The Woes Of Being A Coin Dealer ... Funny Story!

I get customers like that all time. More common than you think. On the flip side is the following expericance:

I was a newbie dealer, and the local b and m dealer had taken pity on me and helped me out from time to time. I used to go through his melt bag and pull coins out for melt plus 10 percent.

One day, I'm sitting at a case going through the days purchases, when a guy comes in and also wants to sell Buffalo nickels.

He argued with owner and he too wanted one dollar each. He said "I saw it on the internet" ( lol). Finally the owner real nicely tells him that he can sell them for a quarter a piece. On his way out he asked me if I wanted to buy them. I look at the owner and he nods and goes back to his reading. I aske to see them and as he told the owner, I had to pay for them before I could see them. I almost passed and asked him how many he had. So he pulls out a whitman folder and counts them. He looks up and says "65". I want 65 dollars. Well....knowing that a full set is 65, I decided to take the gamble and give him the money. He hands the album over and sure enough, a full set of full date Buffalo's.

I showed Randy, the owner, after the customer left. He took one look and shakes his head and congradulated me. He said a year later that he wanted so bad to have me give the set to him. It was his shop after all. But then he thought that since he had passed on it, and I HAD asked permission.....

More times than most the stuff that goes out the door is junk. But every once in awhile.........

Funny story - but I don't think I would have let him back into the store a second time.

These are such interesting insights into coin dealer transactions with customers.

The SAD thing is, dopes like that turn around and get on YELP and other sites and give bad reviews to dealers like this.

That place actually seems to think that "ancient coins" == "Greek and/or Roman"; they have a few ancient Indian coins in their "world coins" list!

That said, if the prices are in US dollars (as appears to be the case), it's all way out of my league, anyway.

Believe me, half of $75, never mind half of a three-digit sum, is already an awful lot of money.

If the 2014/15 exchange rate jump didn't happen, and exchange rates were still where they used to be in 2011-13, I'd have at least considered paying $40 or more for a coin. (Indeed, I have bought many large silver coins for similar amounts in April 2011, when the exchange rates were much better.)
At the current exchange rates, I'd probably only pay that much if it's either gold, very large silver (though that's more about the $20-30 range), or an extremely rare country.

EDIT: I can't agree with the "always a bargain" comment - I have seen too many dealers whose entire coin inventory consists of common modern coins for ludicrous prices.
Though I suppose even then it's theoretically possible that one of them is a really rare variety; and, in any case, as long as we limit it to dealers that sell mostly coins, I agree entirely.

That was good for a laugh.