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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;GDJMSP, post: 1976917, member: 112&quot;]The primary point I was making is that there is no such thing as a &quot;reasonable profit&quot; because what is reasonable is determined by the specific situation at hand. And since there are many different situations, there are many different answers. Thus there is no single answer, which is what the OP was searching for.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>There is a huge difference between a customer walking into a dealer&#039;s shop and offering to sell a given coin for $300, and a customer walking in and saying - what will you give me for this ? With the 1st, the customer has set the price and there is no question of ethics involved regardless of how much the coin is really worth because the dealer will either say yes or no based on what he knows and if he says yes he is giving the customer what he asked for. With the 2nd, the customer has asked for an offer. This is when the question of ethics comes into play.</p><p><br /></p><p>The customer asking for an offer is the little old lady, or anybody else who knows nothing about coins. Or, a seasoned collector who is trying to sell his collection, or whatever. Who the customer is doesn&#039;t matter. The thing that matters is that they have asked for an offer. And because they have asked for an offer then the dealer is obligated to be ethical, fair. With me so far ?</p><p><br /></p><p>Now the additional point I was making is that we, as outsiders, have no right to judge what the dealer does or does not do. We may think we do all day long but we don&#039;t. No more than that dealer, or the little old lady has any right judge what we may have done in our own lives. The only person who can judge, who has the right to judge, whether or not what the dealer did is ethical, is the dealer himself. Nobody else. And the same goes for each and every one of us in our own lives. We are the ones who have to look in the mirror every morning. And you can bet that dealer knows whether what he did was ethical or not. But it is not our place to say so either way.</p><p><br /></p><p>This whole discussion started off with the question - </p><p><br /></p><p><i>&quot;What is a reasonable margin to expect of a dealer to make when purchasing &quot;higher end&quot; but still working class coins?&quot;</i></p><p><br /></p><p>The OP is searching for a percentage number as an answer. And he&#039;s not asking what is reasonable, he is asking what is ethical, and merely substituting one word for another. But like I said, <u>that</u> question has no single answer. And we have discussed this many, many, times over the years. The reason there is no single answer is because there are so many different situations. It&#039;s kind of like what Tom was saying. The so called &quot;reasonable profit&quot; for a given coin is determined by many different things. For example, if it is a common coin that typically sells at retail for $10 or $15 - what is a reasonable profit ? Is the percentage number the same as that for a coin that sells for $3000 ? </p><p><br /></p><p>With the $10 coin the dealer may have to hold it for months before he can sell it, all that time tying up his cash flow. So he may need to make 50%, or even 100% profit on that coin and others like it, just to make it worth while for him. But on the coin that sells for $3000 10% profit may be worth it, or even 5% if he sells it quick enough. And on a coin that sells for $300 he may need to make 20%. There is no single answer as to what is a &quot;reasonable profit&quot; because there cannot be !</p><p><br /></p><p>People get hung up on the percentages and use them to try and determine if the dealer is ethical or not, and you can&#039;t do that because those percentages change for each and every coin and each and every specific situation. And in many if not most cases &quot;people&quot;, outsiders, don&#039;t even have any idea of what ethical even is because they have no insight into what the specific situation is. They don&#039;t know how or when or under what circumstances the dealer bought the coin. They know nothing about it at all. And because they don&#039;t, they have no right to judge. But they will anyway. People like to judge others because it makes them feel better about themselves. They like to be able to say - I&#039;d never do that ! Or yeah, I&#039;d do it just like that guy did. Either one makes the person feel better about themselves because they happen to agree with what they &quot;think&quot; the given situation was. But they don&#039;t really know. And because they don&#039;t know, they shouldn&#039;t be judging to begin with.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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