Coins sold on cable tv channels
giantsfan20
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Selling NGC Proof 69 1960,61,62 Franklins for $299 each. Steve and Allison coins on Comcat.
EBay can be bought for $200
Guess the audience is public who does not any form of research. For the dealers out their what would buy them for ?
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Yes. What is your point?
That cable TV is a more expensive sales channel than eBay, and thus requires larger markups to make the business worthwhile? That buyers on TV are less sophisticated than buyers on eBay? Or at a B&M coin dealer? Or at a show?
Correct. That's why milk costs more at 7-11 than at a supermarket, why clothing costs more at Macy's than at Costco, and why gas costs more in an inner city, where residents tend to be lower income, than in a suburb, where people have more income but selling costs are lower and there is more competition.
@NJCoin . To be honest I tend to find that many of the people selling coins on TV are trying to "create a need and then supply the product". Watch for any length of time and you will be fed a lot of nonsense about the importance of slab labels, distorted mintage or population census material or vastly overstating the importance of a particular coin. Think the difference between going to church to attend mass and going to a good old fashioned barn revival. James
Maybe TV televangelists, with their shuck and jive, are a more relevant ‘religious’ comparison.
30+ years coin shop experience (ret.) Coins, bullion, currency, scrap & interesting folks. Loved every minute!
You mean like Tide does with detergent?
@jmlanzaf . Sorry I am laundry ignorant and have washed one load of laundry in my entire life. Mt wife does not like Tide though. Says they add way to much perfume. James
They make an unscented gentle version, and also if you have a newer machine you may be using too much detergent.
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DD has another skill set we did not know about - clothes washing………….
Another market force worth consideration is perceived value.
Many ignorant buyers will consider the intrinsic value of the aged item in silver or gold. Regardless of the total amount of precious metal content.
Significant amount of couch potatoes will not or do not have the skillset to search the web for comps.
The way TV shoppers buy is very different than the way collectors on this forum buy and their motivations and interests are different. They don’t go to coins shows, scroll through eBay, watch major auctions, consult several major numismatic dealers, reference Greysheet or PCGS price guide, and certainly don’t read this forum. When you think about it, that really is a lot of work.
Instead, they would prefer to sit on their couch and be sold things with some historical interest and intrinsic value by someone who likely does those things and understands the market. Of course they will be shown high prices in select price guides and the future potential value will be hyped to them, but at the end of the day, they will be buying something that will hold up much better in value than just about anything else that can be bought from TV.
Aside from that, these folks likely enjoying buying from TV. That’s something everyone is looking for in exchange for a bit of disposable income, no matter where you’re buying coins from.
And while these buyers or their heirs may be disheartened at the “valuation” of their purchases at the time of sale, the same thing happens all the time, even to those that don’t purchase from TV. Just see this recent thread as an example: https://forums.collectors.com/discussion/1109597/disappointed-with-great-collections-results-and-according-to-many-with-myself/p1
Yes. Of course. It's called "selling."
The fact remains, air time, studio time, production costs, call centers, customer service, returns, credit cards, etc. all add up. Selling on TV is far more expensive than setting up at a show, or selling through the internet.
They do it because there is a profitable market for them to do so. But their margins are not out of line with the other channels, after taking the increased costs into account.
Sometimes they even get hurt when a market doesn't develop as expected, such as with the 2024 Morgan and Peace Dollars, and they have to either dump at a loss after taking into account their bloated cost structure, or sit on expensive inventory for a long time.
They are not selling to people like us. They are selling to people who either don't know any better, or who just like buying through TV.
Again, lots of different ways to buy lots of different things. Both necessities and discretionary items. Everyone doesn't always migrate to the least expensive option. That's why we have choices, and why businesses set up to feed those choices.
@NJCoin. I will have to disagree with you there. I don't know what you have done for a living or do now. I was a newspaper kid who built a route from 16 to 97 papers. I sold Fuller Brush from the age of 15 to 17. I worked as a salesman for a janitorial supply company for over 35 years. I started my own commercial cleaning service (semi-retired now), when I was 20 years old.
I think I know a little bit about selling. Selling involves meeting an actual need and delivering at a price you can live on and that is fair to the customer. Misrepresentation, distorting facts, and robbing people with inflated prices is not selling; it is just legalized swindle. You don't have to give up your integrity to be a salesman. As a matter of fact it is your most precious asset and best tool. james
Fair enough. Agree to disagree.
To @jmlanzaf's point, does Proctor & Gamble engage in "misrepresentation, distorting facts, and robbing people with inflated prices" by building an entire company around R&D, marketing and product extensions when it develops a million different flavors of Tide that it sells for a lot more than generic laundry soap?
How about the inner city bodega that has a fraction of the selection of a suburban supermarket, where it sells everything at higher prices? These are just two examples of higher cost alternatives to lower cost products that everyone might not have access to.
It is not dishonest or illegal. It is just meeting a need. Same with check cashing stores for people who cannot get regular bank accounts. The fact is that these are high cost operations that capture those costs through higher prices. If there was no market, they would not exist. Same with coins on TV.
"Actual need" is determined by the market. Not by me, and not by you.
Just for the record, though, no one ever "needed" to have a newspaper delivered to their door, or to be sold a Fuller Brush. Or to have anyone clean anything for them.
These are all examples of markets you developed and then successfully served. That's what markets and capitalism are all about. No different than what the TV guys do with coins, even if you think one product or service meets an "actual need" while the other does not.
Read the labels. Just about every detergent in the store is one of the same 2 or 3 compounds. Tide does not meet a need that Brand X doesn't. Tide markets the heck out of its brand.
I don't "need" a slab or a registry set. People like them but that comes with a cost. How many $3 coins are in $25 slabs just so someone can plug it into a registry set?
"First Strike" could be the last coin struck.
The person buying from TV doesn't know where else to get the coin or that the coin even exists. They pay a little more to have it brought to them in their homes. The TV sellers may well make LESS money on the coins than your local BM shop. But they fill a distribution void.
What's the value added or necessity of a privy mark, for that matter?
This hobby is full of marketing.
I despise how they “rate” the rarity, implying the new strike Morgan is rarer than the 1893S because the mintage is lower. Probably makes sense to some.
Absolutely. Again, it's called marketing. True on its face, and absolutely meaningless to those who know what they are doing.
Those who know better don't buy coins on TV. But that does not mean it's illegitimate, any more than buying socks at Saks 5th Avenue is less legitimate than paying 75% less for something roughly equivalent at Walmart.
Different sales channels, with different cost structures, selling to different demographics. There is room for everyone, and no one forces anyone flipping TV channels to stop on the one selling coins, and to then pick up the phone and order. The fact that they do, over and over and over again, is precisely what legitimizes TV as a sales channel, at its inflated pricing.
P. T. Barnum
Dave
Respectfully disagree here. The coins they sell are, for the most part, not crap. They are the same coins we all know and love.
The only difference is the pricing. And, again, that is accounted for by the inflated cost associated with selling through TV. Not by PT Barnum taking advantage of suckers.
They probably make around the same margins as other coin retailers. If this was not the case, competition would make it so by attracting others drawn to the inflated margins, who would then just drive the margins down. This is how capitalism and markets work.
You have to understand the difference between selling and marketing. Marketing is about "creating" a "need" and supplying the suggested product or service to buy. The fact is just about no one on earth will ever achieve the results they promote on TV no matter what the numismatic coin is. Fact. Anyone buying on TV will lose money no matter what they do. So how is it legal?
They will put in their fine print that coins must be held 2, 3 or 5 years depending on how long they wish to use a particular entity. Sell before that time they can say you did not hold long enough. However, before that date ever comes they will close down and or transfer ownership of company to one of the other owners, (establishing a new managing partner).
Sell after that date, LOSE MONEY, and they will tell you the previous owners were crooks, but they are not. Then they will try to sell you a "special" offer the new management wants you to have because they feel so bad for you. This too will be over priced and be impossible to get your money back and or make a profit.
Real names of the same company in small print:
Numismatic Sale
Numismatic Sales (note the S)
Numismatic Sales. (note the period mark)
Numismatic Sales.com (note the internet tie)
Each one the same company but now not responsible for the previous company's sales. Each one knowing you fell for it once so you should be a pretty good mark the second time around.
It may be confusing because products and services are being sold but as my college professor use to say. "Go to any business college in the world and you will find classes labeled Sales AND Marketing". They may have a symbiotic relationship but are two completely different things. James
So, njcoin is a tv pitchman. Explains a lot.
Nope. Just explaining something that appears to be a mystery to some.
The business is thriving, but prices remain high. Where else in the economy do you see that?
If selling costs were not high, competition would drive selling prices down, because others would be attracted to the excessive margins. If there was no demand at the prices charged, there would be no business.
The fact that people don't understand it doesn't mean it isn't so. They are just not the intended audience. Similar to the recent SB auction.
Would not waste my time on them.
Examples? HSN has been around the 30 years. Same name, same guy. Same with The Coin Vault. Rick Tomaska has now been on TV for over a decade, and he had a very solid reputation before getting involved in that space. He is no less legitimate than the folks behind VB, even though they don't sell on TV, also offer questionable value, and have a great many fans, both here and on other parts of the great interweb.
So just who is coming and going in a few years, making unfulfilled promises of riches, shutting down, and reappearing under a slightly different name? Retailers come and go, as in any business. But the big successful guys have been in business for a long time.
Same with Littleton. Not on TV.
Very high cost business model. Very high prices. Been in business forever, still going strong, with very little competition in its space.
Not any more or less legitimate than HA, your local B&M, or anyone who sets up at a show. Different business model with a different cost structure.
There is room for everyone. No one is scamming anyone, any more than the inner city bodega is scamming a local resident who cannot get out to the suburbs to do their grocery shopping.