What Would You Do?

Option 1

I'd pay the $100 and take my chances.


-MV

He set the price. It's not like you were attempting to lowball him.

I would do option 3. If I sincerely believed they were worth much more than I could pay with cash on hand and I had a good enough look in the box to convince myself that most if not all of them were not fakes, I'd go for option 5.

Pay the man his asking price and then ask him if he has any military medals and badges. Nice dream, when I go out looking all I usually find is way over priced junk.

I am on very good relations with a coin dealer who has the highest professional reputation recognized internationally.
The business auctions maybe more than $10 million in coins per year.

There would be a 'no brain-er' policy for such a client:
The coins would be auctioned, the client would take the price realized less fees.

The reputation of such an auction house / coin dealer is dependent on such a high level of professional integrity.

I consider option 1 to be somewhat dishonest.

tell him it's probably worth more but you'll have to check
the contents in detail to be sure. Ask him if he's sure he's still
willing to sell it for $100. if he does sell, then take it and
upon confirmation that it's a bargain, drop a random coin
into a charity box to try and pass the luck on to those
that really need it.

HH

Realistically, offer him $30 (or $20, or $10, or $5, depending on when in the day it is and what I intended to do that day) because I'm highly unlikely to have so much money nearby. Then say that if he can wait a few hours while I go fetch it, I would give him much more money (probably between $200 and $500).

If I actually have $100 on hand (say, if I already went out to buy some coins), probably something similar to option 4. Specifically, if I ever sell any of his coins, I'll try to give him at least half of the money (and yes, I'll probably say it initially).

Just in case: if he ultimately doesn't want to sell it anymore - well, I would just walk away sadly but won't be particularly worried. More than once I had found good deals on coins, and almost every time I specifically asked if the guy really still wants to sell that coin for the price they gave (and they almost always did - I'm not sure if I've ever received a negative reply).
...I'll try to make sure that at least I get my $100 back, however.

I had a dream or a day dream similar to this poll;

What if, you were given the opportunity to buy someone's inheritance but there were no really big money coins. Maybe a bunch of Indian cents, wheats, maybe a few silver dollars etc...

But there are rolls of cents, and you offer a fair price for the lot, but without looking in the rolls (you assume all pennies) Your in a hurry, the sellers in a hurry, no time to search through all the rolls.

You go on your way, and later you open the rolls, and find pennies, but you also find in it a gold piece.

I contemplated this, what would I do? Go back days later explaining what happened, perhaps offer more? Maybe just chalk it up to "Bank error in my favor" and take the win?

Its an interesting scenario, and a dream for most of us