Selling coins from Littleton Coin Company

I bought a small lot from a guy that inherited some Littleton packaged coins.
I had him send me a list, pictures of the coins and Littleton labels.
He also has a bunch of mint sets.
He wanted me to make offer on the lot.
I backed up the grade on the Littleton labels 3 grades... considered the mint sets as packing material...paid up for 2 bust half's in Blanchard holders and melt on a $10 liberty head.
I then knocked $100 off rounded down to the nearest dollar and let the seller know what I might pay for the lot.
The seller asked if I was sure about my estimate??
I double checked and said if it's what you say they are Yes.
I had the seller send the gold piece and bust half's first and I was pleased.
Then made a deal on the rest.
The seller said I was considerably higher than a local coin shop offered.
Some of those prices on the Littleton labels (yikes)
I paid the seller about 30% of Littleton marked prices.
I got rid of some coins I didn't want and both parties were happy.

Remember buy the coin not the holder.
Tried my best to get a feel for when the sellers father bought the coins from Littleton by decifering the label.

And I got a cool book.

 

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As I read your post when you said the seller asked if you were sure about your offer price, the first thing that came to my mind was you were high. After reading the entire post I see that his LCS low balled him and you made a fair offer. Congratulations to you for being fair and honest with him and for the coins you purchased.

 

I did have to double check my offer.
I already ran the numbers twice and then the seller questioned it.
I felt my offer was good maybe a little bit low, but I only wanted a few coins and knowing that people turn up their noses to Littleton marked coins...well I could have always gone up if the seller wanted more.
I already got the gold and best of the silver in the previous transaction.
I could have passed on the Littleton lot and mint sets all together.
After I bought the book of coins I took them to the local coin club meeting and showed some of the other guys.
Everyone looked at the prices and I asked how I did.
Everyone squinted, hem hawed around and then I said I paid about 30/40% of the labeled prices.
The general consensus was I did ok, when I told them I also got 15 assorted proof mint sets the results were the same...when I told them I got those for free as packing material they took me a little more serious.
Some even asked if I was going to sell off a few...I did.

 

And you had a good time doing this and an even better time showing them off at your club.

 

Yes.
It all started with the seller selling a $10 liberty head gold piece as a buy it now prices a little high.
Description wasn't all that good so I asked a question about it and what he knew about the coin and his best price.
He said he inherited it from his father and didn't know much.
I said sorry for your loss and melt was $X.XX.
The seller said he would take that price.
When it arrived in the mail well packed it looked way better than his picture.
I already got his contact information and asked if he would let me know if he was going to sell anything else coin related.
He said he had a few more coins and would like to sell them but didn't want to spend the time on eBay.

 

I'm courious to see how the other Littleton coins were packaged from DimeDude if he could get a picture?
I haven't seen many like the ones I pictured and was trying to figure out what year they could have been bought.
If just in the cellophane packing with the bar codes...they are probably newer purchases.
They may not be as desirable.

 

I've written on CT about how I got my young nephews into coin collecting and they have friends who are into it as well. They do coin trades with their friends and with each other. They use their allowance to buy coins and have been enjoying the hobby a lot these past few years. I bought them each binders and flips and they love organizing and showing off their new acquisitions. These are kids ages 9-12.

The kids love the 24k Gold Plated Quarters. Their friends like them so much that their friends trade 90% silver coins for those Gold Plated Quarters!

Value in collecting is in the eyes of the beholder.

I have no interest in collecting what people call "Nicely Toned Coins". The term "Nice Toning" is an oxymoron to my mind. (I believe the trend to value them started with a con man who said to a very wealthy guy, "Hey, aren't these gorgeous colors on the coins? Toned coins are the new trend!" And the wealthy guy said, "Yeah, I guess they are kind of nice." The con man said, "These are in very high demand right now. They are very rare and hard to find. But because I need to move some inventory I would be willing to sell them to you at a great discount." And the wealthy guy bought them, and proudly showed them off to his friends. And because he was extremely wealthy people had a lot of respect for him and believed him when he said that this was a new trend in coin collecting. And thus was born the idea of valuing "Nice Toning" and it became something that some coin collectors put a high value on.)

I personally don't like toned coins, and I don't understand why people like what I think of as damage, so I won't buy them. But why call "worthless" or put down what others like to collect?

For all we know dents in cars will be the next big thing and "Nice Denting" will be the trend!

The point is, if people find joy in collecting, they should buy what they like, not for value to pass on to their descendants, but for the joy of collecting.

As @Clawcoins wrote, we live in a capitalistic society and it's always a good idea to compare prices because they can vary widely. But that goes for anything we buy. Some sellers gouge you on the shipping charges. Buyers should always beware.

One of the reasons Littleton, Franklin and other such companies do so well is because of their marketing. They have loads of mass marketing to non-collectors around the country. Local coin shops don't do mass marketing. The U.S. Mint doesn't put flyers into clothing catalogs, newspapers, magazines or advertise on TV. Nowadays people can just Google for things, but for most of the time that these collections were bought, either Google didn't exist or the people buying from Littleton never thought to do price comparisons online because they didn't do much of anything online.

But in terms of what coin collectors should value and what they shouldn't value - colored coins, gold coins, toned coins, etc, why not allow everyone to decide their own values based on their likes and dislikes? Telling people that what they value in their collections, or what their loved ones valued is worthless and they were cheated seems kind of cruel to me. Saying that there isn't a high demand for those items now and that the market isn't paying those prices at this time is honest and less cruel. And it doesn't put a judgment on what collectors like to collect.

How many parents threw out their kids' old baseball cards or comic books from the 1950's and how much would they be worth nowadays?

For all we know, colored quarters will be more valued in 100 years from now than toned coins are!

Anyway, if you inherited any Gold or Colored coins, I would be happy to buy them from you for my nephews who will be more than happy to collect them and trade them with their friends! Which just gave me the idea to post that on the "Want" forum here on CT! Thanks for the idea! (I usually buy them the gold and colored quarters from the cheapest sellers on eBay.)

 

Are those older holders or what Littleton puts their better stuff in? When I bought from them in the 90's came in cellophane packets.

 

and then it wouldn't be a hobby

 

They'd be worth a lot less if most of them hadn't been thrown away...

 

I just bought up a small collection I can only assume was accumulated through Littleton. Had to explain it over messages and I was scared it would be interpreted negatively when I clearly wouldn't have meant it that way.

I simply state that an astute collector would pay more for your coins and sell to you for less than a brick and mortar store could due to overhead costs.

I paid 160 for the entire lot. Some of it is sold already but as many of you know, selling then shipping small items one at a time is not cost efficient or quick by any means. Definitely better ways to collect nowadays instead of sight-unseen coins-by-mail.

 

I believe so.
What I guess is these are premium coins.
Choice UNC coins is my best guess.
Don't know what time period though as I haven't seen or talked to anyone else that has any.
Most I see on the market are in cellophane.

 

Could be.
In 1975
People I know bought a styrofoam cooler full of cards for $50 at a flee market for their kids birthday gift...he collected cards and said there were some cards in the lot from the 1960's before he was born...he thought that was cool and wanted them.

He later sold a lot of the cards when he moved out piecemeal and with the help of someone who went to card shows for over $50,000.

Who Knew??
Certainly not me.

 

When I came back from college after my first year I found that my mother got rid of all of my comic books. They was a tragic loss for me as a 19 year old but the value today is priceless.

 

My sister-in-law's father died recently, and she asked me to evaluate his coin collection. When I opened the boxes, the first thing that I saw was a bunch of Littleton packaging and I thought, "Uh oh".

There was, of course, a bunch of silly display set type stuff in there. But he'd done most of his collecting in the 90's, and a lot of the stuff that he'd purchased was silver. So, in the end, his investment had actually beat out inflation overall (he'd documented his purchase prices in a book that was also in one of the boxes).

 

My father was in the Army when I was a kid and we moved from base to base almost every year. When I was 17, we were living in Mannheim, Germany in military housing. I graduated from high school in 1965 and got a job at a Stars and Strips books and magazines store on the base. It was about the time Marvel comics were becoming popular. I spent almost all my earnings on the Marvel comics. I must have had almost every first edition of each comic. I don't remember how many I had, but they were stacked about 3 feet high in my closet.
My father got orders to go back to the states, so I went back to my store and took inventory and locked up with me owing the store about $100 for the comics I bought. When I got home from work, I went to my closet to box up my comics and found that my mother had packed them up and given them to the Army Thrift Store on the base. I rushed over to get my comics back and found that they had already sold them. Back then, there was a weight limit for enlisted men, and my father told me that my comics put them over the limit. Today, those comics would be worth 100's of thousands of dollars because I kept my comics in mint shape in magazine bags to protect them.
My son started collecting comics when he was about 12. He worked at a local pharmacy about spent all of his money and allowance on comics, and he, too, kept his comics in magazine bags. When he went to college, he paid his tuition by selling some of his comics. I told him he didn't have to, but he said he wanted to pay his own way in college, which he did and now his first three daughters are doing the same.
Now, my collection is for movies, especially the Marvel character movies. I have built a theater and we watch movies and big sports games, especially the NCAA finals, Super Bowl, and World Series. My son lives in Atlanta and when a North Carolina Tar Heels play in a big game, he comes up to watch it in our theater. He says it's more fun that being crowed in the auditorium.
Anyway, my parents paid me back for getting rid of my comics. They bought a house in California for $50,000 and when they passed, aside from my father's coins, I got their house. It sold for $400,000 in a week's time.
How do you like them apples?

 

"How do you like them apples?"

Haven't heard that in years!

Sorry about your comics, but glad you got a decent inheritance to make up for it.