Ebay Is Now My Main Coin Store. Sigh.

one shop in LA?

No, one in my city. Alhambra. I'm sure there are plenty in L.A.
There are many cities within Los Angeles County that have coin shops. There is also one in Pasadena, where the Rose Bowl is, but it's small and dirty Very unorganized shop.

I am with biggfredd here. Sounds to me like a COIN dealer who is doing a brisk business and thats all. Wait, its not all.

This dealer is doing a brisk business and the person who usually does the collector grading is DYING. The shop is having trouble replacing their DYING grader. So you are asked to wait a few HOURS for the other folks to pick up the slack of the DYING man. Not unreasonable IMO.

We are lucky to have several dealers in Northern VA alone. We go accross the bridge to MD and there are a good 4 or 5 in resonable driving distance. Then if I wanted to dodge bullets in DC or Baltimore, add even more. So we are lucky.

Our main store, the owner is a crotchety guy, but he warms up as soon as he knows you are a serious collector. I constantly tell him he needs to realize that solely silver and gold transactions are a good thing. they can drive the business far beyond pure numismatic transactions can. So you have a counter full of Maple Leafs, Pandas, Eagles and Britannias to satisfy that.

He complains about customers trying to buy all of his cheaper Morgans. Obvious silver people or bulk dealers. I tell him just say nope and be done with it. He doesn't want to deal with the silver stuff, so he has sold out all his Eagles and wont get anymore. He still does a brilliant business, but he is losing money IMO.

So back to the original point, that dealer is still a coin dealer. They are simply being smart and making money, as is the point of having a business. It does suck that grading guy is dying and isn't there to be that personable guy to talk coins with, but cancer kind of puts a damper on things like that. That doesn't make this dealer just a bullion dealer.