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Did Closing Teletrade Hurt Coin Values?
Neca63
Posts: 350
Teletrade used to have inexpensive grading fees and it was a decent way to sell some graded coins that were valued under 50 dollars.
Some lower dollar value certified coins went into some nice collections, both type and series.
Those few dollars generated from the cherrypicking, certifying, and auctioning also brought useful dollars to those services and to the sellers of that material.
Some of those sellers took the money from the sale and used the money to buy other coins, and often times, some more expensive ones.
Now, holders of lessor value coins have lost a major sales avenue and that could make some of them exit the hobby, or to have to become dealers long enough to unload their unwanted material, or both.
The small fry collector has lost a useful grading/marketing outlet.
This may cause many gem lower value coins to remain uncertified and lose value and it may also lead to an artificial over-valuation of certified ones.
Anything that make it harder for coin collectors to sell their common stock coins will hurt numismatics.
The market is already very illiquid.
It has now become even more so.
Closing Teletrade and their access to inexpensive grading and auctioning has surely changed the game.
If the coin is not worth at least a few hundred dollars in a grade at least a point or two lower than you think the coin is in, it probably is not worth certifying.
If it is not worth certifying it, it may not be worth owning because you may not be able to sell it to anybody else and get your money back.
Where you gonna sell it, Ebay? Sure, if you do not have a life dedicated to something besides coins.
Bummer for the little guys.
Some lower dollar value certified coins went into some nice collections, both type and series.
Those few dollars generated from the cherrypicking, certifying, and auctioning also brought useful dollars to those services and to the sellers of that material.
Some of those sellers took the money from the sale and used the money to buy other coins, and often times, some more expensive ones.
Now, holders of lessor value coins have lost a major sales avenue and that could make some of them exit the hobby, or to have to become dealers long enough to unload their unwanted material, or both.
The small fry collector has lost a useful grading/marketing outlet.
This may cause many gem lower value coins to remain uncertified and lose value and it may also lead to an artificial over-valuation of certified ones.
Anything that make it harder for coin collectors to sell their common stock coins will hurt numismatics.
The market is already very illiquid.
It has now become even more so.
Closing Teletrade and their access to inexpensive grading and auctioning has surely changed the game.
If the coin is not worth at least a few hundred dollars in a grade at least a point or two lower than you think the coin is in, it probably is not worth certifying.
If it is not worth certifying it, it may not be worth owning because you may not be able to sell it to anybody else and get your money back.
Where you gonna sell it, Ebay? Sure, if you do not have a life dedicated to something besides coins.
Bummer for the little guys.
0
Comments
Coin Club Benefit auctions ..... View the Lots
I don't see any significant change.
<< <i>Didn't teletrade just get absorbed by Stacks? Now that stacks is running weekly auctions,
I don't see any significant change. >>
+1
Plus -- much of that void has been successfully filled by Great Collections.
Latin American Collection
<< <i>
<< <i>Didn't teletrade just get absorbed by Stacks? Now that stacks is running weekly auctions,
I don't see any significant change. >>
+1
Plus -- much of that void has been successfully filled by Great Collections. >>
Unless something changed, when I last visited them, Stacks had a minimum coin value requirement of 250 dollars.
Great Collections operates differently from Teletrade. They review the coins before sending in the coins and then decide if it is worth their time whereas, Teletrade pretty much just sent the stuff through and left it up to the owner to know better. G.C. examines the coins and that adds another level of complexity to hard calll decisions that may have been already made by the sellers. While some may like the additional eye on the coin before deciding to spend money to slab, others may find the extra step cumbersome and possibly needless.
I say good luck to Ian and Great Coillections. They are helping people sell coins which is a good thing.
They are a welcome addition to the marketplace.
Plain and simple...Making it harder for a collector to resell their coins does not help them, adding additional resources does.
GC is good, but does not quite fill TT shoes. GC's grading fees are a bit higher. Significantly higher for variety attribution.
And Stacks is not in the same ballpark because of their minimums.
<< <i>Plain and simple...Making it harder for a collector to resell their coins does not help them, adding additional resources does. >>
If I recall correctly, Teletrade raised the minimum value of the coins they would handle in the last year or two of their existence.
I have had numerous challenges trying to use Stack's web site, and find it to be more of a "turn-off" than an enticement to view and shop for coins.
Stuart
Collect 18th & 19th Century US Type Coins, Silver Dollars, $20 Gold Double Eagles and World Crowns & Talers with High Eye Appeal
"Luck is what happens when Preparation meets Opportunity"
It is true StacksBowers has the $250 minimum coin value as of now. GreatCollections has served as a decent alternative to Teletrade.
I am very sad I cannot research the Teletrade archives any longer as their system was most convenient for determining coin values, but then I suppose it is getting out-of-date by now for certain coins anyway. Maybe I will have to sign up for CoinFacts to enjoy a smoother way of determining coin values. GreatCollections and Heritage auction archives are not as easy to search as was Teletrade.
Selling on eBay has become more complicated, expensive, and seller unfriendly to the point I no longer do it; not an option on the table for me as of the past few years. Did it all the time in 2006 thru 2011 and enjoyed it.
NGC registry V-Nickel proof #6!!!!
working on proof shield nickels # 8 with a bullet!!!!
RIP "BEAR"
<< <i>Looks like Great-Collections more than picked up the Teletrade slack. >>
I concur.
CN eBay
All of my collection is in a safe deposit box!
As far as Stacks goes, it makes sense (to me) that they have a minimum. It takes time and resources
to handle, catalog, photograph, and ship the coins. It's not worth their time on say, $30 coins, based on
the % they take from the sale. Ebay makes you do all the work yourself and gets nearly 9% plus their
paypal cut.
As others have said, teletrade in their final years was pretty poor. Just recycling the same coins they couldn't
sell from weeks/months past. Before that they were decent, but not to the level of changing the market by
their absence.
<< <i>
<< <i>Plain and simple...Making it harder for a collector to resell their coins does not help them, adding additional resources does. >>
If I recall correctly, Teletrade raised the minimum value of the coins they would handle in the last year or two of their existence. >>
This is true.
It was no longer the Modern Mecca of Coin Sales or Consignments!
They literally picked and chose what they would or would not sell.
They also cut their auctions from 4 times a week to only once on Sunday.
Their business used to thrive until all the whiners and complainers started dissing the site about either the same old stock or Teletrade owned the stock or the fee's were too weird or whatever else they could whine about.
I used to love Teletrade and would buy dealer lots for resale on eBay at some nice markups but all that just disappeared.
Which reminds me, I need to go into my bookmarks and delete all the old Teletrade links for auctions won or lost and final sale prices since they do not appear to work any longer.
The name is LEE!
no longer into auctions. I think, at one point they had a hand in some of the best
auctions, which TT never handled anything that mattered, really.
-Steve
A 1914-D Quarter FS-101 in VF25 for $595? Virtually no one cares about the varieties in Barbers - the pops are virtually nil as so few have been submitted for attribution .. It's a $30 coin without the attribution - worth no premium in my eye.. - even if the premium commanded a 50-100% increase, $595 for a $30 coin? And there are currently at least 5 other similarly blatant examples in the Barber Quarter listings alone .. And I have seen similar foolishness throughout other series as well .. And these coins linger for months on end ..
Ian - allow them 3 re-lists .. 3 strikes and they're out .. Re-list at a real world value or pull the listing
Some of them are laughably out of sync
FWIW: I thought Teletrade was fantastic until the very end
Edit for clarification
Teletrade sold through around the same % of coins as the other auction venues when all was said and done. In fact, sold better than one or two of them quite possibly (including present day auction sites). And the "crap" that didn't sell well on Teletrade is simply not selling well on other auction venues now. Folks enjoyed "beating up" Teletrade and now that it is shut down, nothing much has improved out there.
One thing for certain, some damn good guys ran Teletrade over the years. Paul Song, Ian Russell and Brian Kendrella to name just a few recent ones.
As always, just my two cents.
Wondercoin.
The disadvantage of bidding on Teletrade is you could not pull bids like you can on Auction Sniper which is for use with ebay. In many ways ebay has replaced Teletrade and online in many ways has replaced selling at shows. The ANA dealers at the latest show may blame the Kennedy Gold for slow sales and I don't doubt that had a negative on dealer sales pulling a lot of money to the USM away from show dealers. However, I think online is also draining material offerings and funds from shows.
I don't regard big ticket material as the real coin market (especially with the grading, holder, and sticker game) as most collectors can not afford these and even they might prefer to spend that money on a muscle car, boat, or sugar baby. The big money goes to their stock market etrade account. I chart gold and silver (spot) along with Walkers (short set in MS65), Commems in MS65 (48 piece set), and Dollars (common dates in MS65). People have also underestimated the bulk accumulator and roll investor. My floor safe used to have many bulk rolls of ASE and VF to BU Dollars stacked up on top of each other, it was an impressive sight. I had been a bulk collector of this stuff and when silver went to $50 in 2011 I unloaded most of it and made lots of money. This is what the real coin market is really about. Lots of serious money is going to mods like the HOF and Kennedy Gold Halves, however it seems the people really cleaning up on these got in early and sold out before the dropoff.
When Teletraded folded, I took one look at what they tried to replace it with, rejected it, and never went back.
<< <i>As others have stated, Teletrades inventory ended up becoming very very stale. The same coins would be listed week after week for sometimes years on end. It became unworthwhile to navigate the site unless it was a Sunday night auction. And to add hopefully constructive feedback to Ian. Great collections has been recycling the same Barber listings for awhile now. I can't say for other series of coins because that is really all that I look at...but I'm starting to get the same emotion visiting Great Collections I had at Teletrade.
-Steve >>
I bought several coins from TT over the years. This was probably my best purchase from them. They did tend to keep listing coins at unrealistic prices. I did like them because I would occasionally find a nice coin at a price I liked.
I have only bought one coin from GC. This is it.
It seems that many auctions have problems with things not selling because they are overpriced. I saw this all the time on TT. This still happens on GC and ebay. It's simple, if the price is too high it will not sell. Listing it over and over is not going to make an item move if you don't get real with the price.
What I can say is Stack's site is terrible compared to Teletrade. Their site is both hard to navigate, and slooooooow. Time to invest in new technology!
Dave
<< <i>Can't make any statement on the impact on prices...that would be difficult to gauge.
What I can say is Stack's site is terrible compared to Teletrade. Their site is both hard to navigate, and slooooooow. Time to invest in new technology!
Dave >>
Investing in new technology isn't necessary... it would be a huge improvement if they just fired up the old Teletrade technology that worked very well.
Michael Kittle Rare Coins --- 1908-S Indian Head Cent Grading Set --- No. 1 1909 Mint Set --- Kittlecoins on Facebook --- Long Beach Table 448
I can remember Monday nights tying up the phone. That was 93ish and the coin market was in a slump so I was able to buy a good number of things that have since upgraded such as 2 1/5 classic gold from 62 to 63, trade dollar 62 to 63, and a SLQ that recently came back with a gold bean.
It was expensive to return coins since they hit you with a return fee (Once $400+ to return a heraldic Unc Dollar) but at least you could return a coin with no questions whereas the big auction houses made it very uncomfortable to return, even if you were a sight unseen bidder.
I can only regret some of the returns I made. I was a little too fussy and have now learned how some issues are struck and what they look like.
But that was the old Teletrade
What's wrong with ebay & pay pal that a good duopoly can't fix ?
My opinion to the OP's question is no, I don't think coin values have been hurt.
"If I say something in the woods and my wife isn't there to hear it.....am I still wrong?"
My Washington Quarter Registry set...in progress
Never even knew they were kaput. I LOVED their auction results. Used it as one of my main pricing guides -- even helped to price my inventory when I would do a little show.
Wow . . too bad. I know you buyers and flippers had reservations when they went under . .
But does anyone know if their old auction results can be accessed?????
Drunner
<< <i>
<< <i>Can't make any statement on the impact on prices...that would be difficult to gauge.
What I can say is Stack's site is terrible compared to Teletrade. Their site is both hard to navigate, and slooooooow. Time to invest in new technology!
Dave >>
Investing in new technology isn't necessary... it would be a huge improvement if they just fired up the old Teletrade technology that worked very well. >>
I have not bought anything from the Stack's replacement. I really don't know what they were thinking when they shut down TT.
<< <i>Tele---who....
indeed it wont be long and no one more then likely will bring it up again