Has Anyone Here Ever Found A Deal @ Littleton?

Littleton's quarterly coin catalogs were actually a big part of what increased my awareness of and interest in coins back in the day...should I be embarrassed now?

I concur with the rest of the responses, though. They do offer some good stuff (albeit at rather overinflated prices), but they peddle a lot of sets of junk as well, including plenty of colorized and gold-plated coins. At 8 years old, I thought some of that stuff was neat; now I just want to get rid of it but I'm not even sure my local coin dealer would touch it.

Their "coins on approval" stuff is something YOU have to opt out of - and it has caught a lot of customers off-guard over the decades. A lot of people have ended up billed hundreds of dollars for stuff they didn't know they signed up to get, which is a VERY risky and arguably unethical way to do business.

Everything posted above I agree with such as to be informed about the intro deals that are linked to clubs and their regular sending of coins to buy unless you cancel. The second issue is that they have their own graders and so many coins listed as uncirculated may actually be picked over bottom examples in some cases based on the grade they actually show on the coin sale listing, 'uncirculated' can be MS60 only in their grading. It would have to say Gem Uncirculated-65 to be a MS65. So pay close attention to grade listed for items vs this list. https://www.littletoncoin.com/LCC/h...tandards.pdf

Most of what you find there can be found elsewhere for less and also you have possibility to find higher grades that werent picked through unlike at littleton due to their own grading. There are occasionally deals such as online-only has some on their site and when they have sales with coupons, but the main ones that are worthwhile would be new items where they didnt pick them over grade wise. Otherwise your coins may be exactly as ordered, just possibly a higher price if your not paying attention.

More than 50 years ago, when I first started buying coins by mail, Littleton was one company I used a time or two. Didn't take me too long to learn to avoid them...

I too purchased coins from Littleton when I was a lad (late 60's)...I enjoyed receiving their monthly approval selections. Littleton got me interested in foreign coins...an area I still enjoy. I used Littleton as a stepping stone in my advancement from accumulator to collector to Numismatist. I just can't knock them from my point of view. They are expensive and there are no deals...but they can start you on the collecting road.

KK

I also got coins on approval from Littleton when I was a kid. Most of my LWC and Buffalo nickels came from them. I have no regrets, but it is not really something I would recommend now.

I believe it was P.T. Barnum who said, "There's a Littleton collector born every minute."

Littleton is good for beginners and for getting people interested in coins. Most of the good deals will appeal primarily to beginners and are value added products like short sets of indians or complete sets of SBA's. Very few advanced collectors will find any "good deals" among their offering except those that involve approvals also.

I should hope most of their customers discover other sources for coins very quickly but even it they don't at least their coins will be nice ones.

Companies like this have a very high overhead. If you think about it though most furniture stores and all jewelry stores mark up new product more than Littleton! It's simply unusual to see retail pricing in the coin business.