The "Second" Coin Market

Know what you mean. Ever see all the posts here about stupid prices received for nothing on ebay?

I did advise him to see if he could return them and get his money back, and not buy any more.

Beats me that people will buy crap like this for ten years before looking for a coin dealer in their phone book.

Not sure but I'd say Chris's story is more the norm than people think. There is one coin store I USED to go by almost every day and stopped in occationally. Several times while there I witnessed someone being taken either in sales or purchasing. One such was two rolls of Indian Head Nickels for double face value and all had dates. Most coins there were cleaned and there was no negotiating prices. Prices were a minimum of Red Book.

this is an interesting topic because it brings in a couple of the 'hot' buttons for collecting these days. First, the brick and mortar dealers around me are far a few between and the one that has any kind of selection (that isn't all about metal), wouldn't give you the time of day to even look at something like this so these folks who we would like to see become collectors continue in ignorance (no insult intended). They have no one to help them. And the few shows I've been to around my area are pretty heavy into dealers that sell metal shaped like coins. I believe, based solely on my interaction with them, that many don't give a hoot about coins. They care that metal is metal and that they want to make a profit on that. I find it sad and again folks who visit these shows find no help. The one thing that the price of silver has done for sure is make the collecting portion of this hobby secondary.

Ignorance can be an expensive occupation. In you first instance, the customer bought them with eye towards profit or least 'holding' their paid value, instead of just buying them to enjoy, knowing there was zilch resale opportunities. In the second example, that customer is trying to key in on a bargain, or just testing how much you know about the coins you sell. A face to face market is a tricky platform for commerce that is a double edged sword, because it's human nature to make assumptions about people we don't personally know. Do you know if I'm going to drop $10 or $1000 in your store? Would you rather service the $1000 customer first than the $10 customer or are they the same, regardless of how much they spend or none? I sidestep all these issues by the anonymity of the Internet. There my money's just as good as everyone else's. I find that this attitude is not at all uncommon, with the unintended consequence of shuttering many brick and mortar coin stores and driving dealers to the Internet or to weekend coin shows. I would say that the Internet is not all bad; it has a plethora of coin-related resources, of which CCF is one, and no one should claim ignorance when all these resources are out there just for the asking.

, CowboyB!

How true, how true. Maybe it's due to the area I grew up in where haggling or chewing down anything and everything in the way of prices, but I find myself doing that everywhere to this day. And not just with coins but almost anything. For example I usually try to get things cheaper at Walmart when it's the last one. For example I found a $50 pair of solar flood lights that had been taken out of the box and last one so I found the manager and he ended up letting me have them for $5. And they work great. It's just in my system to never pay full price if not required.
At coin shows I never, ever pay what a dealer is asking. If they wouldn't drop the price, I walk away.

I agree with GooGoo: research is something that I'm trying to educate my sons about.