Tried to sell silver to LCS today...bad to worse news

The OP’s experience, to me, lends credence to the argument that silver and gold Eagles are the way to go.

 

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The takeaway lesson I would personally get from this story is that you will tend to get more back when you sell on your own to other collectors vs. when you try to take them into a coin shop/pawn shop. Collectors don't have overhead to worry about and usually aren't all that concerned about immediately reselling the merchandise.

 

I thought the very same thing. I have gone through spurts over the years sometimes buying rolls of ASE's and sometimes buying rolls of cull dollars. I been re-thinking the cull dollars since Sparks adventure.

 

dealers most are out to get youir silver or gold as cheap as they can do your homework check on the internet it tells you the value of your silver and gold at melt prices .expect a smaller amount but know what they are worth before hand i dontg trust any dealer have had some bad ones all around the new england states

 

I have had the same type of problems trying to liquidate some of my collection. I sent quite a few coins to the major auction house to be sold and 5 months later I found out that they grouped about 18 nicely graded coins together in 3 different lots and sold them for 16.2% of the suggested value from PCGS and NGC which is whos holders they were in? I lost a bunch on them from what I paid for them. I got about 30% of what I paid for them? Not good.

 

It is for this exact reason that I chose not to send a similar group of coins to a certain prestigious auction House. Anything valued under $500 was going into "sight unseen sealed bid dealer wholesale lots" - as soon as I heard that, I'd made my decision to keep selling them off myself.

It is a LOT of work selling off a collection. That's something to be considered when you factor the prices a dealer offers you. You are basically paying for the convenience of not having to take multiple years selling a few coins here, a few coins there.

 

No you weren't being unrealistic, the idea of "numismatic value" was what was unrealistic. 1940 - 62 quarters in G to Fine are readily available as "junk silver" and their value IS melt value. The "numismatic value" you see listed in price guides is mythical and is basically Dealer Nuisance Charge. The premium a dealer will charge you to cover the nuisance of stocking and inventorying the things plus a small profit.

 

This discussion is fascinating - I've been dabbling in collecting for years - since I was a kid and got a 1982 silver half George Washington commemorative in a red box from an uncle who was a collector. I mostly just buy what interests me or catches my fancy, it's not about profit and I don't worry about reselling, but over the years I have sort of followed a couple of rules - if buying low end stuff - junk silver or (once upon a time) cheap gold - I have price points I follow - I bought a few thousand dollars worth of gold coins - all older stuff that I bought at bargain prices - before the price hit $600 an ounce in 2007(?), it wasn't stuff I was attached to so I sold when it went over $1200. I'd buy again if it went below $1000 in limited quantities if deals presented themselves. My mental price for low end silver is $17 per ounce. However I will pay above that for larger lots of things like quarters that have SLQs or mercury dimes that I can look through for anything of interest to my collections. I've never really shopped in a coin shop in person (just online) or gone to a coin show, but my kids are all grown up now, I think once this virus is over, I may start checking those things out. What kinds of rules / habits do you guys follow for buying / collecting / selling?

 

Well circulated quarters from 1940 to 1962 have silver melt value and that’s all. There is no way anyone will give you more than melt for those.

 

This thread is quite interesting, and timely, since I have been appraising several estate coin collections, and subsequently been asked to liquidate most of them. I have taken the time to read each post. For the most part, many of the comments and opinions generally follow my experiences as follows.

The appraisals are generally detailed and include both “Estimated Dealer Buy” and “Estimated Dealer Sell” pricing of the items. Since I have been a long time collector, I have several collector contacts, and those are the first potential customers, who truly buy collectibles. These buy at a price greater than dealer buy, but less than sell. Next, I go to a high volume bullion buyer shop, which will buy large mintage modern gold and silver commemoratives, with little or no collector premium at melt. Also, this shop buys circulated US and World gold with excessive scratches and dings at melt. Finally, this shop buys US 90% junk silver @ 69% of spot silver, which today translates to (.69)($25)spot, or $17.25 on a dollar face, vs. $15 more or less on a dollar face at the conventional LCS. I concentrate on truly junk silver at this shop, having offered the Mercs, Standing Libs., Walkers to the collector friends at a premium.

Since I receive a fee or commission for the sales, I reserve the opportunity to buy coins at a discount, equivalent to the sales commission.

In the end, I have a fiduciary responsibility to the Estate and make it a win-win for all involved.

 

I started to get interested in coins in 1963 when I was a little kid. However, back then you could still get buffalo nickels in change and early 1900's Lincoln cents as well as SL quarters. Silver coins started to disappear in the late 60's as well as the buffalo nickels. So basically I've been a collector for over 55 years. What I can say is that buying and selling really hasn't changed much in 55 years. The only change is now we have the internet. All dealers are doing it to make a living. Making a living means making a profit on what they sell. So you'll never get retail when selling common coins. However, that changes when you start talking about key date coins or rare varieties. A lot of dealers have want lists from regular customers looking for these coins. If the dealer knows he has a good chance of turning the coin over quick it puts you in more control of the sale. When talking about key date coins or varieties condition is very important. Example: A banged up 1955 double die cent in extra fine is a hard sell. You would be lucky to be offered VG money for it. Also don't expect much for modern coins usually dealers have more than they can ever sell. Modern is considered dated after 1950. Dealers tend to sell them to the home shopping network coin guys. However, one thing you should do before selling your coins get to know the dealer. Build a friendship with them. This can take some time. Don't rush it or you will lose. You will be able find out what the dealer has a market for this will help you when and what you decide to sell to him. If you just walk into a coin shop with a box of modern or junk coins the dealer may have no interest in what your offering and may not want to spend a lot of time looking at them. The other way to sell your coins is on consignment at the dealers shop. Many will do it once they get to know you. For this method you can set the sell price and the dealer gets a commission for allowing you to sell coins thru them. 10 to 15 percent seems to be the norm. However, selling on consignment is normally only for coins with a value of at least a few hundred dollars and only a few coins at a time. I've done pretty good when selling on consignment.

 

I'm surprised no other shop is willing to outbid that.

When I was going to local coin shows, there were almost always at least a couple of dealers who would buy 90% at no more than a 10% discount from melt -- maybe 15% when silver was languishing around its ten-year lows.

Heck, JM Bullion appears to be buying 90% at melt; they're quoting $18.35 per dollar FV, with silver ask at $25.41, and for selling, they bottom out close to 20x FV for very large quantities. That's less than a 10% spread.

70% of melt is getting close to what I was seeing pawn shops offer a couple of years ago; of course, they turned around and sold it at 150% of melt.

 

You are quite right. I was using the price guide listed values as if they were usable...they aren’t.

Which begs the question: if they are not usable, why do they exist? And if the Sheldon scale and TPG price guides don’t allow you to place a relevant value, how does anyone expect to find out?...Spark

 

BTW, the Mexico 1968 25 Pesos is 0.52 tr. oz. net weight, not an ounce. The Type 2 with the curved rings should have some numismatic value, but the interest in them now is a lot less then I remember when they came out in 1968.

 

I'm going to disagree about eBay - perhaps if you're interested in a higher end collection you're right, but I mostly buy American coins of the 19th and early 20th century on the lower end of the scale. Not that I won't low ball a nice MS PCGS slab occasionally and maybe pick that up to. I always search "Sold" auctions on eBay to get some idea of what the low end of prices is that people are paying / getting for coins I'm interested in. You can search in various ways, I always look at "lowest price to highest" and scroll down a bit to get a sense of what the going prices are / recently have been.

 

Once again...I looked up the value at NGC World PG which listed it at $21...which is what I believed was a fair value, but the LCS had no interest, not even for below melt. It’s frustrating to learn that tools you used for decades turn out to be unreliable.

Thanks to @GDJMSP for his info, I got very disappointed, but he helped me to a new North Star to navigate with...Spark

 

...and a big thanks to all who responded in kind with data and observations on this situation. Several said the post was interesting and timely so I’m glad it helped them too.

For me, I have taken a reality hit, a paradigm shift in coin collecting in general and learned a lot by this...

...going forward...best regards to all...Spark

 

This proves my point that you can’t sell to a dealer unless the items are “hot” or you somehow got them for free. Lol
If you’re supposed to pay a markup so some dealer profits and then sell for a much reduced price, (also so they can profit) I guess it’s accepted the individual is always supposed to take it in the shorts buying and selling. What a way to attract newcomers to something. I guess there’s always the people that don’t know they’re getting screwed to keep business rolling.

I’m sure some won’t like the truth but this is the truth. I get your perspective as I’m a regular listener of the podcast. On the contrary I’d be interested to know what a dealer feels are fair offers? Is it always .50 on the dollar? Is that fair? Granted I can understand you can’t pay top dollar for all the common crap people bring in every day.

This thread is a good lesson for the youngsters. It’s very easy to buy all you want . Re-selling is the rub unless you save stuff for many years.

 

I don't get this point. There's one spread between buy price and sell price. If the spread is too wide, the dealer will run out of either material or customers.

There isn't always some objective "real value" that's higher than a dealer's buy price and lower than a dealer's sell price. Depending on market conditions, a dealer might have to pay more than melt to get the material he needs, or he might have to sell below melt to maintain cash flow. (From the example further up the thread, if customers aren't buying at melt, he might have to sell to a refinery below melt.)