my local coin shop

My local coin shop is owned by a cranky old man. But I kept going because he had a lot of good stuff with good prices. Turns out, it just takes a while for him to warm up to you. Now when I walk in his face lights up and he'll talk my ear off for the next hour.

His crankiness comes from too many people coming in and either buying up all his silver so that he has limited inventory for collectors, or asking him "what's this coin worth" so that they can go sell it on ebay. He only warms up to people who genuinely like coins, not bullion investors or ebay sellers.

So in other words, give your cranky old man a chance!

 

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That's exactly what I'm talking about.
Not that all of them are like that but many many are

 

I've encountered several cranky old men shops over the years. In the NW suburbs of Chicago, I'm blessed by several local shops with polite and friendly people. When I was a kid there were 3 coin shops my dad took me to, all of them cranky.

 

Buying deals is where a shop makes money. Most of what I buy at my shop is material I flip to make an instant profit on the wholesale market via shows or ebay. While I have material in the shop that is at retail only, there is income from that but traffic who won't pay retail or has a deal for me is simply not worth a large portion of my time. I do have junk boxes (small ticket coins at retail) for a lot of those people and they can look thru them to their hearts content.

Consequently, when there is a lot of traffic in the shop it is critical to screen the profitable from the non profitable traffic in terms of time management. Being able to do this quickly is a large part of efficient shop management. I am friendly with everyone and there are many who are mainly book and supplies buyers (thats fine) but I have to concentrate my time on the profitable traffic. The other day I had a knowledgeable collector with a large number of big ticket coins to sell. While a number of them were stickered, they did not really have the eye appeal IMO to be quick sellers. It seems a lot of coins with dark or brown toning, and even black spots are being stickered. They may technically make the grade but most customers want coins that are brilliant with nice luster and no spots or toning. Coins that don't make this criteria I consider "average quality" whether stickered or not. It is my grading criteria and assessment of its eye appeal in determining if the coins can sell (in making an offer)not some sticker. He was willing to consign a few of them (I dont shell out money for big ticket material unless really super deal) willing to take CDN Bid if they sold. Another fellow came in with some nice commems in 65-66 and I purchased them at 80% of CDN Bid which is usually my standard offer for material I can use for inventory.

 

I hear ya Matt... but that would be giving circus carny's a bad name.

 

i actually like the guy at my local about 15 miles away, the shop is down a little alley and you have to walk to below pavement level to get to it, and it has various artifacts of interest in aside from coins which i like becasue im a metal detectorist.

im 21 so i think he may be confused sometimes at why im not out buying drink

 

(by nearby, I mean about a mile.)

maybe he'd be in a better mood if I was a bigger and/or more frequent customer.

He does seem more interested in the silver/gold business, whether or not those metals are in coin form.
From my perspective, not the best deal on junk silver.
In general, small B&M is sometimes worth it compared to large B&M or online, sometimes not.

 

I 100% agree.

Then again, this is possibly because I AM a cranky old guy.

 

The local shop I use is owned by an older gentleman, but I would not call him cranky. Even all the younger guys are willing to chat and talk - especially if they are not too busy. I usually go on saturday which is almost always crowded with the weekend crowd selling gold or silver items. Still they find time for me and I like listening to some of the stories. And I think they answer my questions as best as possible - even when I dig into the business side.

 

The old gentlman and one whipper snapper who run the coin shop nearest me are super friendly. I budget an extra 45 minutes of time when I go, in just for casual chit chat. The next closest coin shop is run by a guy in his early 60s (so I hesitate to call him old), but I don't go in. I wouldn't call him cranky but I'll call him LAZY. I don't know how he stays in business. The last time I went in looking for something he said, "yeah I got some in the back, if you want to come back in a few hours I'll probably have them out for you."

 

I'm really sorry to hear some folks don't have a dealer they trust or an enviroment that allows for the enjoyment of our hobby. I spend my Saturday mornings at my local shop. Usually, about half of my coin club is there and we talk coins and polotics generally having a really great time. As far as the dealer who owns the place he was a bit of a tough nut to crack but once he knew I wasn't going away he lightened up.

I hear alot of you guys talk about prices at your dealers shop and how they won't drop a buck or two. Let me ask this do you go to Walmart and expect to haggle? Of course not. My guy is usually just under Red book prices. I don't mind paying the price he asks, if I do I go somewhere else. But, he has bills to pay and a bit of a premium is ok by me for my shop to stay open. I know I wouldn't want my boss to try and haggle with me ove my wage I'm pretty sure he doesn't like it either. I may argue grade over higher price raw coins but alot of times that is just part of the fun.

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I do not haggle with my local dealers and I do not haggle with the dealers that I see at coin shows. Sometimes some local dealers give me a good price for silver art bars because they treat them as .999 generic silver and they see them as "silver is silver". Since I have done business with a few of my local dealers, then they usually cut me a small break on the silver premiums. Since the late September smackdown on spot silver price that took it from $40 to a low of $26, the dealers raised their premiums dramatically but I did not mind paying it and I understood why they had to do that. Afterall, they are not in business to lose money.

If I go to a local dealer or a coin show and see a silver art bar or any other type of silver and the price that they gave me was too high, then I will just pass on it and move on. There will always be other opportunities in the future to buy what I want at a lower price.

 

You can't compare retail to collectibles.. it's apples to oranges. I have never met a dealer of coins, or comicbooks, or antiques, or any collectible that has a fixed price and won't "haggle". It's the nature of the beast so to speak. And the more you spend, the greater your bargaining power.

 

I have a great local coin shop within two miles of me. Oddly enough, the owner does not try to sell PM but does buy it (and then promptly resell it down the road actually). He doesn't get a lot of coin business that I can see, but is keeping the place running along anyway. There are a group of 'regulars' that I've begun to recognize and visa-verso. It's almost a club - also a Saturday morning thing for most.

Haggling is a sure fire way for this particular dealer to push his prices up. He readily admits to doing that with customers that he knows like to haggle. In the end, he often gets a better price than he would with a no-haggle customer (that is a regular no-haggle type). Seems fair to me. I still don't like it when the grey sheet gets pulled out and a price is determined from those bid/ask columns (along with an opinion of grade to boot), but like others here, I just don't buy if that's not something I think is good enough for me.

Also, retail haggling can be successful too. Just ask for a manager and say 'can you do better than $xxx?'. I've not tried it, but others say this actually can work and what's the harm in asking in any environment? The U.S. just doesn't engage in this routinely out of habit/cultural norms (except for cars/real estate of course...).