Littleton Coin Company, Thoughts?

I agree with the rebalancing of the last few posts. They are offering a commodity + a value added service in the sets. I too develop retail products for my profession, and the profitability in the service provided on top of the commodity is what pays the bills and supports families. A couple of my first numismatic buys where Littleton nickel sets back in the mid-nineties. Do I know now that I paid more than the commodity value of the coins, yes I do, In looking back on the fun of receiving it and how it further developed my interest in this hobby as a kid, that 2-3x over the commodity value wasn't unreasonable for what I received. I'm in an industry where some of my competitors routinely get 25-50x and I bet those griping about Littleton have a bunch of these other items in their bathrooms by the handful.

I will say the Coins in Approval is a sketchy way to earn revenue, however, but that might be a reflection of my younger generation too. Getting pulled into this and having to go to an effort to get out is lame.

Correct. Littleton is not interested in appealing to informed collectors, but only to uninformed casual readers. This has been their model for 6 decades or more.

HEY! There was one great club in years gone by, having nothing to do with coins, but of the same type.

SF&F Book Club. When people still bought books...

I quit and resigned a couple of times. I did alright in that club

I have only seen Franklin halves, Washington quarters and Silver Eagles in their original packaging. I do not know what the coins cost. Every coin I have seen from Littleton in the past two years has been under graded! By that I mean coins graded "Uncirculated" getting MS-65. Last week a SE graded Uncirculated was actually an MS-70. Two others were MS-69's.

Decades ago this company was considered "One of the full page advertisers that YOU STAY AWAY FROM." From what I've seen, they may have "cleaned up their act." So much so that I have complimented the owner on two occasions by phone.

I don't have any idea if their prices are high.

Smart move.

Never heard of them. What was their deal?

I agree that the key with Littleton is to grab what you want at a good/decent deal and jump ship ASAP. Among one or two other things, I received my 2 setts of 2008 Territories quarters from them for face that way.

Getting off-topic, but since it was brought up, wasn't at one time (way back) their deal providing Kodak 5254 (an emulsion for motion picture applications) repackaged for use in 35mm cameras? As I recall, you got back mounted tranparencies {slides} and negatives. The catch was that the film was not balanced for daylight and you needed a warming filter for natural looking color balance. But compared to a lot of still films of the day, the resolution and lack of grain was tremendous, so I used it a lot.