My first opportunity to corner a market - reactions
kieferscoins
Posts: 10,017 ✭
This will interest slab collectors and Conder 101:
Background: PCI made in 1992 a blue label slab that was supposed to be for world coins. For some unknown reason, they stopped after just a few months and went back to the normal green label. In Conder101's book that is coming out in a few months, he calls them very rare and has only seen 12-24 examples in the last 4 years.
Conder101: Did they only make them in 1992? The guy said he submitted about 100 cuban coin in 1999 after buying a group of them and submitted them to PCI all coming back in the blue label. Could it be 1999 instead of 1992 or is it his error?
Today: Now fast forward to a few weeks ago. I came in contact with a guy that has about 100 blue label PCI world coins for sale (all priced from $6-295 each). I could buy them all and corner the market, knowing that they are rare - which there could still be only a few hundred out there after this hoard. I decided to have first pick of a few of the slabs and then announce the "Blue Label Cuban Hoard" (becuase all the coins were submitted at one time and the hoard consists of circulated Cuban coins) instead of buying them all up quietly and waiting for the book to come out saying 24 known and later selling them all. Hopefully this was the right thing to do. The population of known blue label PCI coins has just jumped from 24 to 124-150!
Cameron Kiefer
Background: PCI made in 1992 a blue label slab that was supposed to be for world coins. For some unknown reason, they stopped after just a few months and went back to the normal green label. In Conder101's book that is coming out in a few months, he calls them very rare and has only seen 12-24 examples in the last 4 years.
Conder101: Did they only make them in 1992? The guy said he submitted about 100 cuban coin in 1999 after buying a group of them and submitted them to PCI all coming back in the blue label. Could it be 1999 instead of 1992 or is it his error?
Today: Now fast forward to a few weeks ago. I came in contact with a guy that has about 100 blue label PCI world coins for sale (all priced from $6-295 each). I could buy them all and corner the market, knowing that they are rare - which there could still be only a few hundred out there after this hoard. I decided to have first pick of a few of the slabs and then announce the "Blue Label Cuban Hoard" (becuase all the coins were submitted at one time and the hoard consists of circulated Cuban coins) instead of buying them all up quietly and waiting for the book to come out saying 24 known and later selling them all. Hopefully this was the right thing to do. The population of known blue label PCI coins has just jumped from 24 to 124-150!
Cameron Kiefer
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Comments
Pennies make dollars, and dollars make slabs!
....inflation must be kicking in again this dollar says spend by Dec. 31 2004!
Erik
K S
Cameron Kiefer
To corner a market you must have collectors who are the "end user"- collectors who also want this item.
I don't see that happening with PCI product so much.
I DO see it happening though, one day, with NGC or PCGS slabs. Now, if you could continue your quest with the fat slab NGC, plain white obverse insert with the gold hot stamp reverse then you're possibly on to something.
-By the way, do you have examples of PCI's "Signature Series" from each of the contributors? PM me if you don't.
peacockcoins
<< <i>To corner a market you must have collectors who are the "end user"- collectors who also want this item >>
The end user is not there yet since the book isn't out. I forsee this in the future though.
Cameron Kiefer
Carl
Signature Series
Signature Series PCI
PCI Signature Series
peacockcoins
youll learn fast. reallllll fastttt
Go BIG or GO HOME. ©Bill
We'll use our hands and hearts and if we must we'll use our heads.
Cameron Kiefer
Liberty: Parent of Science & Industry
I don't foresee any collectors paying a prem for them either. Probably you & Conder101 are the only people in the whole wide world with any interest in them but then again what do I know, I'm just a Sample Slab collector.
Cameron Kiefer
It's like buying the first year or two of a new model of car. They have a lot of failures and recalls because they don't have the bugs out of it yet.
As for when they were produced, everything I have seen and everyone I have talked to that remembers them have all agreed that they were an early PCI product so I will still say 1992. I think the seller is mistaken.
And yes there are very very few people who are interested in collecting slabs right now and that may never change. On the other hand very very few people bothered to pay any attention to mintmarks until after Heaton wrote the book (In 1893?) telling everyone what mintmarked varieties there were out there. And even then it didn't really start taking off until the 1920's and 30's. "Yeah I really got a good upgrade on my 1896 quarter! You remember, that one I had with the light wear and that S on the back. Well I got a nice 96 proof today so I swapped it out. What did I do with the old one? Well I knew you had a nice proof already, so I just spent it."
Ask most anyone and they will tell you that nothing increases interest in a series like a reference book on it. I've been able to tell that my being on this forum and answering questions about the slab has increased interest in them. Sample slabs are already seem to be gaining a following. Prices on ebay have been rising even for the very common ones. Will it continue? I don't know. but some of the older varieties are probably scarce enough that it wouldn't take very many people at all collecting them to push up the values significantly. Right now though it's just fun trying to find what you can. It's kind of like what coin collecting was like back in the fifties when you could still collect just by searching rolls and sometimes a scarce or even a rare coin would turn up in pocket change. Instead of rolls I'm scanning ebay or dealers cases watching for those old pieces of slabbing history to turn up and to try and get them before they are destroyed because someone thinks they might upgrade or because people want then in the latest holder. (which in three years gets changed again so it's time to have everything reholdered. Whenever a major change in a holder is made it seem like within a year to 18 months 90% of all of the slabs for that company offered at major shows are in the new holders.)
My comment to Cameron was not meant as a knock. I would like you to know that.
I agree that the work you have done researching and answering questions on the forum has put considerable light on what may turn into being a very collectable area of numismatics. And I can certainly understand your interest on the level of numismatic history. It is a worthy endeavor and one to be taken seriously. And yes, I do think of you as a bit of a pioneer.
I'm sure you will find certain areas in a first edition of your book that may prove to be not completely accurate. You are the first to do this, so it's unkown territory. I think it will be great when your work makes it's first appearance. I hope it is successful enough so that we see multipile editions over the years. I congratulate you.
Carl
<< <i>But until I stick my neck on the line and people start LOOKING at what they have and TELLING me what a fool I am there is no way I can get better data. >>
You're no fool, you have done awesome work.
Cameron Kiefer
And Cameron, I know you are not calling me a fool, but there will be some that do and I know this. That is why I said that. To show that I am aware of it and that it isn't going to bother me when it happens. It is always easy to second guess the pioneer. And there will be plenty of people out there ready to do it.
First to have any hope for success you must pick an item that is relatively scarce and relatively inexpensive unless you have a large amount of money. The fact that something is scarce and inexpensive usually means that it does not have much of a collector following, which dooms your efforts from the start.
Then you start buying and hoarding. As you absorb more and more pieces, fewer of them come on the market. That usually results in higher prices for each new piece you add to your hoard.
Finally if you succeed to buying up a dominant position in the market, which usually does not happen, you will need to sell the items to reap your profits. The trouble is unless there has been significant shift in the demand for the item you have been hoarding, you probably won’t realize much if anything in profits. If you sell the items too quickly, there will be too many on the market and the price will fall. If you sell them slowly enough to make a profit, you might find that you would have been better off if you had acted like a “normal” investor.
Bottom line: cornering the market doesn’t often work, and in the process you can alienate a lot of people if they figure out what you are up to.
<< <i>Bottom line: cornering the market doesn’t often work, and in the process you can alienate a lot of people if they figure out what you are up to. >>
I agree. That's why it was an opportunity and not something I took it up on.
Cameron Kiefer