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My question, is it bad that I'm buying a coin every week? My average spending on actual coins is $8 per week.
I don't see why that would be "bad"; if you can afford $8 a week to buy coins, then by all means do so. If you can afford more, buy more. As for "once a week", I did much the same thing. Back when I collected the mail for my coin club, there was a coin dealer just across the road from the post office; I'd check the mail every week, and every week I'd visit the dealer at the same time.
A good, working relationship with a dealer (or better yet, a couple of dealers) is something every collector should strive for. A good dealer values repeat business, and will work hard to keep it. If a dealer knows they have a regular, reliable, hassle-free customer, they're much more likely to offer you discounts and go out of their way to acquire things that you might be interested in buying.
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The problem is how do I find exactly what I'm looking for from a reputable dealer at a reasonable and fair price?
One thing I would recommend here is attending a coin show; there, you'll get the opportunity to check out a whole bunch of dealers at once. Visit the dealers in person; check out what kinds of coins they sell, and make a note of the ones that look the best to you. Then go home, and research those names on the web to see if anyone online has anything particularly good (or bad) to say about them.
Then there's your dealer friend. Ask them if they could obtain the sorts of things you'd be interested in. Even if they're not prepared to do a one-off favour and order it in especially for you, if enough of their customers come in and ask for those same things, sooner or later the dealer will get the message and order some in. Finally, if it's something they have absolutely no interest in stocking, they probably have someone they'd recommend who does stock it.
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...am I doing something wrong in not being able to find things?
My only recommendation there is to be prepared to be flexible when it comes to "fair price". If you're after a particular coin, but all the examples of it you find for sale are "too expensive", then perhaps it's time to acknowledge that the actual "fair price" is higher than you expected.
It all depends, of course, on what information you're using to determine "fair price". If you're using the PCGS price guide, you'll find the whole world is apparently full of bargains. On the other hand, if you're using a
RedBook that's a few years out of date, everything's going to appear to be "too expensive".
In the end, some coins may remain elusive. I've got some coins on my
wantlist that have been there ever since I started keeping a wantlist, eight years ago.
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
Posted 10/23/2008 06:37 am
to CCF
