Getting My Foot In The Door In The Business Of Numismatics

What are you missing here? It doesn't matter that you "know what you're doing." Every single one of those transactions is illegal, and if you chose to never ship a coin the buyer has no legal recourse against you. You can't be held liable as an adult.

If you work out the otther issues, one place to start might be to go to some local pawn shops / gold buying outfits, ask if they are selling their stuff on the internet and if not, offer to sell it for them as an experienced eBayer for a percentage of the profits. You may not make a bunch, but most of them have no idea what they have and just buy and sell within a spread around melt, so someone selling their better items numismatically should be able to make some extra for both parties.

And thats how I would be selling and buying on ebay, or Amazon. Or better yet if we are being legal they would be selling it but I would be listing it and receiving the income from the transactions

Pricing and dealer markup in the coin business varies depending on quite a few factors. Grade and scarcity are very important. Unfortunately, there are no shortcuts, in order to be successful you need to be able to grade quickly and accurately. A Grade of "F" is actually a "Fine" coin.. not Fair. On a Liberty or V nickel a grade of "F" means you can read all of the letters of "Liberty" on the obverse, the dentils are complete and the leaves on the reverse show detail. V nickels graded Fine rarely sell for 5 for $3.75, Most V nickels that sell for this price are common dates and will grade between AG(About Good) and G(Good). Dealers generally sell them for around 75 cents to $1 each. Better date coins will of course, sell for more. My suggestion to you would be to take your time, learn to grade and study as many coin series as you can so you know which are key dates and which aren't. You might start by buying a book on coin grading and grade every coin you get back in change.

There are several good grading books on the market. Grading Coins by Photgraphs, the ANA Grading book, Making the grade, etc... You should check them out and buy one. After a while, you're grading skills will get better, and you'll feel better about your grading. PCGS also has a wonderful on-line grading site that you should check out...

http://www.pcgs.com/Photograde/

I also agree w/ BlackRabitCoins when he said that you should take your time, learn to grade and study as many coin series as you can so you know which are key dates and which aren't.

Coin dealing is not easy as many have previously stated. Have you been over to Corbin's Coin & Stamp yet? Talk to Del... I'm sure he'd answer any questions you may have.

Also, are there any local coin clubs that you could join. They are good sources of information, and usually have several dealers as members that you could talk to.

In response to Dave H there is really no good ones that I'm aware of. There are coin clubs but not good ones. And I have called Del and talked to him but I dont him t feel like I'm one day gonna steal all his business because we live in the same city. Id love to have somebody from this forum mentor me cause id feel more comfortable about it that way I'm not stepping on toes.

Actually, I think he may have said "If you want to make a small fortune selling coins, start will a large fortune"

loganjonathan, these guys are all providing valid opinions which you are absorbing quite well for someone your age. Since your parents are selling on ebay with your help, you have a huge jump start on understanding the mechanisms of the market. If I were to chime in with advice, it would be to start with smaller transactions and transition over from what you are doing now. You can pick pieces that you can afford to lose some money one if things go south and then learn from those experiences. I think another advantage to your age is the ability to flex with the current market. It it turns out that it is not worth it, you still have your current business.

Kudos to you for your business chutzpah. I have bought coins that I intended to sell and have yet to sell a one.

SsuperDdave, what is SEO?