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 Replies: 18 / Views: 2,185 |
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Valued Member
United States
164 Posts |
I had a funny experience with a local coin dealer, And it goes to show that sometimes when the coin dealers lack knowledge on their own merchandise, It can be to your advantage. To try and keep a long story short, I used to buy bags of foriegn coins about a year or so ago (when I didn't even know what the word "Numismatic" ment) to search through them to try and find coinage from the years of world war 2. (Did find a few.) But after a while since I had no knowledge of the coins, I simply put them in the closet where they sat until I dug into them recently. After I went back to the coins, I got somewhat of a feeling of guilt. I spent over 90$ on the coins alltogether for them to just sit there in the closet, So I decided to go looking through the coins to figure out if I had anything rare to pay back the 90$ I purchased them with. It was in this thread that I made my first attempts at trying to find anything valuable, And the posters were nice enough to point out a coin that might be of interest (Thanks again guys  ), I did some research later, and I found out that the coin was worth 100$! More then enough to pay the money back that I had used to buy the coins in the first place. So the next day I excitedly bring my (Unwraped and unprotected) coin down to the same local coin dealer I had purchased the coins from a year ago. I hand the coin to the dealer, and I ask him how much its worth. "Oh, Its not worth anything, We get these things all the time" he said, As he litterally threw the coin from his left hand to his right and back, tossing the coin about while he was speaking. "Yeah we get these things in all the time, its not worth anything, sorry." After he was finally done speaking, I anxiously retrieved my coin, worrying that he would fling it across the room by accident. A week later that same coin sold on ebay for $119. (Mission complete.  ) Considering that the stores employees don't seem to do a very good job at cherrypicking the good dates, I'm considering again buying another grab bag from them.  (Though this time I've armed myself with the Krause catalog, I have to apologize again for spamming those coins before.  ) So the moral of the story is that you should not always trust what the coins dealers say without doing a bit of research first, heh. (And if you think you've found something precious, Wrap it in a flip before bringing it out of the house, If the dealer had flung that coin across the store into the wall, i'd be in a very different mood.  ) Edited by JOE
02/15/2009 06:25 am
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
20753 Posts |
Maybe you missed a chance there. You should probably tell that dealer that your kid likes those and you would like some more of them. And you'ld be willing to even pay $1 each and just for your kid. If he knows you don't have a kid, say it's for a neighbor's kid.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1231 Posts |
Joe, you will find that most coin dealers don't want to bother learning much about world coins or even dealing in them. Their loss and it makes for good cherrypicking.
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Pillar of the Community
United Kingdom
1077 Posts |
Well done you! What is it with people and their egos that they can't just admit when they don't know the answer to something, but instead feel they have to feed you some nonsense.
Whenever I go shopping for something (especially technical) I make sure I ask a tough question that I know the answer to. If the person says they don't know or gives me the correct answer then that's fine, I am more than willing to buy from them. But if they feed me a line, their sale is sunk!
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Pillar of the Community
United States
2049 Posts |
I've noticed that our local coin dealer gets sloppy from time to time. In the "common" Morgan dollar bin ($18/each) I found an 1899-P in F-12. I bought it and later sold it to a different dealer for $125. So it pays to cherrypick sometimes and to me, that's kind of fun. Sidenote: before anyone questions why I sold it to another dealer, I had listed it on here in the buy/sell section for about that same price recently and no one wanted it, so I got what I was looking for from a different dealer. |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
781 Posts |
I've had similar experiences with dealers who didn't know what they were selling. thinking he was simply selling old, obsolete, demonitized coins for just over face (since it was now "worthless), he unknowingly sold me a bunch of .500 silver composition coinage. arm yourself with knowledge and you can take advantage of those who would otherwise take advantage of you. "canis canem"
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Pillar of the Community
Australia
3831 Posts |
Congratulations. Good luck finding more awesome coins.  My partial coin collection http://www.omnicoin.com/collection/gxseriesMy numismatics articles and collection: http://www.gxseries.com/numis/numis_index.htmRegularly updated at least once a month. |
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New Member
United States
27 Posts |
I absolutely depend upon the US market disregarding world coinage. Last night I finished cataloging a small lot of world silver bought from an on-line auction house, had to pay more than melt value but received twice the price in catalog value. There was one coin which I already have, so it will be sold, probably for half the auction cost. One man's penny is another man's dollar.
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Valued Member
United States
259 Posts |
I wouldn't be so hard on the dealer based on that experience with bulk world coins.
I tried just a few days ago to sell about 14 pounds of world coins I had purchased for $5 to $9 a pound from various internet sources and none of the several dealers I went to would give me anything at all for them. So I went away completely empty handed.
There is a foreign currency exchange place near me that offered me $1 a pound for them. They just buy in bulk and operate more like a pawn shop. As I sifted thru the coins found a 1893 Canada five cent worth maybe $25 that I had overlooked. I pocketed it and took their offer of $1 a pound. I don't expect these dealers to sift carefully through a large bulk lot of coins to see if maybe there's a valuable coin in there before making their offer.
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Moderator
 United States
16679 Posts |
I deal with a dealer in AZ. from time to time and have seen people bring coins in for evaluation and after eavesdropping on their conversation, could see he is grossly underpaying these folks for their coins. I didn't care for his low balling, well, to make a long story short, I noticed a 1914-S Lincoln in VF on top of a stack of 1918-S Lincolns (which were AG-G coins for $1 ea.), he put the 14-S with the 18-S's. The 14-S had $1 on it. The rest is history swcoin.ecrater.com
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Pillar of the Community
Canada
1166 Posts |
I was in the antiques and collectibles business for a few years and with the variety of items that we sold, we did the best we could with quick research and pricing. There were items that we knew were valuable and those items were priced accordingly for the marketplace. But with all the different items that were antiques or collectible, there is no way to be an expert in every area. The same would apply to coin dealers. When you purchase (for resale) hundreds or thousands of coins (circulated, uncirculated, commemoratives, foreign, etc.), bills, tokens, ephemera, and whatever, things are going to slip by. Certain things are going to be obivous, and there are going to be things that look interesting and you research those. But, a day is only so long and you have to look after customers, answer the phone, put out stock, and move product to pay your bills. When a customer bought something from me that they got at a "steal", I wasn't upset. I knew that that customer would be back and would spend more time in the store looking for another deal. I would rather have customers in my store buying than to have tons of stock priced at catalogue prices and no one buying it. Just my 2 cents worth Oh! This was my 100th post  Edited by ikandiggit
02/15/2009 2:32 pm
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Pillar of the Community
United Kingdom
1077 Posts |
Personally I don't think it's about whether or not he was an expert on those coins. Or had the time to find out. It was about him being given one individual coin and asserting it wasn't worth anything. He should have said, "I'm sorry I don't know" or better still "Let me look that up for you".
Fair enough that he can't be an expert on all coins, but he should not when asked directly, value something that he didn't have a clue about as worthless just to try to come across as some sort of expert.
Just my opinion.
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Pillar of the Community
Canada
1166 Posts |
I agree  |
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
10284 Posts |
Quote:
As he literally threw the coin from his left hand to his right and back, tossing the coin about while he was speaking. I have sweat bullets just a few times after making this mistake. I never hand a coin to anyone out of packaging if it is collectible. Anything can happen in just a couple seconds from spinning the coin on a counter to rubbing it on a pants leg to shine it up. Dealer or not, it can happen at any time. Made me feel like handing a monkey a hand grenade the first couple times and then I was cured. |
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
10045 Posts |
Quote:A week later that same coin sold on ebay for $119. (Mission complete. )  Congrats--that's what makes collecting so fun, particularly for rare world coins that "slip through the cracks" at US dealers. I have found some inexplicable rarities in dealer stock, I mean $200+ coins staring at me in all their obviousness for only $2-5 apiece. And, I once erred by telling a dealer what I found--after purchasing. Don't do this-- ever, because you'll be marked for life. Edited by DVCollector
02/15/2009 3:51 pm
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Valued Member
United States
259 Posts |
I'd be inteested in knowing what the coin was. Then we can see whether the dealer was being uneasonable. What with shill bidding, assistance of confederates etc., the fact something sells for $119 on ebay doesn't prove anything at all. So what was the coin? And was yours the same year and in the same condition as the one that sold on ebay? Edited by chasinva69
02/15/2009 5:32 pm
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Replies: 18 / Views: 2,185 |
Posted 02/15/2009 09:34 am
