Shipping from Germany

Sure, but average lot cost isn't $1,000, and from the numbers shown they don't charge a flat $20 extra.
You can do some research, the loss rate is actually less than 1%, and this included tiers lower than registered mail so the loss rate for base level traced option is not even close to 1%.

In 2012 I was hit with 6 packages loss in 2 month period, all from Germany, out of maybe 15,20? I mean actually lost, none of those reached me later. That was freaky, but it doesn't change the ratio. My business ships around 500 packages a day with USPS and we experience less than 0.2% loss.

I can guarantee you zumbly the cost of shipping is $5 or less. You have already verified the shipping was not expedited, or it wouldn't had taken a week to get to Singapore.
Fact is, only the opposite is out of the ordinary. G&N/pecunem, all they did was choosing shipping method according to what they had billed. 3 day fedex international every time, it costs them $10-15 a package, why do you think this isn't commonplace practice among these sellers?

 

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The shipper has no control over what happens in the receiving country's system. I've had many "expedited" packages sit in Customs for weeks. There is no way to verify that they are there or when they will be sent on. Packages can sit in Customs for a month without any recourse by the shipper or the receiver. (I'm speaking of US Customs)

 

Again, expedited services don't take 2 weeks or a month, and they are traceable all the way. Whichever courier service, if it's expedited, it gets scanned every stop and the trace shows all the way through.

There are different tiers of shipping, lowest tiers untracable, even if they give you a "tracking number". Middle tiers are what TIF described above, they cost 5 bucks to ship a padded envelop across the pound. $10 if it weights 3 or 4 oz. Then you have expedited services, which is what these people charged for. Priority international is middle tier, there are 4 levels of priority express (used to be called express mail). Please check with courier information before arguing with me on these, I do this for a living.

 

I'm not arguing nor am I going to discuss it further. It is pointless. You feel a certain way about the shipping costs and that is simply the way you feel.

I'm happy to have one less competitor in the Roma auctions

 

Using Royal mail, it should cost £8.70 for £50 insurance and £11.20 for up to £250 insurance. over 250 insurance is not offered through royal mail.

http://www.royalmail.com/price-finder

 

I didn't realize that there were published, reliable loss rates for ancient coins shipped by auctioneers via the various shipping methods. Can you provide a link or data that compiles this information for such coin shipments?

 

There is, all major couriers report their loss rates, not very clear and not readily available but you can get a good idea of it researching online.

Expedited services have such low loss rates it's not really worth insuring, and that's why many couriers get away with not offering insurance option above certain level on those services, ie. what Armoldoe said above.

Services of different tiers/levels aren't mixed, not during the international transition. So there's pretty much no chance an express package would had been mistaken for priority and get stuck 2 weeks enroute. This is why there are all kinds of weird regulations with expedited services, such as using a enormous envelop for something tiny. Weight and size aren't the courier's main concern here, rather that they are responsible for delivering the parcel on time.

Again, I want to remind you folks that these are companies, they don't ship as individuals and it doesn't cost nearly as much for them to ship as you would as a private sender. Roma's charge is for expedited service, and they didn't use that, this is indisputable.

Really, I wouldn't mind even if they had asked for more shipping cost, all I wanted is expedited shipping, because that ensures the item getting to me better than insurance would, I don't want the money back, I want what I bought... It's the fact they used cheapass shipping method for something that doesn't deserve such risk, and they charged me for expedited service, this bothers me.

And TIF, sorry to disappoint you but I'll just have my guys in London getting the purchases from Roma for me and redirect. Sucks I'd have to go through this, but so many people being content with this is what allowed them to keep behaving this way. So I blame on you guys for my suffering

 

I just got my package from Pecunem and checked with my fedex agent, 12.26 euro they shipped Tuesday 5 am EST. The shipping method guarantees delivery in 5 business days but in this case took 2.

 

This topic is certainly more complex than some seem to realize. It is not just a matter of how much a shipper is paying for the postage. Aside from the other expenses such as supplies and wages, there is the insurance (which has been discussed, but I would like to comment). As a dealer I can confirm that obtaining reasonable insurance rates for coins can be difficult. Even though some shippers including the USPS, FEDEX, etc. say coins are covered, if you file a claim they will find in the small print a reason to deny the claim. As such dealers and auction houses must either obtain costly private insurance, or self insure themselves.

Anyway, I dont want to get too deep into the issue. What it all boils down to is that the purchaser needs to balance out the factors before the do business with a person or dealer. What are the sales commissions, shipping, wait time, etc? For me I have been offering free 'standard' shipping worldwide for several years. That is, cheapest method (but with tracking numbers) and I sometimes will only ship once or twice a week. Anything else is at buyers expense (such as overnight, additional insurance, etc). It's worked for me.

 

Hello,

What I find out lately what is really irritating, when you buy coins from professional sellers & auctions, they are kind and give service as long as you pay.
Than when you decided you need to sell some coins in the range 100-300 usd, that you have bought in the past, the auction houses, dealer are doing difficult, this is not good quality( while they selling simular coins themselves, but your are not okay)), you ask too much, and so on, also they ask too much commision and final what you would get for them is half you have paid, so the coin hobby in general is not really attractive to start in, while I love history and coins.
Also there picture are mostly much better than yours, so you buy it is okay, but if you make pictures they look crap, while they are not, same coin.

Anyway I really need to think if I want to continue the hobby.

What do you think?

 

The deal as I see it is people who do collect mid grade and lower price coins do not spend a lot of money with the big auction houses so the dealers are not rewarded for buying coins they will have trouble selling. The current fad of condition makes it easier to sell a $100 coin than a $10 coin at least when the people who are looking for cheap things do not waste their time looking at the offerings of sellers who only have expensive items. It costs them as much to handle a $50 coin as a $500 one so the reward for doing it simply is not there. There are dealers who buy and sell mostly lower end material but they are not the names you know. Even that group will pay a fraction of what you paid since they are in it for profit (as a business should be). If you want someone to buy and sell at little or no mark-up, trade with your friends or other collectors interested in getting rid of duplicates or things they have 'outgrown'. Even then you will have to cover costs like postage and PayPal. We all have surplus coins but most people do not want other people's cast offs so the value of most coins we buy is 'educational' rather than 'monetary'. I have enough coins I don't want that I do not need to buy more. If you are in it for profit, you are in the wrong hobby and should not continue.

 

I understand your frustration when you're rebuffed by dealers or auction houses you may be trying to sell/consign your coins to when you see them selling similar coins in similar grades, but there may be a number of reasons for this. One reason that comes to my mind immediately is that those coins could have been been part of a larger consignment that included better coins and they had to take the lesser ones as a package deal.

Regarding what you're being offered for your coins, my take is that, well, dealers need their profit, and it may be too much to ask for a hobby to also be a good store of wealth when you need to cash out your initial dollar investment into it. I'm an optimistic pragmatist - 30% to 40% is the loss I expect to suffer if I have to sell any coin I bought in the near term. 50% may indeed be the figure depending on the sale venue chosen. I feel lucky that this hobby offers enough else to enjoy that being able to get back any sum of money at all is just a bonus. If I have to be concerned about how negative the return on my $ investment is going to get, I wouldn't be calling this a hobby.

 

Don't think all this is new. in the late 80's a member of our club died. His widow asked one of the members to help her dispose of his coins (no one in the family wanted them). The group was large and varied in terms of value. The best offer from several dealer who was shown them was under 25% of retail as estimated by a couple of our more experienced member dealers (neither of whom could afford the whole group). The widow said that she wanted the club members to have first shot so we went through boxes and boxes at meetings for about a year. Things we could not absorb were consigned to various auctions or sold to dealers who specialized in that level coin. After a lot of work, the widow got a bit more than the original estimate. The member who made this happen received nothing for many hours work and we can not expect dealers to do all this sorting and handling for nothing. That is where the 25% figure came from. Fair? Maybe.

 

One end of your comparison are organizations whose sole purpose was to sort out items and put them on sale. The other end are people working for free and organized as volunteers, they aren't comparable.

This type of business making less than 30% (after overheads and taxes) would not be considered profitable. 25% is huge, considering sales platforms (ebay amazon) only charge 11%.

 

Dear Doug & Zumbly,

I agree with what you are saying, only I do not mind to take a loss and indeed it is business principle, but I feel the auction houses and dealers are profiting too much from people enjoying the hobby.
If I have a wonderful coin they mostly say not good this and that, that' s what I also do not like in their approach always breaking down the reality.
They really do not help us ( i have experience with a lot of them) and also I wondering if they really have passion for it.
The only good guy I knew was John Jencek....but where is he...now.
I can accept loses around 30%, but half and so, than I feel can better go on holiday from it.
Indeed in life people wants something and business is build on that, same for all goods we need.
Is there is demand than there is business and related profit.

Peace.

 

In an earlier post in this thread I mentioned that I had a coin from Artemide that as far as I knew had never shipped. It turns out that it had shipped and showed up in the mail today. The delay was expected as I chose the cheapest shipping option (registered) though I am still surprised that I never got a shipping confirmation even after writing them to inquire about it.

 

I'll point out that I have known many fine gentlemen (and a couple ladies) in the coin business who helped me greatly along the way and who I hope will remain in business for another 50 years (making some of them 140 years old). I have also a much smaller number of consummate jerks. I won't tell you what I hope for them because that would not be nice. I do admit that I am less likely to stop at a table at a coin show if the proprietor is wearing a tie and I am sure that my shallow discrimination has caused me to miss some coins I would have bought. Like coins, dealers come in many flavors and it is good that they are not all alike. We will find enough to spend our yearly coin budget be it ten thousand or ten million without having to support people not interested in our business. If you have had trouble with dealers, perhaps you have been shopping in the wrong places.

 

We'll probably have as many different opinions here as there are different sellers all with their own different set of costs and profit margins. We'll also all have different ideas on what constitutes "too much" profit. At the end of the day, you can walk up and down the block and just do business with those whom you feel comfortable with.

This below is taken straight off the website of an established and well-known dealer who deals in everything from lower-end to pricier coins. I haven't researched selling much, but I have the feeling that these terms may be typical?

"For high value coins we will pay up to 65% of retail, but typically we pay 45 - 50%. Because we can often buy common coins that retail under $100 in large bulk lots, our purchase price for low value coins may be considerably less than 50% of retail."

 

That same dealer, Forum, also says "For coins, our consignment fee is 10% of the sale price or a minimum of $40, whichever is greater." So, that means $40 off the top. If a coin really can be sold at $100 (listed at $100 is not the same as sold at $100), that is 40%, and you get paid only after it sells. The time frame for realizing your money can be very long, and all the while you are thinking about it and your involvement lingers. At least with outright sales the project is resolved.

 

It is ironic that the hate heaped on coin dealers by the "cultural property" crowd is exceeded only by the hate heaped on coin dealers by coin collectors.