Here's What A Coin Shop Offered For The '11 ASE Set

@Eaglefoot

I certainly do not take any comfort in your situation. Hopefully you can chalk it up as a learning experience and have more tempered expectation the next time this sort of thing comes around. I for one, was disappointed with the amount of speculation with the issue as I spent about two hours trying to complete an order.

That said, I think you aren't totally stuck. My advice is to parce the piece out into separate auctions. You should be able to get most of your investment back. holding onto it is not a great option as people will trade this back and forth ad infinitum at 100,000 coins- it is not scarce.

There are more dealers than your local brick & mortar outfit. I sold 3 raw sets to a dealer in Maryland when prices were higher. You could check with APMEX too. It would not hurt to check around some more before you go the ebay route.

Gambling always has two possibilities...you win or you lose. And sometimes a lesson learned early is best anyway...don't blame the dealer

For those who didn't know.... I bought TWO 5 coin sets from the Mint, and sent them both to PCGS once I got them. And paid the extra (what was it ? $15.00 per coin for the First Strike designation?)

I always planned on keeping the best of the two Sets once they came back. The one I'm keeping has two perfect 70's in it. (not the two I wish, but oh well)

I hear what most are saying here....and do take it to heart.
I certainly don't "blame the dealer".....it was more of just a shock at the reality that I wasn't aware of with these at the time.
I assumed that having a "graded set" versus a "raw set" would massively increase the premiums for the awesome "never before done" Sets.
I assumed that PCGS, (regarded as the best by most folks), slabbed Sets would garner the best prices and remain standing at "the Top" of the heap throughout all of the fallout.
I assumed that paying the "extra" for the FS designation, above and beyond the initial cost of grading, would increase my premiums EVEN FURTHER, to make that extra cost worthwhile as well.
I assumed that this would be the way to go for these Sets, and I'd have my one Set to keep for free, WITH extra money in my pocket.

I assumed......I assumed......I assumed....I assumed.
How many times have I been told in my life.... NEVER TO ASSUME !

I was not, and am still not a collector of "slabbed coins".I did this "one time thing" to finally be one of those folks who "got on a good thing"......for once.

I've never done ebay before, don't know anything about it, except that I'd have NO SELLING HISTORY...which I assume would not bode well for me......but my wife has done Craigslist a couple of times, maybe I'll have her try that and see what happens.
Especially since the whole "buy one sell one" is what she was behind in this thing....(or that I could make enough money for selling one set to pay for the whole kittenKaboodle).
She would have been fine not to have bought anything at all.....this was all me.....

I'm going to walk around in a Donkey outfit for the next few months just to punish myself !.....

We'll see what Craigslist produces....then to the coin shop I guess. (and I suppose by this time, he'll have lowered his offer to $425.00 for the set ! ....)

With the average slobbed coin selling for over $1000, a $30 fee is only 3%. When you're sending in $200 coins and paying $75 for all the bells and whistles, that jumps to 37.5%.

I'm not a fan of the belief that slabbing coins "increases" their value. It merely obligates by contract which company will guarantee value at a designated grade and some people put more faith in one company over another.

In the end (and I say this as an avid ASE collector) the only sure value of a bullion coin like an ASE is its bullion content .... and that jumps around in today's market, too. :-)

There used to be a saying 'buy the coin not the slab' I think it still holds true but dealers attitudes have changed significantly over the last couple of years at least the ones in my area.
Used to be if a coin was VF it sold for VF prices regardless of any plastic housing. Now I hear all the time 'But this one is in a PCGS holder' and the price is hugely inflated just for that reason. Then add the CAC sticker and you go up even more... I had a very heated discussion with one dealer at the last show I went to about this. He was adamant that the slab and the CAC sticker doubled the price of the coin from grey sheet.
Yet when an offer to sell was made by me the response was 'I'll pay grey sheet ask regardless of the Slab or sticker...'

People are getting too hung up on the TPG thing and the emphasis has gone away from the coin. I agree with what's been said here, your mistake was the grading part. You gambled and lost but that's why its called gambling... They are after all bullion ...

Pretty please post a pick of the donkey suite and on a brighter note you will eventually be forgiven by the better half believe me I know from personal experience..

The last raw set sold on ebay for a very nice price of $750

The last SINGLE coin NGC Reverse Proof PF70 from the set sold for $569.95...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/2011-P-SILV...em4843a658cf

and the last SINGLE coin NGC MS70 S mint coin sold for $360.99

http://www.ebay.com/itm/2011-S-SILV...em2ebaeb3961

That's around $930 for just the two coins....

I sent 15 sets in for grading by NGC and got 8 complete 70 sets with a few spare 70's. It was well worth the investment.

Any graded set can easily become a raw set but it doesn't work the other way around...a good way to dump your lower grade coins is by cracking them out and making up a raw sets. You will never know the history of that raw set you bought. The only way to be sure it is original is to buy an unopened box and pay that premium. THAT makes much more sense to me anyway than an open box set..