Coin Price Differences Between Ebay, LCS, And Shows

I would not say those prices are very far off.

I do think a person could develop a good relationship with
dealers at a LCS or coin shows, and buy a little cheaper.

I have gotten some of my best bargains on ebay. Coin shows and coin stores can also have decent prices as well. I have a target price for each coin I buy and if I can find it at that price, I buy it. Occasionally, I have to revise my prices upwards when I can't find what I want at the price I want. This is typically for scarce items, not commons.

Lots of things to consider with this subject. For example if buying on line with ebay or any place on line, you must really add in the additional costs of postage, handling, insurances, wrong coins sent, wrong coins shown, lost in mail, etc. This is the one great advantage of a coin store or coin show. You get what you see and no extra charges.
However, with coin shows you also must realize that for large shows dealers have traveled some distances, have to have a place to stay, eat food in restaurants and other expendatures due to just being there. Also, large shows the table rentals are much higher than at a small show. This all means that in order for a dealer to pay for all this, they mush raise the prices of their coins accordingly.
Now with a local coin store, again, the dealer must raise money to pay for gas, electric, phone, water, possible rent and yet support a family maybe. And all this is from selling coins or coin stuff.
In other words, the prices of coins can vary excessively due to many reasons. I found the local coin show is still the best place to buy a coin.

I appreciate the OP not calling me out, but I felt compelled to respond as I am the "other member" that started this whole thing in the other thread.

Carl, let me help you and others think about costs in a way that a business would and it might make the dynamic a little clearer. Most all the costs you talk about, food, lodging, and table fee for shows as well as lights, rent, salaries for shops are examples of fixed costs. If it costs me $1,000 to do a show all told, I need to sell $10,000 at 10% margins to break even. After that, all my gross profit becomes net profit. The same is true of a shop that costs $10K a month to run. After $50K a month in business at 20%, you are making money. Fixed costs don't have to be passed through to consumers directly as you can always grow out of them with increasing volume of sales.

ebay fees are variable costs. They scale with volume, so there is no growing out of them. I sell $1,000, I pay $130. I sell $10,000, I pay $1,300. Variable costs always need to be passed through to consumers as they directly reduce the profit received per transaction. This is why I can state without significant data or further analysis that ebay prices are going to be at least $13% higher than at shows. For low cost items, it will be even higher as postage is involved. Yes, you pay for the postage whether its free shipping or not. Its a variable cost and you pay for it either directly or through higher prices.

Now, shops have high fixed costs, but low variable costs. I sometimes get decent deals at shops. Generally not as good as shows, but better than ebay.

I find sell through rates to be similar on ebay and at shows. I am not putting things up at auction starting at $0.01 just to get it to sell at whatever. I know what the price needs to be to make a reasonable margin after costs and fees and I set a BIN there. My sell through rate is comparable to the rate that things sell at shows. At shows I have less audience, but my prices can be 15% lower. Its also hard to compare as there's lots of low value stuff I can bring to a show that is not even worth photographing and auctioning on ebay. You could sell $500 of it at a show, $2-$10 at a time. Its maybe 50% profit, but you can't do that on ebay.

For me it does not matter if I am buying from a LCS, coin show, ebay, Heritage, Great Collections as I use past realized auction prices from ebay, Heritage and Great Collection to determine the value and my offer or bid price for a coin. All selling venues can be overpriced on a given coin or offer a bragin price. I have made some of my best bargain buys on ebay. The biggest value at a coin show is to see the coin in hand before the purchase and to have access to multiple dealers and if you get an excellent price on a coin, it is a added bonus.

So many things are various. And so much depends on the day, the location, the economy, etc. Where I live there used to be 4 coin shows a Month, now only 3. Used to be many, many coin stores, now not so many. Yes on line sales are part of this. Yet not all. In some areas the sale of coins is just not as good as other places. A coin store is only good if the owner can find material to sell. One large store I know of has turned to selling stamps, baseball stuff, old artifacts, etc. due to low sales of coins. Yet the one thing I seldom hear about with coin purchases via the internet is wrong coins, fakes, lost in mail, etc. Everyone always brags about the successes but so few brag about their losses.
As to the original question. Just to many possible differences in the coins, the hobbiest, the location, the economy, etc.