Littleton buy list
KISHU1
Posts: 2,153 ✭✭✭
Did anyone get the Littleton buy list emailed to them?
Very interesting and good reading
I just started looking at it
Frank D
1
Comments
Nope. But my paternal Granddad and Great Grandparents sure did. I have the coins sealed in Littleton cellophanes to prove it LOL
Never gotten one. I hear they offer top dollar but are very tough on what they will accept.
...this thread 💯 should have been started on April 1st
Can thank Greysheet Marketing for the email.
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This is pretty much true. But not a bad thing.
If you were to send a strict bag of good Indian cents to them, 2600 of them may come back, but you were paid real money for the other 2400.......
I'm not interested in dealing with that company in any way.
I tried selling some stuff to them long ago, they sent everything back. When buying, their grading standards are much higher than mine.
They expect both solid for the grade AND no problems. They hate spots.
You might be surprised how tough something like no problem G and better '43-D nickels are. More than half are too worn or have problems. What is often called G and better indians will usually run about 20% unacceptable to them. Usually it's old cleaning or rim dings. But any wear of the lettering into the rim will be rejected.
They are strong buyers but if you don't go through and remove rejects you will be disappointed.
Ya' shouldda sent them 2400. But a nice bag of G and better will probably have about 4000 acceptable. If you look closely at those other 1000 coins you'll gain some insight into their business model; they don't want any coins returned by their customers. Customers are very valuable in their business model and they don't want to lose any. Why risk losing a customer over a little reverse rim ding even on an otherwise nice and fairly graded indian cent? They're better off just not shipping coins like this.
+1
@KISHU1
I did , it was from the Greysheet people.
Trying to interpret it.
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Bad transactions with : nobody to date
They seem to be happy to buy anything from the public.......at the right price.
https://littletoncoin.com/shop/Coins-To-Sell
I received the notice from Greysheet about the Littleton buy list. Years ago, my Mother purchased a coin for me from Littleton. After that they started sending her coins - unsolicited - and expecting payment. Finally, after two respectful requests to stop, I had to write them a nasty letter telling them any further coins received would not be paid for or returned. They stopped. Cheers, RickO
I knew a dealer who sent some material to them. This dealer is a competent grader, and he knows what he's doing. They sent most of the coins back to him. He commented that they were so fussy that trying to do business with them was not worthwhile.
I also noted that they made very few offers for higher grade, higher priced material. For example the early half dimes were not on their list.
Show me a dealer who isn't looking to do that.
FWIW: I sold them stuff in the 90’s. Indians, V Nickels, Common seated, and the like, usually in G-VG. They paid very well for accurately graded, problem free coins, but had to be problem free. They were realistic about grading and the coins that were returned did have minor problems. At the time, I was able to get more from Littleton than selling them through mail order (I used to do that in the pre-ebay days) or dealers, so it was worth it.
It’s been love/hate with them. At first, about half came back. Then it averaged 20-30% returns. They kept 100% of the last batch. I guess I’ve been trained???
Been there, done that, years ago when I was a kid. They have been around for a long time. I will have nothing to do with them now.
They take the cream according to their standards and send the rest back. Very fussy and unreasonable IMO. I lived up in Bethlehem, NH for a while and spoke to local flea market and other small time vendors who had stories about them not being reasonable. The ANA standards are well known by experienced numismatists, what logic dictates rejection of properly assessed numismatic material? Would there be any way to hold them accountable to the hobby?
Accountable for what? Not wanting to buy coins with problems? The horror!
Not problems, but not pq enough. I've seen them reject certified items, coins and currency that were no problem, they set up at shows and quibble that properly graded currency doesn't have wide enough margins. They advertise that they will buy properly graded material and send much of it back.
OK- so what? Isn't it up to the buyer to determine what's acceptable for the price they're offering? If a dealer says "This coin is nice enough for you", are you obligated to buy it?
Again, so? If you disagree with how they grade coins, don't offer yours to them. Problem solved.
They could be more honest in their heavily advertised buy lists. What happens if you send a certified and cac'd PCGS coin to them and they say no dice on that? Of course they can determine their own standards, as cac does, but when dealer after dealer said they sent them properly graded material and they returned most of it, what type of message does that send?
legally speaking, if they send you anything you did not order, you don't have to pay for it. There were lots of issues with this a few decades ago I think.
My dad got hooked by them 20 years ago. He kept a lot of unsolicited stuff-quite a little collection!
As I said earlier-I will not deal with them in any way, shape, or form and I tell others to avoid them completely.
You might want to be careful about that. Their terms of sale typically say that along with your purchase, you will receive coins on approval. This is almost certainly what happened to ricko's mom. The coins are sent with the idea the buyer will pay for the ones he wants to keep and return the ones he doesn't want. Of course, once asked to stop, they should have.
Depending on what the Terms of Sale were, also they might be illegal which voids the whole sale.
I suppose that could be so. I would think the odds are good that Littleton had a lawyer review their terms- what do you think?
never dealt with them before
1997-present
So are we saying with their tough acceptance rate that Littleton is the CAC for raw coin buying?
I'll show myself the exit, thanks.
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There certainly were. I believe this was changed in the 1960's. The law became that if you received unsolicited items in the mail you did not have to pay for them or return them. This stopped companies like Littleton coin and stamp from sending you stuff you never ordered. Although, I believe they kept doing it for a while longer, thinking that most people would still return the stuff. I cannot complain too much as I collected stamps back then in addition to coins and the stamps they sold were very inexpensive and fun for a kid. Yes, they sent them to kids.
I believe it was one of the PCGS officials that once said "Ownership adds a point" (Referring to unc. Morgans, I believe)-someone please correct me if I am wrong.
Did you ever notice that for raw coins when you go to sell they are F-VF, but if you go to buy the same grade, they are VF-XF? Not all, but a lot of dealers pull this stunt. Dealer ownership adds a grade.
Sometimes when you go to sell a semi-key coin you get the reply "That is as common as sand and nearly worthless", but the same coin in the same grade in the dealer's case is "as rare as hen's teeth and almost priceless".
I think this only applies if they send you something out of the blue. When you buy any of the cheap "teasers" from Littleton or other approval services, the fine print always says that you agree to receive selections to buy or return and can cancel anytime. So, the packages are not unsolicited until you cancel and you're responsible for paying.
[I'm pretty confident that this is accurate info, but I'm not a lawyer so please feel free to make any corrections]
Littleton’s On‑Approval Service
https://youtu.be/LwwuIBD5kt8
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Bad transactions with : nobody to date
Yes, they sent them to kids.
I can't imagine, over many years, how many people (kids included) that Littleton brought into the hobby. What with their ads in comic books and newspapers. I can't see anything wrong with that.
During the last 50 years or so, I've seen thousands of coins that were purchased from them. Never once did I see an over-graded example. Were the coins higher priced, yes, but were they accurately graded, absolutely !
As far as their buying, I've shipped them more packages than I can remember. Sure I got a lot of returns. We can all buy what we like, can't we ? They paid me very strong for what they kept. Nobody put a gun to my head.
Here is a good way to look at how Littleton buys. If they advertise for a G...that means they want a full rim G6. The color has to be perfect and surfaces mark free for the grade level. For coins like Indian Head pennies, V-nickels, and a few others they are probably the best outlet. For tougher series with more spreads the quality they seek is just too easy for me to retail.
Say what we want, the family has been in the coin business for a long time and the family are coin collectors.
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A record auction price for one of America's oldest and rarest coins was achieved when I recently sold my collection of Massachusetts Bay Colony silver coins. My extremely rare 1652 [undated] New England Shilling was the premier piece in my 19‑coin Massachusetts Bay collection, which I had gradually assembled over the course of a decade. These prominent colonial coins were struck over 300 years ago from 1652–1683 and feature the famous New England, Willow Tree, Oak Tree and Pine Tree motifs.
These were also coins I learned about at an early age. My first recollection of a [1652] New England Shilling was in Ripley's Believe It or Not! in the Sunday comics in the 1950s. The idea of a coin that old was amazing – struck in 1652 not long after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620! As a New Englander, this coin made a real impression with its simple ne obverse (for New England) and Roman numeral XII reverse (for 12 pence or one shilling).
Growing up in our family stamp and coin business, I was collecting Lincoln cents, Buffalo nickels and Mercury dimes by about age ten. The scarce and rare Massachusetts Bay Colonials listed and pictured right up front in the official Red Book (A Guide Book of United States Coins) were dream coins to a young collector like me! In later years, I would learn a lot more about the varieties of these coins and the collectors who've owned them.
https://www.littletoncoin.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Display|10001|10001|-1||LearnNav|My-Dream-New-England-Shilling-Sold-at-Auction.html
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Bad transactions with : nobody to date
Question for those here that have sold to Littleton.
Can you just send them a bunch of , let's say, Buffalo Nickels and they will 'grade' them and pay for what they want and send the rest back?
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Bad transactions with : nobody to date
Kind of like what a lot of collectors look for, right?
Well, you wouldn't want to send them a mix of grades. They won't pull out the uncs, au's and xf's and pay for that. They would advertise paying a price for G/better. So if you sent them a bag, they will fish out anything that meets their criteria for that, and return the rest.
most likely, but as you know stuff depends. The law is not black and white. Anyways if they kept sending me stuff after I asked them not to, I would just keep it.