Astute Commentary From London Coin Shop Owner

Of little to know interest to people like me that are only into coins as a hobby. Yesterdays prices, to days prices and tomorrows prices and almost anything else about coins is just something for those that are into this all for money. For me it's just a hobby and I could care less about so many things that irritate, bother, worry, etc. others. I constantly hear about how right after you buy a coin, it's value drops. So what. Same when you buy a new car, boat, plane, etc. Think about all the hobbies that have come and gone and the values of those items. With coins this hobby has been around for even longer than me and that is a long time. I'd said this many times now. To me this is a hobby and values of stuff really has little space for concern.

Is this any different from taking something you bought new at Nordstrom's and shopping it a year later at Craigslist or ebay?

Disagree.

We are talking about a secondary market. That means used.

If you sell an item of clothing on ebay "new with tags," you won't get the full retail price either.

When the original retailer sells the item, they are targeting a specific type of customer. The same item, new, in the secondary market involves different types of buyers and sellers, and different dynamics.
Which results in a different price.

Perhaps the real difference is in the number of gullible customers for these types of products? Buyers of most other types of products expect them to decrease in value when they leave the showroom.
If we argue that the "collectibles" market is different, then I will argue that there is always high risk in identifying what is a collectible upon release, and anyone playing that game should be aware of those risks.

To me, what Mr. Lobel's comment misses is the third party involved here (the first two being the mints, and dealers): the naive buyers looking for someone on whom to vent their frustrations ...
In my opinion, rather than whining about either the mints or the dealers, perhaps they should look in the mirror (or better yet, pick up a book on managing financial risk).

Sure, I get it that he doesn't want to alienate potential customers by calling them out for their naivete.
So, I'll do it.

Not really. You can have sealed US mint products and a lot have still lost value, same with the still in package things from other mints.




Coin's aren't clothes. What you are still missing is there is a difference between losing value and 90% plus being worth less than half on a consistent basis. The only chance most things have of increasing is a top pop grade, even the top pop grades on many things sell at or below issue prices, ask Canada how well it's gone with them trying to sell $100+ an ounce silver products that were over priced.

Anyways blame whoever you want, he was spot on about the greed of the mints

If I don't like the price of something at Best Buy I can go to Walmart or vice versa along with countless other options. Government monopolies (which is exactly what the mints are) don't have markets. The aftermarket is the first true test of what they are putting out. You literally go to jail if you set up a mint that made exactly what they were making so there is a huge difference and free market rules do not apply.

All mints offer discounts to big buyers which is fine, but with the world mints some of these discounts can be substantial. There is plenty of profit in the pricing and the mints themselves would rather just deal with distributors if they could instead of the public where you have to ship a lot more and deal with more returns.

The dealer was spot on about how the mints are gouging on many items where only the highest graded hold up. Coins aren't a consumable, or something that is worn, or played, they're essentially in the same condition a year later as when you bought them but now the $100+ coin is worth $40 is you're lucky.

Like it or not as he mentioned drops of that magnitude do turn people off from collecting. If you aren't familiar with some of the premiums these world mints are charging you might want to take a look, makes the US mint look like a discount shop

Except others can make almost identical cars and BMW has to compete against other car makers. BMW also has to sell cars to stay in business.

The mint doesn't have to compete against anyone, no one else can make coins for their country (with few exceptions on the world mint scale for major mints which is what was being discussed) and they don't have to sell a single thing to collectors in order to make money for the year. The US mint has no competition for US coins, same for The Royal Mint, Canadian mint, Perth is technically an Aussie mint but for collector coins they don't directly compete with overlapping products anyway and so on.




The 100+ an ounce silver products that were referenced almost all have mintages of several thousand or more.

Here's a good example https://www.mint.ca/store/coins/1-o...w_Releases_&

105 USD at the time of this posting with a mintage of 5k. A sellout would be over a half million USD in revenue, if their production costs are anywhere close to that they are extremely mismanaged.

Don't get me wrong I actually am a big fan of the world products and think they do a better job than the US mint especially on ultra moderns, but I do also understand that a lot of the silver products prices have exploded in the last couple years trying to take advantage of the increased popularity