lump me into the 5% that did not lose money when I sold and chalk it up to luck.&nbsp; The truth is that I spent a lot of time reading coin books, interacting on coin forums, studying coins, photographing coins, and searching internet auctions in order to become an astute collector.&nbsp; It was not an accident that I was successful.&nbsp; Just because someone does it differently than you, it does not mean they are doing it wrong.[/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