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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Hobo, post: 396605, member: 11521&quot;]I agree. If you are interested in coins primarily as an investment you might have a difficult time turning a profit unless you have some inside information or special knowledge the rest of us are not privy to. There is a fairly hefty fee to be paid both when buying and selling coins. Other investments have lower fees - stocks and real estate for instance. </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>If you buy and sell your coins from/to a dealer you will most likely pay retail (or close to it unless you are able to make some special arrangement with the dealer). When you sell the dealer will probably pay you wholesale or less. The dealer is in business to make a profit and he makes his profit on the spread between what he pays and what he sells a coin for. It would not be unusual for a dealer to buy a coin for $900 and sell it for $1000 or more. So that coin that you bought last week for $1,050 might only bring an offer of $900 from the dealer today. Your coin would have to increase in value 16.7% just for you to break even. </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>It gets tougher if you are dealing with an auction house. Suppose the auction house charges a seller&#039;s fee of 10% and a buyer&#039;s fee of 15%. If you bought a coin at their auction for $1,000 your total cost (including the buyer&#039;s fee but not including shipping) would be $1150. If you sold the coin at another auction and the high bid was $1,000 you would net $900 after paying the seller&#039;s fee. That&#039;s a loss of $250. For you to break even the selling price would have to increase by 27.8% to $1,278. That&#039;s a very tall order. </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>As you see, the fees to buy and sell coins quickly eat up your profits (or add to your losses).</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Fees to buy and sell stocks are much cheaper than this if you use discount brokers. If you know what you are doing buying and selling stocks you can make money and keep more of your profits by using discount brokers. </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Realtors around here typically charge 6% commission. When home prices were rising most people did not balk at that fee because it came out of the increase in the value of their home. They were happy as long as there was money left over after the Real Estate agent&#039;s fee was taken out. My, how times have changed!</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Now that home prices have leveled off or, in some cases, dropped, more people are taking notice at how large a fee 6% of the sales price really is. Someone that bought a home a year ago and has to sell today (say because they got transferred) is competing against many, many other homes that are on the market. Around here a lot of the homes on the market are foreclosures (which drive down the value of other homes in the area). The seller that paid $300,000 a year ago may have to accept $270,000 for his house - and pay the Realtor a commission of over $16,000. OUCH! All of a sudden that 6% became real money. (In this example the seller would take a loss of almost $50,000 on the house. So much for a guaranteed profit on a house.) </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>The same thing can happen with coins. If you buy coins and the market goes down the selling fees only add insult to injury after you take a loss on the coin itself. </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Think long and hard before deciding to buy coins as an investment.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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