Price Gouging At A Coin Show

Man, it's a free market. Dealers are allowed to price their coins the way they see fit, and collectors can shop elsewhere if they don't like it. It's as simple as that.

Funny you mention "survival of the fittest". In class today, a teacher and another student got into a philosophical debate. It somehow got onto anarchy. My teacher argued that "survival of the fittest would have absolutely no chance because if that was the true case, then why would a mother give a "weak, unfit" child unconditional love and protection? If no mother was to protect the child, sticking the the "survival of the fittest" philosophy, then no babies would last in this world, then human existence would fade away. Same case with the coin thing, if strong dealers always prey on weak customers, then how is it possible the business/industry will last?

When I was around 16 years old a local coin shop put a big ad in the newspaper. (This was during the early 80's) He was buying all coins at multiples of their face value. Wheatie pennies were fetching 2.5 cents each. My father gave me a bunch to sell. (I didn't collect coins back then and I wished I would have kept them.)

The owner was gabbing away with two guys trying to buy their gold coins when he wrote me out a check. His store was in a bank building so I just had to take the elevator down to cash it. I was quite surprised when I got $600. (Instead of $6.00) I walked out of the bank pretty happy until I started thinking about whether I would get in trouble over it. I went to see a friend of my fathers, who was in the legal game, and she said to just go back to the bank and explain that it was a mistake.

The bank clerk who cashed the check and a manager said they were waiting to see if I came back or not. It seems the coin store owner came in and 'ran around' trying to find me and saying he needed to stop the check immediately. He even wanted to call the police and claim I had commited fraud. The bank manager showed me the check which said '600' and 'Six and.....00/100". So it was an honest mistake all around. Oh, but the coin dealer is a businessman and he can't be out. The manager said he ranted and raved and I was kicked out of his store forever, etc., etc... It was no big deal since he was arrested shortly afterword. Seems he melting down stolen silver and got caught. I always wondered if buying up all of those coins didn't have something to do with covering up what he was really doing.

Anyway, my point is this.A dealer tries to screw you over and and people think buyer beware, business as usual. But if the businessman gets screwed, stop the check, call the cops, and get the hell out of Dodge.

It's called hypocracy. A concept which should have no place in any form of collecting.

quote:

---

A dealer tries to screw you over and and people think buyer beware, business as usual. But if the businessman gets screwed, stop the check, call the cops, and get the hell out of Dodge.

---

Well to top it off your situation wasn't a deliberate, premeditated act of fraud. HE wrote the check incorrectly.

But you're right. The hypocracy exists and it's rediculous. My wife took her car in to have the AC system repaired. The auto shop charged her $50 just to look at the car and quote $850 to fix this and that. So she took it to another place that fixed it for less than half the quoted price, saying the other place overcharged for parts and some of the work didn't need to be done.

So it was a win win for them. Charge $50.00 to spend 10 minutes looking at the car. Quote a rediculous amount to fix it. If the sucker bites they make tons of money. If they don't they just got $50 for basically nothing.

How many people get messed up everyday by businesses and how often do they get in any sort of trouble?

I'm sorry to sound so cynical but the car thing just happened and I'm still kind of ticked about it. :)

All these cases just goes to show how nasty and disgusting some businesses are. THose people simply have no clue of what is called legitimacy and are just plain wrong. Anyway, what would your definition of "price gouging" really be?

A seller taking advantage of a customers lack of knowledge is on the customer, not the seller.

Price gouging is when demand temporarily outweighs supply and the seller charges a premium over the actual worth of the item in question.

Yes, it is unethical to deliberately mislead someone into either paying too much, or buying under-market.

It's still on the customer to do their own research.

Haggling over price points is prevalent. Somebody says, "how much do you want for this silver dollar?" The dealer will more than likely quote a price higher than they expect to get. If the customer accepts that price, and pays "too much", well, what do you expect the dealer to do? Say, "oh wait a minute, I over-priced that."?

I used to sell cars (please don't hold this against me...). My very first day on the sales floor I had a customer come in looking for a "red sporty car". We test drove every red car on the lot. Then, I remembered my demo car was a "red sporty car." We drove that one and she fell in love with it. This car didn't have a sticker on it. When we went back inside I went and looked up the sticker price. The sticker was $11,800. I knew the car had about 5000 miles on it so when I went back in the office I told them the sticker price was $12,500 in order to give myself some room to negotiate. They immediately said, "We'll take it." They got out a checkbook and started to the write a check. At that point what should I have done?

I went to the sales manager and explained what had happened. First he was impressed that I sold a demo car for more than sticker, but after we talked we came up with a solution. We told the buyer that we had a special deal on demo's that I wasn't aware of, seeing as how this was my first day, and tag, title and tax was included in the price.

In my coin dealer example above, if the dealer is making a very good profit he might throw in a lesser value coin as a "special" to make up for it, but, then again he might not.

In the example that started this thread, if Sports Writer says to the dealer, "$15? I'll give you $10." and had not made a big deal about the original offer, he might have gotten the set for less than the $14 he ultimately paid for it.

Caveat emptor.

OK, I get what you're saying. I guess we were talking about two different things. You were referring to the original post, but your reply came right after my example of the auto-shop way overcharging their estimate. They grossly inflated the cost of parts and qouted work that didn't need to be done.

But yeah, as far as haggling goes it's up to the buyer. I generally hate haggling because to me it seems like a childish game. I prefer the Saturn "one price" for everyone policy. But... having to haggle sometimes is just the reality of life.