Coins V Stocks? The Ugly Side Of Selling?

There is internet and other sites youi can sell your staff nice and easy!
For a worn morgan 15$ with silver at 20 was a nice price

There's an old adage: the easiest way to make a small fortune in coin collecting is to start out with a large one.

The amount of money you get for a coin is directly proportional to the amount of time and effort you're prepared to dedicate to it. Taking it to a dealer is quick money, but usually not very much of it. Sending it to an auction house is usually better money, but you have to wait for the next auction, whcih might be a couple of months away. Selling it online (coin forum or ebay) is usually even better money, but you have to do all the selling, shipping, and dealing with the buyer yourself.

Notice how many times I used the word, "usually". In the end, a coin is worth whatever the people that see it for sale are prepared to pay for it.

If you're buying higher-value stuff, you can get them certified. Yeah, I know, folks on this board tend to be anti-slab, but what it lets you do is to sell them on sites like ebay without people looking at you weird because you don't have 85000 feedback. Even after fees, ebay seems to produce a better return (for certified coins) than trying to unload them on a dealer. Uncertified might be dicier if you don't already have huge feedback. A lot of people, I think, look suspiciously on low-feedback sellers showing up with big dollar items of questionable provenance. Especially when your ebay handle sounds Chinese.

But that sort of skirts the real issue. There's are many reasons financial planners suggest putting only a very small fractions of one's assets into alternatives - illiquidity and the resulting friction are a legitimate issue. It's an issue that can be managed, but not one that can be ignored.

So...in a way, I'm right.

My son does have stocks, and some gov't bonds that he received mostly as gifts. But he doesn't know about these.

So you post an ad on ebay for morgan silvers, and get stuck in the mud with the other 3000 posts.

As a rule of thumb, because of his age, and because it may be a passing fancy at this point, I have been steering him to "silver". That is, assume a coin (silver, that is) has two different sets of value: 1) Is the value of silver, which no one can ever, ever take away. It is a commodity, period.

But the silver piece also has the numismatic value to it. So, if it's a piece of silver, that is a bare "minimum" value. The value as a coin is above and beyond. And it is this second part we may eventually get stuck on.

So far I've never sold a coin and probably never will. Therefore it makes no difference if they are going up or down in value.
Coin collecting is basically a hobby and should in most instances be
considered exactly that.
Stocks on the other hand are exact and what you see is what you get. I mean if you see your AT&T stocks are at $29.62 per share and you sell them, that is what you get. Simple and easy. Of course there is that brokerage fee though. Now with coins you first must find a place to sell them. Then worry about things if using the internet such as lost in mail, insurances, postages and haggling about prices.
Coins are like cars in a way. Someone can tell you your car is worth $30,000 but if the only offer you get when selling is $10,000, then that is really what it is worth. Coins too are like that. You can look up all the so called Coin Price Guides and find a certain coin is valued at $100 but if and when you try to sell it you only get $50 offers, that is what it really is worth.
Back to stocks. Again, you see a stock is selling for $xxx and that is exactly what you pay or get selling. No haggling, just that price. And again, the broker fees.
I never sell coins but I have sold and bought many stocks. You can look at your coins and appreciate them for what they are. Anyone that gets that same enjoyment from a stock certificate needs help.

Coins are for collecting, not investing. Just my proverbial Two Cents.

That is just it. To a large extent coins are a HOBBY, and not an investment. And the approach to coins as a hobby is much different than how you would approach them as an investment. You make the comparison to stocks, stocks are much more liquid than coins are. Whenever you decide to sell your stock there is a buyer with a posted bid ready to pay that for it. Coins are not like that. Yes there are bid and ask prices, but those are supposed to be dealer to dealer wholesale prices. The retail prices you pay will likely be higher than Ask, the the prices you will be paid will be less than Bid. You also have the fact that one share of common stock in a company is just like any other share and they are both worth the same price. This is not true with coins. Every coin is different and prices for two coins of the same date/mint and condition can vary widely. And prices offered for coins are also dependent on the popularity of the series. A rare date nickel Three Cent piece may have a posted Bid/Ask range, but you are likely to be offered much less because the dealer may have to hold it for a LONG time because th number of people who collect those rare coins are also rare. But a rare coin in a popular series will get an offer much closer to Bid price because the dealer knows that he ill not have it for long. He will be able to sell it quickly, make his profit, and then roll that money over as well.

Usually coins are a hobby, but for some reason unlike most any other hobby, people seem to expect they should make a profit on it, or at least get all their money back. A hobby, almost by definition, is something pursue using discretionary money. If you get ANY of your money back from a hobby you should consider yourself lucky. In this respect coin are miles ahead of most any other hobby. But if you are concerned with getting a good rate of return on your money you would be better off in other more traditional investments, but they aren't as much fun.