One Less Coin Dealer In Downtown Winnipeg...

I just noticed over the weekend that Four Corners Coins in downtown Winnipeg seems to have gone belly up -- the place is empty and the windows are papered over.

It's hardly surprising -- the guy didn't seem to know what he was doing at all. His place was totally disorganized, with piles of stock everywhere behind the counter.

One of the things he teneded to excel at was foreign currency -- he had piles and piles of it, but usually it wasn't sorted by country, nor was it ever priced. He wanted to look up every price in the catalogue as it was bought, something that would ensure that even the smallest transaction would take three or four times it should have.

One time I called him with a mint roll of key-date quarters I wanted to sell. He gave me a reasonable price over the phone, and I told him I would be right over. An hour later, and I'm there putting the roll on his counter. He seemed not to remember the phone call, then he's looking at both ends of the roll, then he goes to tear the plastic wrap off it, while he's quoting me a new price that is 2/3's of what he mentioned on the phone. When he realized I wasn't going to bite, he sets the roll down and says he's not interested.

The most unforgiveable sin, though, was his habit of "throwing the bull", exaggerating things. One time I heard him tell a female customer that the Dutch 1 Guilder coins she was looking at were "rare, since they've changed to the Euro now", and that they were well worth their $2 each price tag. Another time, he was telling a customer that he didn't price his notes, because "the value is always changing".

One less dealer in downtown Winnipeg?

In this case, not a bad thing.