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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;GDJMSP, post: 2891259, member: 112&quot;]I think some have misconceptions about coin shows when it comes to why people, meaning dealers and collectors alike, attend them. With dealers, make no mistake they attend them to buy and sell. Coin shows are where dealers do most of their business. That&#039;s the only reason they are willing to pay travel expenses which are often quite high and table fees which are often also quite high. For a dealer to attend a 2-4 day (when you account for the early bird day) coin show it can easily cost him a couple thousand dollars or more. Just for that 1 show. So why is he willing to spend that much money ? Because that&#039;s where does most of his business !</p><p><br /></p><p>Take early bird days for example. Typically only dealers attend them as specifically aside for the dealers, but collectors can sometimes attend if they are willing to pay the fees. And early bird days are usually a flurry of activity with a great deal of buying and selling being done. It is not unheard of for more buying and selling to occur on that 1 day than rest of the entire show. And 99+% of it takes place between dealers because as a general rule few collectors attend due to the fees. </p><p><br /></p><p>During the rest of the show buying and selling between dealers continue to occur, but of course buying and selling also takes place between collectors and dealers, just not as much as is taking place between dealer and dealer. Overall, and I mean over the course of an entire year and encompassing all venues, meaning coin shows, his brick and mortar shop if he has one, online sales, mail sales, and auctions, 80% or more of a dealer&#039;s business is done with other dealers. Collectors only account for about 20% or less of a dealer&#039;s business. And this is true year after year.</p><p><br /></p><p>You know without a doubt that dealers are more than willing to sell coins to collectors at shows, but are dealers willing to buy coins from collectors at coin shows ? Absolutely, they&#039;ll fall all over themselves to buy coins from you. Assuming of course that: 1- you have some coins they want to buy - however, most collectors don&#039;t. And 2 - assuming that you are willing to sell them at a realistic price. </p><p><br /></p><p>So what do I mean by those two things ? It&#039;s pretty simple, coins they want to buy can be defined as coins that are hard to find or in great demand. What they don&#039;t want are common coins, they already have too many of those. They&#039;ll still buy them, but only at discounted prices because they know they are going to have a hard time selling them. Otherwise they would have sold the ones they already have. And since what most collectors have are common coins, that&#039;s why they think coin shows are bad places to try and sell their coins. In effect they are right, they just don&#039;t usually understand why they are right.</p><p><br /></p><p>And that brings us to what I termed as realistic prices. So what exactly are realistic prices ? You can also call them fair prices or real world prices, but market prices is probably the most accurate. Simply put they are not what most collectors think they are. Collectors tend to think of market prices being what they paid for a coin, or at least in that neighborhood. But in reality that is not the case at all. market prices are, always have been, and probably always will be, determined by the electronic dealer markets. The electronic dealer markets are where any dealer who is a member, and most are member of at least 1 and some all of them, where a dealer can go and buy a given coin in any given grade from another dealer any day of the week - at the current price, the current low Ask. </p><p><br /></p><p>Now you also have to understand that there are many Asks (asking prices) at any given time. Some may be quite high and they are usually just ignored, but there is always 1 low Ask. And, there is also 1 high Bid, and many lower bids. But the current market price is determined by that low Ask and that high Bid - always. And it can change from day to day. And all dealers know this.</p><p><br /></p><p>So, given that, if you are a collector trying to sell a coin to a dealer and you are asking X dollars for your coin, but he knows he can go and buy that same coin same grade for 20-30-40% or more less any time he wants - why in the world would he want to buy it from you ? That would be like you going to the most expensive furniture store in town looking to buy a new TV and paying X dollars for it - when you know for a fact you can go across town and buy the same TV for 20-30-40% less. Who&#039;s gonna do that ? And that is why market prices are set, determined, by the electronic dealer market. </p><p><br /></p><p>So no, when you go and try to sell a coin to a dealer, the dealer is not trying to rip you off, he&#039;s just not being stupid. He knows what the current market price is, the problem is, you the collector, usually don&#039;t. You think the coin is worth what you paid for it or at least somewhere around that. But it isn&#039;t, not in the real world. In the real world prices may have fallen by 50% since you bought that coin, or you may have simply paid too much for it. Or the reverse may be true and it may be worth a good bit more than what you paid, but that seldom happens. </p><p><br /></p><p>In the real world, at any given time any given coin in any given grade is only worth whatever the lowest asking price is on the electronic dealer markets. Sure, you can pay more than that for a coin, but that doesn&#039;t mean it&#039;s worth that much, it just means you were willing to pay that much.</p><p><br /></p><p>And that&#039;s why what happens at coin shows - happens. You, a collector,&nbsp; want to sell coins at a coin show - you can do it all day long at every show. But first, have something they want to buy, and be willing to sell it for a market price. That&#039;s the way the world works.</p><p><br /></p><p>And yeah, before somebody says it, I know there are unscrupulous people out there, people/dealers who will try and rip you off. They exist in all walks of life. But I&#039;m not talking about them, I&#039;m talking about the good guys, the guys who will offer you a fair price for your coins. You just have to know what a fair price really is - that&#039;s your responsibility. And that&#039;s also how you can tell the good guys from the bad guys.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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