Paul Sims, Inc.

Purchased several rolls of "BU" morgans from Sims and they were what I would, unfortunately, consider to be average for the price at the time - in other words most were MS61, MS62 with a decent number of AU sliders included. Given the price paid though, I was satisfied with the purchase and their service.

If you order from SIMS I think you can expect to get what you pay for, but I would not expect any "great" deals. As for their comparison against Littleton, I would actually give Sims a "better rating."

I've bought most of my silver Maple Leafs from Paul Sims, and I've always been happy with them. I haven't bought too much else from them so I can't really comment on the non-buillion coins. Just one Proof Kennedy half that turned out to have a nice strike-through on it.

Rachel [:p]

I have not bought from them and I have no plans to do so.

tradernick, I don't know what the exact numbers are (I think about 3500 dealers) today vs. 30 or 40 years ago but most of the "Mom and Pop" coins shops around here went the way of the "Mom and Pop" Grocery Stores. I lived in suburban Chicago in the 60's,and could walk to 3 or 4 shops by my house and take a short bus trip to 4 or 5 more! I mean I could really shop, browse, hang out and learn! Some were multi- venue shops but about half were strictly coin shops. Now there are only 4 or 5 shops within 20-25 miles of home and most have very restricted hours or sell jewelry and other collectables as well. How does this stack up to others experience on this forum? Mike

I realize that there's good reasons for some people not to have a store.

There are however many dealers with multi-million dollar inventories that have shops AND set up at shows. Look at the front row of tables at any major show and you'll see many dealers with million+ inventories, and a store back home. Also, you can see Heritage, Spectrum, Stacks and many others that are generally considered major dealers. Then there's a lot of other large dealers like Silvertowne, David Lawrence, John Hamrick, National Gold Exchange, Rarcoa, etc. Do they have corner mom and pop type shops? No. Do they operate a retail business? Well, I could be wrong but I think that all of those dealers (hmmm except maybe Stacks) have office spaces or buildings with an area for viewing, selling, & buying coins. To me that constitutes having a shop, albeit the word shop doesn't really seem to fit.
I too have seen Littleton at FUN, Baltimore, ANA etc and always got the impression they were there to buy. But they're not someone that I generally do business with so I could very well be mistaken about that.

I'm not familiar with a Pecking Order and didn't mean to imply that there was one. Also, my point in the above post was not to knock dealers that don't have shops. Some of the best dealers I know don't have retail shops.

Personally I couldn't see myself without a shop. I tried it for a few years but missed it so much I almost went crazy. Running a shop has been the most rewarding work I've done in my life, and I've made some friendships that have endured through the years. It's the PEOPLE in the hobby that make me eager to get to work every morning.

To recap the point of my above post, I just think it's odd that there's a handful of advertisers in some coin publications that try to come across as major players in the market when they have no real prescence, either retail (store) or wholesale (shows) other than to walk the floor and buy coins that they can overgrade and sell to that segment of collectors that don't (or can't) attend shows, visit shops, join clubs etc. In many cases (NOT ALL) I think there's a lot of people being taken advantage of.

Nick