In our hobby we encounter a wide variety of characters. In this thread post your memorable communications. These could be ebay messages, something heard at a show, or whatever else you feel fits! These messages could be something funny, sad, weird, witty, wise, etc...
I'll start with 3 "cases" 1. I'm not here to make you money. This involves multiple people on ebay contacting me and asking for a better price. That's ok; everyone wants a deal and I can reduce some items if I want to move the funds into a new collecting area. What makes me is when these same people respond to me lowering the price with something as follows: I can't make money selling this to my clients! Well am I here to help you make money (response not sent )? 2. The sad story. I had a person contact me via ebay asking to lower a price on a coin. Ok, I'm reasonable and willing to deal. This person however decided to be creative. The message paraphrased as follows: Hello, I really like that mouse coin (Australian Year of the Mouse)! I have a friend whose nickname is "Minnie" and she'd love that coin. She has cancer and I'd really like to give it to her. Can you take 50% off? This one touched me. Just like many others, I've had family affected by cancer and I am empathetic. However, using that to get 50% off a coin just seems slimy and disingenuous. I replied to this person wishing my best thoughts and suggesting they do something more personal for their friend that does not involve spending money on a coin. 3. There is still hope! Yes there is! I had a buyer offer $110 on a $220 item via the best offer feature. Most of the time these are just lowballers that disappear when one counters at a reasonable price. Still I decided to test my luck. I replied to the offer with a $210 counter and a "friendly" jibe asking whether the person may have had a typo and really meant to offer $210. Oddly enough, they accepted the $210 counter, paid in a timely manner, and left positive feedback! They didn't ever message me, so I don't know if it really was a typo or the person was just embarrassed enough by the reply to their first offer. I will be an optimist and assume this really was a nice ebayer!
Really? I hate when the 1st person to comment says something negative. Especially after typing out a long, well thought out post. Add that to the list
I encounter ALL kinds at the flea market. One of the more memorable ones- I acquired a small cache of coal scrip tokens. You cant just walk into a coin shop and purchase these most of the time plus they are cool imo. So anyway i had them in my display case at the flea, and some hillbilly walks up. So he acquires about a few of them and i could see a smirk on his face as i was giving him the prices. (Like $3-$5 each) He starts laughing and says man, down in west virginia you can get these for 10 cent apiece. I looked up at him, and said well its a damn good thing im selling these in Ohio then huh??
I was selling an 1889-S Morgan in MS63 and an AU Seated Dollar to a dealer. I quoted him $500 on the Morgan and $1000 on the Seated (a bit better date). He asked if he could take the coins to his table to look at the Grey Sheet, which wasn't a problem because I knew him. He came back and said he could only pay $900 for the Seated and $600 for the Morgan. I told him I could do that. Another dealer friend that was standing behind him looked at me with a look on his face like either he had missed something.
I love the locations of his 'architects' : "London, New York, Milan, Barcelona" ...more like, "Grandma's Basement, Cinder-Block Shelf, Dusty Water-leak Stained Wall"
Maybe not a "communication" per-se, but a comic "relays a message," right? Not exactly very kosher by today's standards, but this is a comic from a 1960s error-coin numismatic rag: