does your dealer ever show you his personal collection

MacCoin

My deal hoards all the beautiful toners He has an awesome toned type set.I wished he was a member. he says he don't the have time.

Sunnywood

This reminds me of a conversation I had at the ANA with dealer Jack Beymer. I asked him to keep me in mind if he ran across any high-grade shield nickel die variety coins (RPD, DDO, etc) that are listed as Cherrypicker Varieties. He retorted, "Why would I do that? If I found anything good like that I would keep it for my own collection." I found this somewhat startling from a dealer with a bourse table !!!!

Sunnywood

mbbiker

You should bring your camera to his shop someday and take some pics of his eye candy and share it with people like me who can't afford to buy the real thing.

09sVDB

Yes, In addition to the firm that he works for, he maintains his own site.

fantasiize

The two dealers (one near home, the other near work) both share the same view, which, by my perspective, is hard to believe.

They do not believe in personal collections as they work in the industry and look to just do it professionally. Not sure if they are kidding me so they would not have to spend more time or what BUT I don't ask any more.

stujoe

IIRC, that was B. Max Mehl's philosophy too.

gmarguli

Many of the *full time* dealers I've talked with do not collect. If they do they will collect some type of coins they don't deal in (errors, varieties, foreign).

BillJones

My collection serves two functions. First it gives me a set of “salesmen’s samples” that I can use for photographs, advertising and newsletters. I do show some coins from my collection to customers with the understanding that the coins are not available. So far that has not caused hard feelings. As a very young collector a dealer showed me coins from his inventory that I could never have afforded for a long time, but it planted seeds. I appreciated that, I think that some of my customers like to see coins “in the metal” that they have only seen in pictures.

The second function that my collection serves is that it keeps my grader’s eye sharp. After a day of looking at overgraded material, it’s refreshing and educational to look at my collection and know what the coins should look like in the various grades.

Some dealers do not collect because be they cannot afford to have the capital tied up in a collection. There is also the risk that as a collector you would keep everything that was good and have nothing left to sell. Fortunately I have enough personal income and capital that I have no need to break my collection. And I have maintained some strong "firewalls" between my colleciton and my inventory. Now and then a door will open in the firewall that allow a flow in and out, but that is rare. And I always replace the capital from the business with cash or coins.