Snake Oil & Coins

tracker

I caught a few minutes of HSN early this morning. I was totally amazed at the lines of BS they spewed while hawking their coins. Quoting mintage numbers and duping the public as to how "Rare" their MS70 Silver and Gold Eagles (New ICG slabs) are. To the novice it would seem they actually knew what they were talking about! The sincere expressions on the faces of these oil salesmen had me laughing for about 10 minutes... until I thought about the hundreds+ buyers they were taking advantage of. Unfreaking real!!!

nwcs

I was watching a bit of the coin vault last night and they were selling 20 VF-BU Morgan/Peace dollars (15 Peace, 5 Morgan). They guaranteed there would be some BUs. As they said that, the camera panned the coins they were moving around and I saw all the hairlining in the world on them. Ugh. Even worse than snake oil is recycled snake oil!

tracker

Reminds me of a late nite tv coin auction from Tennessee that was on a few years ago. Gold coins (PCI graded) going for 2 & 3X Redbook! Some people seem to have more $ than sense I guess.

prooflike

...and here I thought this was going to be a thread on dipping coins in snake oil! was I disappointed

In all seriousness, it is unfortunate that the TV cons have to give the hobby a bad reputation. It does not matter if they have a 'higher overhead', that is their problem. but, people continue to buy or they would not pursue the selling of coins at ridiculously high prices.