Buyers Code Of Honor...please Weigh In..

for me the answer is easy as I have faced it several times. If it is something I want and know I can afford I have told the owner to go to a coin shop to get an offer, come back to me and I will beat it by 10%. Fair for the owner and I still get a good deal.

If it is beyond my means or outside of my area of collecting I direct the owner to a dealer whom I have dealt with for over twenty year who I know is fair. Both have worked very well for me.

How much is your integrity and a clean conscience worth to you? Mine is worth more than discounted coins. I bet yours is, too, or you wouldn't have made this thread. Personally I'd never enjoy a coin knowing I took advantage of someone's ignorance to buy it.

Great Opinions! One issue I face here, is there is no Coin dealer within 30 miles that is trustworthy. The only one I know of, the owners are ruthless and offer a 10th of the value. My friend who owns the pawnshop, says people come in after leaving the Gold&Silver shops with ridiculously lowball offers for melt on Morgans, Barber Halfs, and that is sickening. I told him to buy anything Pre1900 at 10% more then the scrap offer and I will cover it. You cant save the world, but anytime I can try and help someone, I do. I take pride in my integrity, and cannot say I have taken advantage of anyone who was in a position to come out better on the deal. When you have a 20 something kid bring you a box of Morgans saying his great Aunt Left him these and just needs "Bill" money.....number one its probably not for bills(drugs..), number two those coins would be bought for melt and some jerk would make 200% profit on it. Now if it was any other scenario: wife/children selling collection of deceased, or older person selling collection to supplement retirement, EVERY TIME I would go out of my way for FREE to help them get a better deal...

I wouldn't do consignment with people who don't care about coins, they just want cash now and don't have the patience needed to get top dollar for consigned items. If you cannot finance the purchase yourself, well, talk to family and friends and get some financing together! That's how I did it when I acquired my first big collection to flip a few years back. Needed $20k, had $5k myself, borrowed $15k, made about $4k selling everything, paid my financiers $2k and made $2k for myself. They were pumped to get 10% on their investment in less than a month. Today, I believe I could pull together as much as $100k in financing within a couple weeks if necessary... however with collections that size, I'd much prefer to simply act as a middleman, get a couple grand for my trouble in ensuring they get maximum value, and be done with it. What I really, truly enjoy is the process of discovering, inventorying and grading material from large collections... it's a lot of fun and you never know what you'll find in the next box or bag of junk silver.

As a general rule of hand, items I flip, I pay about 80% of retail for. For stuff I want to keep for my personal collection, I pay 95%-100% of retail for. The profits I make on other material covers most of the cost of stuff I keep, only a small portion comes out of my pocket, I'd say 10% or less of actual value. It's a win/win situation, the clients get way more than a dealer will offer them and I make some money in the process, and often enjoy the process of selling the material for them. On top of that, the proceeds allow me to build my collection at low cost.

I frequently buy coins from an antique mall that does consignment. The sellers aren't even there & the owner doesn't price the items. Sometimes I get a good deal, sometimes I get a good laugh.

You did a good thing IMO. What were the family's reactions when you told them the true value?

Part of a problem like that old saying, you can take a horse to water but you can't make him drink.
I myself think I am rather honest but so many many times it is just futile trying to help someone. For example at a coin show a dealer was busy talking to someone he possibly knew. On his table was a box of Indian Head Nickels with a sign, 3 for $1. As he was blabbing away I picked a few and one was a 3 legged one and most others were almost AU. I tried to tell him but he rudely said read the sign. I looked some more and found many other great ones. Again I tried to interrupt him but now he looked irritated so I picked up 15 of them, handed him a $5 bill and walked away.
I've run into similar situations in the past. Some people just don't care. I've gotten into some bad situations with relatives about what to do with valuable items left from someone that died. Usually it all ends up that someone is trying to screw someone with values of items and lots of new relative bad feelings.
It is nice to try to be honest but as so many people find out, so many coin dealers, pawn shop people, coin store people, etc. will take you for as much as possible. So just who can you really trust?

I was put into this same situation about a year ago. It was a friend and I knew he was going to go dump them at the first scrap place he came up on. So I bought them at his price. He was shocked when two weeks later I brought him another $1800.00. So yes you are right you should never sell yourself for a few coins.