Just An Observation.....

Most of the time when we buy errors or silver from members we know Exactly how it was acquired. If you have something a member wants and they are willing to pay a premium then good for you for making a profit and filling someone's hole in a collection.

Anyone object to buying silver from another member for 7x face that you Know they got for face value from CRH?

I think not

You are also utilizing excessive amounts of time that others might not have the luxury to spare. Frankly I'd consider that person to be a precious commodity in the world of error finders that sell to other members. Bravo

If you list your coins for auction and are honest in the descriptions, Then there should be no quilt if the bid price goes well above your expectations.

I guess I look at things from a different perspective.

If I know something is essentially worthless and someone pays a lot more for it than it ever has a right to be worth, it does not make me feel like I provided a product in a forthright manner.

I guess I'm saying if some knucklehead wants to give me fifty bucks for a coin I know for certain is worth Two Cents then I am still taking advantage of someone and I just can't do it. The fact is that only a knucklehead would pay outrageous prices for a worthless coin and I'm not going to take advantage of a knucklehead.

I could use extra money too but my business side says there are better ways.

Thanks,
Bill

How many times do you think those pennies have been hunted threw for their rarer dates and varieties already? How many have left the BIEs in there thinking they have no added value, collectiblity or better yet just passed over them.

I bought a lot from a guy that said he went threw over 500 rolls of 09-50s over a 3-4 year period and had maybe a roll of BIEs, Cuds, chips and off centers. But he had over 3 rolls of validated varieties like repunches and DDOs he sold sperately to collectors. He also said he was surprized at the rariety of very visible MDing cent.

Personally, I keep them all just in case the interest and collectibility of these coin keep growing. I think I have finally collected a almost full set of the BIEs from the 50s with MMs. Haven't been watching them on ebay and didn't know they were getting those of high prices.

Hi Rock,

I guess I see your perspective but there, in my humble opinion, needs to be a line drawn that isn't crossed. I could sleep nights if someone wants to pay me 50 cents for a BIE because I am fully aware of the availability of the coins.

As Chuck alludes to, I would rather educate the collector today so they don't get a rude awakening somewhere down the pike. In all honesty, no one is going to pay big bucks for small change unless they have picked up the impression along the way that what they are buying is worth something. I fault Frank Spadone's book for creating a group of collectors that think that coins with common, minor die chips have a real collector value.

Back to the "knucklehead" in my post. If that person walks into a coin shop because he has a need of money for, let's say a medical expense and he tries to sell stuff that he bought from me at 25 bucks a coin that is really worth about face value, I would feel like a (there's a yiddish word for it). That goes even if I never knew the person.

This would be as if I was putting up a reprocessed 1943 junk cent for auction. Let's say that the same "knucklehead" with no numismatic education thought that it was the steel cent of 1943 and not the bronze ones that were the valuable ones. Then he bought that clunker 1943 cent for 20 grand while I stood back and let him do it. Then I gleefully collect his money and keep on moving.

Would that make me the sly, shrewd business genius or would that make me a crook? If I preyed on Mr. Knuckleheads lack of knowledge to make a killing, even if it was his own choice to buy the clunker '43 cent, when I had the ability to educate him as to the truth .....I'm a crook. (Understand that I am not inferring that anyone else is crooked, this is just based upon my own sense of ethics and responsibility to the numismatic community)

The scale of the money involved between my scenario and the 20 sumthin' bucks that gets spent on a BIE cent by a knucklehead who doesn't know what he is doing doesn't, for me, change the underlying principle.

Supply and demand doesn't cut it for me because Mr. Knucklehead may have a completely erroneous impression of what the supply truly is based upon poor information that he has been given. His impression is at variance with the truth and the sticking to what is truth allows me to sleep at night:-). This is akin to the guys hawking raw 1964 Kennedy half dollars for 25 bucks a piece because it is the "First year of Issue". They are trying to use a piece of real information to create the idea that it matters, when of course it doesn't and anyone can get a '64 Kennedy for five or six bucks tops.

I sometimes read things elsewhere that makes me burn inside. I've read some articles that bragged that a dealer type person managed to by a coin for a few hundred bucks, knowing full well what the coin was and then selling it for 40 thousand since it was a rare variety of Large cent. That's not something to be bragged about unless the coin was come by honestly.

Coming by it honestly would be a dealer buying the coin for a few hundred bucks while that dealer had no idea what it was. If subsequent to his research on the coin , he discovered that the coin was a jackpot and sold it for 40 grand, I could see that as , at least being an honest jackpot.

If that had happened to me under the "honest" scenario, I would have called the person I bought the coin from and split the jackpot. My Dad said it best..."It's the principle of the thing".

The size of the transaction, as stated before doesn't change that for me.

Oh well...I've gone on too long already:-)

Have Fun,
Bill