I feel, based on price, the TRUE indicator of a coins price in the open market place is
ebay. No doubt about it.. I have been compiling data now for over a year now and just what I want for my collection, I can say with all certainty this.
ebay is the BEST indicator of what the market will pay for ones coins, not dealers.
NOW, let me say this- I think John100 and SilverDon are on to something. What follows are my observations, I am not saying its gospel but I feel strongly about what I am observing by comparing my data and what goes on with sales-
1- coins commissioned by dealers are the kiss of death for anyone looking to make money on them long term. The premium either is not there in the secondary market or runs out fast.
2- I cant pin this one down, and I bet no dealer will EVER EVER EVER admit this but this is what I think is happening, based on tracking auctions on
ebay. Said dealer has a ton of inventory thats not moving. He bought a massive lot from the
RCM or a distributor. He wants to move it on, so he passes it on to another dealer and strikes a deal, so dealer X says "ok, give me a deal on these and I will move them". A deal is struck so low that dealer X now turns the coins over to a grading agency... then flips them on
ebay, as graded coins.
Why do I say this? Well, I have been tracking a ton of dealers and merchants on
ebay, and been tracking
RCM NCLT coins that I want and along the way I am running into coins that been popular...and this is the scenario I am seeing. There are some dealers on
ebay who are running auctions for coins with nothing but slabbed coins,, sometimes the coins already been out for a year to 6 months... and they run auctions on
ebay,, but they are doing say, 20-30 of a certain type coin, or even more. This same pattern repeats itself.
SO... when this auctions happen, this slabbed graded coins are coming in anywhere between 20-50% roughly of their sale price from the
RCM.
I been following this type of selling for well over a year now...
anyways, thats what I got to share. This is killing our hobby to a degree.
I will say this too... I REALLY WISH... we all got together or someone did,, and did a real time data base of all coins broken out first by releases from government mints. THEN, add data from the what happens on
ebay. With enough data, we could certainly know what a coins TRUE worth is,, we';d get a fair price from collector to collector.
To me, coins are very much like my job as a market trader. It reminds me of IPOs. XYZ company IPOs their company at 100 dollars a share, and lets price it in CAD or whatever currency you wish. THEN on release day, it sells at the initial offering... 100 dollars. But then in a week, XYZ stock falls, gradually. A week later, ABC company has an IPO,,, and ABC stock gets released on the market and it sells at 100 and runs to 200.. and then it slowly grinds higher.
WELL.. I see this same type of price action on coins from the
RCM, the US Mint, etc.
SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO,, if we had a database, real time,,, based on release price from the mint and then from
ebay sales data, I think our hobby would flourish because it would create a healthy market place where folks could know what a coins worth,,, to know whats a fair price.
anyways, I apologize for rambling... I wish we could do this, I know I would be interested in being involved in a project like this...
oh one last thought- if you find a dealer is selling some type of coin and its a "special" or mark down,, it means the coin was a big bummer or disappointment and not received well by collectors or the market place. Therefore, if its dropped from 100 to 80,,, and it "seems" like a deal, I am very certain that 80 dollars will get slashed AGAIN and AGAIN till the dealer gets rid of the coin. Why do I say this? ... because I have tracked dealers doing this and they all exhibit this same type pattern.... in terms of price.
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Posted 11/21/2014 6:46 pm
