The Cherrypicker's Widow

MrEureka

This is a fun one:

PDF from the January Numismatist.

notwilight

Well, we know what Coinguy1 is doing with his spare time--developing ethics proplems for the Numismatist.

This is one of the few cases I've read, where the original wrong was so blatent and obscene, that I would be very tempted to just correct it myself.

OTOH, not enough info was given about the original purchase that I, dealer 1, made. Was the lot offered at a BIN price or did I look through the coins and make an offer. If the latter, what was my responsibility to disclose the rarety of this half...of course dealer 1 didn't figure it out or wouldn't have sold it for $80.

--Jerry

cladking

It seems you already got your revenge when he keeled over dead but option #2
is still attractive. You can always reconsider after the date.

rec78

I think i would offer to buy the rest of the collection but only offer to broker that coin for a fee of say, 10%, after telling the widow what had happened. She would probably understand and go along with this arrangement. However after the person bought it and found this out i am sure that he would have told his wife or/and marked the coin as to what varity and also what it was worth. Most cherrypicker's will mark the holder as to what variety the coin is .
I do not know if oral deception in this case is classified as fraud. However, i am not a lawyer and therefore cannot say for sure. A sales agreement was reached. You also do not say if the friend knew that it was a rare variety before he bought it or found out later. Does the dealer in this case owe the previous owner any money?
It was stated somewhere before in this forum that cherrypicker's add value to the coin . I totally agree with this statement.
There was a deal in Adamstown Pa.(not far from me and if i was into buying picture frames i may have bought it myself) a few years ago where a person bought a picture frame for $4.00 when they took off the picture to replace it, there was an original copy of the declaration of indepence unerneath ! It was sold for over $1,000,000 !!! The person that originally sold it --WELL they got $4.00--JMHO. Bob

Coxe

I agree with the approach of leveling with the widow on the entire situation. That does keep everything moral and certainly demonstrates an applaudable level of honesty on the part of the buyer to the seller.

The assurance that it was a common coin was a breach of trust in that relationship. A proper cherrypicker has no moral obligation to disclose unchallenged that a purchase is a premium bearing variety. If a friend is selling it to you and specifically asks knowing you are knowledgeable, there is a moral imperative in operation. This is also true when the widow returns the opportunity to buy as a friend of the dealer. If the dealer was alive and offering to sell it back and missed that he noted the variety and marked it up 25%, would it be ok to take advantage? No. But it would be a good idea to remind the guy of the original circumstances.

I understand the difficulty not taking advantage of a seller like this, especially in a moment's decision. A good dealer I have done considerable raw business with presented that to me not long ago. I was browsing through his 2x2s and found a coin that was labeled without the mintmark and priced to the Philly one, which was considerably less valuable in the grade. It would have been trivial to just add it to the stack I was buying, and was tempting, gain from his mistake which might have been also the previous seller's mistake. But I gave it to him and told him he missed the mint mark. Would have been nice to have had it then offered to me a a discounted price, but that was not my expectation nor did that happen.

ArgentumRex

Though tempting, paying the woman less than full value might be a bit short sighted, because when/if people find out that you ripped off your "friend's" poor widow, it's not going to look too good for you, regardless of what may or may not have happened between you and your "friend" in the distant past. So, selfish and ethical approaches may arrive at similar outcomes in this case.

options26

I have 2 points, knowledge is king and there have been several examples listed here of people getting cherrypicked. Would this dealer ever even looked for the rare variety? We will never know, but heres my 2 points:

1. The dealer made his normal profit margins from the original purchase and sale of the coin.

2. Now he will again profit from the second sale of the coin.

I will assume that his normal margins are 25%, he originally purchased the coin for $60, and now on the second sale total profit between the 2 will be $2,520.00. I would not complain if I could do that on every $60 purchase. I view the original purchase by the collector as a lesson learned to dealer. People do this all the time, knowledge is king. Van Gough's Sunflower painting was purchased at a flea market for $4, sold for over $60 million, Jay Leno purchases a duesenburg for $300k puts $100k into and sells it for over a million, rare movie posters, the cowardly llions original costume, you name it. It's the nature of the business and those that sell without doing the research first can only blame themselves.

ziggy29

<< <i> It's the nature of the business and those that sell without doing the research first can only blame themselves. >>

Yes and no. Those who just sell willy nilly to anyone? Yeah, sure, to a point -- they are at the whim of "rip artists" looking for the big score.

But if they are selling to someone they know, with a history of dealings that bolster an implied trust -- and the dealer knows and exploits that trust, then shame on the dealer for taking advantage of the situation. I don't think it's reasonable to expect a seller to know every minor and extremely rare die variety, and I think it's unreasonable to expect that level of knowledge. About the only thing that might save them in that situation is a professional appraisal (where there is no buying and selling of coins to avoid conflict of interest) by someone who knows the coins involved forward and backward in his/her sleep.