Coin Market Continues Slow ?
bestday
Posts: 4,242 ✭✭✭✭
Last visited several coin B&Ms in Chicago last spring things were slow ..
Visited again today ...surprised to see shops even slower
Even one what was a big bustling wholesale coin store was empty with 2 less employees... phones silent .. My friend's store cut another employee ,with ebay sales keeping business in black.. others have little foot traffic, with gold spike not helping business very much .. will B&Ms become extinct?
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Not extinct, but they must evolve as the business climate changes.
Most have subsisted on bullion transactions. I would expect many to fold over the next decade.
What I just read is that ebay allows the B&M business to stay afloat.
I run an ebay business and have almost no overhead as I do not have a B&M. I do not get the walks in tho, but in my field that would be rare.
Yes....tripling the fees is mighty generous of the Gonifs at Ebay.
EBay and PayPal fees are part of your overhead.
After going up a little recently, I noticed yesterday the PCGS 3000 index is dropping again to new 10 year lows.
It has been relatively stable since May and looks like it may be a bottom if it holds. Of course, I wouldn't place too much faith in the PCGS 3000 as I think it is a deeply flawed metric for measuring the entire coin market.
Have you viewed the make up of the index? Seems to represent what many of us post on this forum.
My understanding is that the basis is the PCGS Price Guide for the various included types/issues, which is all over the place. While it has gotten better in recent months, it is still far from accurate for many series. In other words: Garbage in, garbage out.
Cam, You should scroll through the list of coins that makes up the index. I don't see any garbage. Active link on PCGS homepage.
Somebody's making money in this coin market......but who?
The coin market is far too small and fragmented for a meaningful "value index" regardless of the originator's good intentions.
I stopped at a shop yesterday about an hour away, business is slow, little in the way of material offered to them they say. Stopped at a pawn shop today that has the same stuff month after month including a nice $5 Liberty slightly better date PCGS MS63 priced at well over a grand! They've had that one over 10 years in their cases. Rosie circ rolls at $18 plus times face value, bullion gold ounces at $75 plus over melt, they have dollar signs in their eyes, their stuff is too precious to bargain on. And I wonder how much they paid? 30% under spot is strong for pawn shops. No way to run a business.
I'm watching what leading in state dealers are selling on the bay and good deals and nice stuff do find buyers, but the market is generally slow. I spoke with a largely bullion dealer who is doing well up in MA at the Brimsfields antique market. But he has been fortunate with metals and anxiety rising.
You misunderstood what I meant. My criticism is with the numerical values assigned to the coins that compose the index. The numbers are based on the PCGS Price Guide, which is divorced from reality in many cases. Some are vastly overpriced and others underpriced. The differences are random, and the data is too scattered for any composite score to be meaningful. Even the price guide methodology is inconsistent, and to be frank, arbitrary. Instead of relying on auction data, sometimes it looks like a dealer's wish list of what he could sell a piece for. It doesn't matter how good of a selection of coins you chose for the composite score if the numerical weight assigned to each coin is arbitrary.
Even in a relative sense, it doesn't seem very meaningful at least to me. Since each series is based on data compiled by the same editor, entire series are subject to the same bias which can differentially skew the composite score so that it may or may not be an accurate reflection of the current market overall. Also since performance is so diverse over several series, the metric itself seems worthless, again all in my opinion.
Is there any good news? I bought an MS 65 Hawaiian two months ago, I got it a CAC sticker green. A wholesale price offer yesterday was $50 over what I paid retail ,but less than PCGS coin values listed price.
The shop I do business with, not the offering dealer, here in NJ has at least 1 million $$$ in inventory on Ebay a lot of nice stuff selling through that venue. Is that "good" I guess. I've seen a lot of his foot traffic at the B&M and it's mostly bullion deals.
I share a lot of the concerns over the "hobby" too. I think this is the bottom or the beginning of the end.
Best, Sol
I've passed on two beautiful Hawaiian's in the past week...MS-65 CAC priced at MS-64 guide. I didn't buy either out of fear they are still falling. I've been kicking myself, but don't want to take a $1k hit.
eBay and Heritage.
Great transactions with oih82w8, JasonGaming, Moose1913.
Why, me of course. Duh.
In fairness, those MS67 coins were in MS66 holders a few years ago so that would make a lot of sense.
Maybe or maybe not. Less pie means more crumbs.
If they were that nice. IMHO you should not have passed. This is the time that Bower's always talking about
when you buy, not when you sell. I understand though, I don't see that many YNs behind me and I don't see it getting any cheaper to do business, which is why I say margins are high on nice $300 to $1500 coins.
I have lived through worse markets and It didn't bother me so much as it does now. Funny thing I can't pinpoint why, maybe it's because in the back of my mind I keep thinking about a 22,000 DJIA and credit.
If the Heritage Auction is any indication, the coin prices are SKYROCKETING. I bought nothing in the auction and in fact, I wasn't even close. Heritage is fetching record prices. The only coins I purchased at reasonable prices came on the bourse floor.
That is the weird thing: who are buying those coins?
I mean not to sound silly but is there a massive amount of collectors out there scouring Ebay and Heritage auctions that just, for lack of a better way of putting it, don't associate with the rest of us??
Is there this group of collectors eager to buy who simply don't go to shows, don't go to shops, and avoid the forums??
Or is there another explanation?
Maybe, and with a little luck, there is a "silent majority" out there doing the buying.
Coin club for several years, bought 7 figure amounts of coins .. none, for past several years.... with nothing more planned ....money going/went into stock market
Not for the coins I bid on. I just lost out on a coin where it sold for double the highest price it was ever sold in the past since 1995 and its by no means a rare coin, just a scarce, with high mintage.
That's what I've been wondering. Who are buying these coins at these high prices and how can I sell my coins to them????????
Think ...concentration of wealth.
I keep hearing the market is slow and prices are dropping....Although I am not seeking many coins, the one's that do interest me are not going cheap, but they are definitely selling. I see many posts here about newly acquired coins, not many bragging about bargains. The larger shows seem well attended and show reports indicate coins are selling. So, while overall, the market may be in a minor slump, the hobby is not going away, there are many, many internet dealers... sellers on Instagram etc.....The market is much larger than what is perceived through an individual view. Cheers, RickO
Young people like me don't bother going to shops anymore...unless my
Dealer text me that e has material I'd be interested in. Why bother driving 30 minutes to my LCS to see the same stuff at the same prices when I can look at tens of thousands of coins on GC, Ha, forums and eBay?
You old dogs are delusional. Times change, there are way too many coin shows. I'd rather be at a college football game than a bourse floor on a nice fall day.
Better deals are to be found in BiN on eBay or auctions on GC....
Common coins and marginal material is suffering, but good material is not....
__That is the weird thing: who are buying those coins?
I mean not to sound silly but is there a massive amount of collectors out there scouring Ebay and Heritage auctions that just, for lack of a better way of putting it, don't associate with the rest of us??
Is there this group of collectors eager to buy who simply don't go to shows, don't go to shops, and avoid the forums??
Or is there another explanation?
__
Actually, Kenriles, you are pretty much on target. I personally know of three wealthy individuals who regularly spend six-figure amounts in Heritage auctions (such as this week's Long Beach Sale) and, while they belong to the National organizations and attend the major shows, you will never see them at a VFW Hall coin show or a B&M shop. Also, they wouldn't be caught dead frequenting a forum such as this, especially talking about Coinstar finds or FleaBay. Speaking of FleaBay, if anything turns up there that might interest them, well, as Longacre would say, they have "people" to handle that.
Please understand that these gentlemen are very nice folks, they're easy to talk to at a major show, and are very enthusiastic collectors that are having a ball. One of them has even loaned me part of his collection to use a couple of times in an exhibit. They just operate on a "different plane of existence" than most folks.
Member ANA, SPMC, SCNA, FUN, CONECA
With all the forest fires I'm surprised we still have trees.
There were two 1838 $2.50 coins in the recent Heritage auction neither was nice enough for me, but they went for less that I thought they would.
The two 1877 Twenty Cent Pieces still went for far more than they had in the past. One was okay, but not great, $18,000 for MS-63, and the other had been rubbed in the obverse fields. It still pulled PR-61 grade and sold for over $13,000.
I can't resist. I am an addict. Coins find me.
There seems to be a flight to quality. Good coins rise. Everything else sinks.
Put another way, rare coins may be worth a premium while others may not be as rare as we thought.
As the expression goes, "You don't buy straw hats in the summer."
This is the perfect time to buy and expand one's collection. This hobby is not going anywhere. This notion of it all ending is nonsense and has been said for many years.
It is a down market, yes. So everybody enjoy your collection and stop panicking.
All the doom and gloom threads around here serve no purpose.
Dead Cat Waltz Exonumia
"Coin collecting for outcasts..."
Agreed. Sometimes people forget that there is a whole world of collectors outside of these forms.
When it is cloudy... it isn't sunny
Funny, 3-5 years ago I used to see Escalades, Tahoes with fancy numismatic vanity plates, with some even coming from 40 - 60 miles away ....parked up and down street in front of the wholesale Buyer's store .
No More
A couple market segments are doing ok it seems whenever I bid I lose... Early problem free federal coinage, hi grade red copper and several foreign segments seem to be moving.
People must quit looking at yesterday. Live today, and look forward to tomorrow. In other words if you keep looking at the past you will do nothing but see the same thing. Things have changed in the coin collecting world, and people don't collect the same way as in the past. There are some people that understand this and there are others that can not comprehend it. The market may be down but it is no way lost in history. There are many things that make it look like the collector base is dwindling, but the truth of the matter is that there are more options now more than ever to buy and sell for the collector. How do I know and understand this, it is because my occupation saw the down turn also because of better technologies and do-it-yourselfers. When there are ways for the consumer to do it themselves, it makes the regular avenues look thinner than in the past.
I think he recognizes that because he said "almost no overhead" not "no overhead". Also, a B&M has much higher overhead than an online eBay business.
In my experience, the B&M business has been "evolving" for 2 decades. There generally aren't a lot of full-service retail outlets servicing the middle-class clientele anymore. They still make money, but mostly on scrap and bullion. The internet has changed the volume of their business. It just doesn't pay to stock common material waiting for someone to fill an album.
More recently, as gold and silver swooned (slight rebound of late), the volume of their scrap business and bullion has decreased. This has created hardship for many retail outlets who got a bit lazy during the post-2008 metals hay days.
It's an odd thing about precious metals: When they are cheap, no one wants them. When they are expensive, every one wants them.
About 4 Months ago, the flea market dealer here in town went out of business. They used to get a good crowd, every weekend, When they closed, I started opening up on Saturdays as a full store to attract their customers and have a place where the folks could come hang out on Saturdays. I keep the inventory fresh every Saturday, sometimes its not that much, but always fresh. Mostly bullion sales today, occasional collector coins, as has been for several weeks , But here is the main difference, after I close up on Saturday, ebay gets the remaining collectors stuff listed on sat night. Bullion, common date dollars generic gold gets taken up to the refinery on mon or tue with the scrap gold jewelry. And then the process is started all over again the following week. The flea market guys went under because they had the same ol same tireless inventory week after week.
Nice to hear and good advice. Do you get repeat buyers coming back week after week?
@jdimmick Great post!! I have to say that I see the same old tired coins on ebay though from some dealers and market makers. But, that market is so big it is hard to tell.
Taking advantage of lower prices would be great if one could actually find coins to buy. That's been a struggle
mark
Fellas, leave the tight pants to the ladies. If I can count the coins in your pockets you better use them to call a tailor. Stay thirsty my friends......
The trouble is the market dries up, and there is no much to buy after the prices drop. It takes a while for the owners to accept the fact that they are going to get less. Therefore the buying opportunities are limited.
It is amazing just how long many owners are willing to hold out, hoping to avoid cutting prices. Years can pass.