Anatomy of an Ethical Estate Deal
jmlanzaf
Posts: 35,105 ✭✭✭✭✭
Everyone thinks dealers are out to take advantage of the uninformed. Let's tell the stories where we could have done it, but chose the ethical path.
I'll go first with a small example...
Woman comes into my friend's shop with her father's stamp collection. My friend told her that it looked like it was all common material and his "stamp guy" probably wouldn't be interested.
She said she understood but wanted to get rid of it, so please show it to me anyway.
I show up. My friend tells me the story and says he glanced through it and didn't see anything.
I start going through it and I'm not seeing anything either. All common used material that's mostly modern. Then I found one page in the back of an album that had a complete set of Columbians. Stuck to the page but complete.
I could have offered $100 for the lot and probably gotten it. I paid her $100 for the junk and $1200 for the one page.
I still need to try and steam them off the page. Lol
Comments
Here's a triple ethical story.
I bought a fairly large estate once. A lot of silver. A couple of GSA dollars. About $5000 total if i recall.
The owner said there was a 55 DDO cent in there. I couldn't find it when I made the offer. My friend, whose shop is was, couldn't find it. The owner looked through it when he sold it and couldn't find it.
So, I buy it. A dealer I knew who traveled around buying happened to come through. I showed the collection to him. He bought the whole thing.
The next day, the dealer calls me and asked if I accidentally gave him a 55 DDO. He found it on the GSA box. I told him the story. He mailed it back to me.
I had a free 55 DDO that was XF/AU but I took it back to the 1st dealer and told her. She called the original owner and returned it to him. [He decided to keep it.]
So 3 dealers had a chance to pocket a free 55 DDO and all 3 of them did the right thing!!
I had a collection come to me when I was dealer that included a complete set of Washington silver quarters in “BU.” The trouble was the 1932-D and S were whizzed sliders. There wasn’t much I could do with the set since the common dates were run of the mill Uncs. These are the kind coins that are good for “shop stock” but no so good if you are a coin show dealer. It would take forever to sell them one at a time, and they weren’t worth the cost of slabbing. I ended up selling to another dealer for the family and took a commission.
I help friends, neighbors, family evaluate collections. I have probably done 15 collections in the last year (unfortunately). I will not buy anything on principal, as my interests could be conflicted. I simply tell them what they have and what it is worth to a collector and dealer. I charge nothing, because I don't want to. I have gotten very good at delivering bad news to those who believe they have the golden goose. But, it's no fun and I dread doing it.
I am a newer collector (started April 2020), and I primarily focus on U.S. Half Cents and Type Coins. Early copper is my favorite.
Good for all of you!
It really frosts me when people come here asking our permission to do what they clearly know is unethical.
ANA 50 year/Life Member (now "Emeritus")
I've helped several friends and family evaluate coins. The usual common 90%, wheats, worn silver certs etc. The best thing was an XF 34-s dollar among commons. I organize the stuff for them in baggies with approximate value so they don't get ripped off at the local shop. I never buy anything from friends or family, as noted above I would also consider that a conflict of interest. I'm just happy to help them not get ripped off.
I 3rd this. Sometimes I'm forced into buying things from/for friends and family. But I really really really hate it and don't think it's a good idea. It's not even that I'm unethical - I never make any money on those deals and sometimes lose money - but money can get in the way of relationships. And when a friend sees a clickbait article on wheat cents 6 months later and asks me why he only got 4 cents each, then I'm in the position of having to explain.
I'm in the process right now of "advising" an owner that inherited Mom and Dad's coins. The daughter said that they bought the coins back in the 70's or 80's and has no idea what they paid.
All were in mylar flips with the paper insert and grades typed (you know the late night TV stuff).
Of course all grades were highly inflated but daughter knows enough to look them up online. Of course here eyes got big when she saw the value.
When I showed up, she's a neighbor, and looked I immediately knew the parents were taken and this would be a rough go. Advised that the best be sent to PCGS for authentication and grading. She did 8 coins and the grades are back. What her research showed was value at around $20k.. Once graded the value is $2,200. Ooops, guess the marketing agent was a bit off, 'eh?
So, will get coins back today or tomorrow from PCGS and then she'll have to decide to keep as is, sell at auction or whatever.
Since I don't charge for helping, and I will not be offering to buy them, but will advise GC to sell for her.
She does have some bulk silver that I may offer to buy and maybe I'll get something out of the event.
bob
vegas baby!
We've made numerous people happy over the years calling them to let them know they have another check coming if they wish. One was when we bought a circ. wheat cent roll deal that had all the dates written on the outside of the paper rolls. After having checked out well over 2/3 of the rolls it was obvious that they were all full and accurately marked so we just counted the rest, added up the bottom line and bought the deal. Once we got to the bottom we found a cent roll marked "50". I figured it was 1950 Lincolns. Turns out the 50 was simply a notation of how many pieces were in there. They were 50- 1986 1/10th oz. gold Eagles wrapped in a cent wrapper. So I called them up, informed them of the find and told them how much we'd pay. They decided to keep 5 for grandkids and sell us the rest.
RIP Mom- 1932-2012
I recently had a woman come into my shop with a raw silver Norse medal, I offered $150 and she said another dealer offered $200- seemed a bit high but not to crazy. I noticed a small gold piece and asked if that was for sale- she said it was 18k gold and the other dealer had offered melt value. I instructed her to keep the gold medal safe and meet me at the CSNS the following week where we could have it graded on site. It was a Proof 65 Norse medal and was sold at the show for 27k- they offered me a 10 percent of the final sale- everyone was very happy
Thanks for sharing the experiences on how honest dealers should operate. Hopefully "honor among thieves" is not true of dealers on this board.
I've seen many of the abusive buying tactics and they are a turn-off for me. I value honesty and being able to live with my past business practices and believing I've never ripped off a customer. If a dealer gets a windfall through manipulative tactics, all the fair dealing in the future will not make up for that. I heard of a dealer in northern New England who had a banker walk into his shop with a lot of large size currency that made him rich but drank himself to death in short order. In that case it was probably the banker who did not check around on real value. A very busy in state dealer bought a group of rare coins from a family after the collector died for some tens of thousands of dollars that ended up being worth 10X as much after certification/auction. That is not an unusual business practice. Another bragged how they "read" the customer who was selling and made offers based on those tactics. Ultimately business people can justify anything if they want and no one will hold them to account. I'd like to see some undercover videos of scam buyers posted on youtube to hopefully effect change that there are actual consequences on ripping people off.
Very nice! Restores some faith. I've seen some shady dealers.
Offered some coins to Andy at Angel Dee's at the ANA in Pittsburgh last month. He asked what I wanted
and I gave him a price. He looked at them again and said "You're too cheap" and gave me 25% more than
I had quoted him. I found that refreshing, as I usually have to be stubborn just to get my asking price.
I'll obviously visit his table at future shows to buy and sell.
All nice stories and reassuring to a degree. However, the "scoundrel" stories not likely to make this post....
Well, just Love coins, period.
In the collections I have had the opportunity to evaluate - even the scoundrels would be honest.
I am a newer collector (started April 2020), and I primarily focus on U.S. Half Cents and Type Coins. Early copper is my favorite.