Talk about the impossible; who wants this task & how long will it take? contest to win 90% half
KollectorKing
Posts: 4,820 ✭✭✭✭✭
A seller emailed me offering the following coins for sale. I politely passed on the deal (the time & effort to sort them would kill me).
- 100 U.S. Large Cents, mostly Poor, Fair, AG-VG all with readable dates.
- 1,000 Indian Cents, mostly Poor, Fair, AG-VG all with readable dates, almost half in the 1800s going back to 1859, 1860s, 70s, 80s, etc.
- 500 Shield Nickels, mostly partial date or no date. Comes with a bottle of Nic-a-Date date-restorer but we don’t have time for this.
- Bag of 4,000 Buffalo Nickels Comes with a bottle of Nic-a-Date date-restorer.
- Better Bag of 4,000 Buffalo Nickels, all with readable dates, average VG or better to VF-XF with full horns.
- 50 Seated Dimes, 1830s to 1891, mostly Good to Fine, average VG overall.
- 100 Standing Quarters 1925-1930 including D & S mints and all of these are better grade than average, mostly VG-Fine or better.
- 50 Franklin Half Dollars, good mix of PDS from the early 50s to early 60s, mostly XF-AU.
- 100 Peace Dollars, PDS mostly VF-AU
- 100 Morgan Dollars, 1878 to 1921 PDOS - A lot of O mints in the 80s and 90s. Mostly VG-XF, some lower, some higher.
- 200 Gem BU Rolls of Lincoln Cents, early memorial issues, mostly 1959 to 1970-PDS, many in original old bank-wrapped rolls and in large upright tube boxes.
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Comments
I'd offer to buy all the silver dimes, quarters, halves and peace dollars at melt, $15 each on the morgans and pass on the rest.
The whole worlds off its rocker, buy Gold™.
BOOMIN!™
Wooooha! Did someone just say it's officially "TACO™" Tuesday????
Mostly give away stuff for kids at coin shows
Seriously, I'd sign up for the entire lot, but only after I retire.
Seems like all of those are commodity categories where an established storefront should have standard buy prices for bulk purchases.
Or look on eBay for past sale prices for bulk lots, then round backwards based on how much time/effort it will take you to deal with them.
I don't expect it would take very long to come up with an offer. I also don't expect that whoever was asking would be happy with the offer they'd get...
Take about 30 minutes to make a decent offer. Why did you pass? Silver is silver and old cents are easily sold and researched and a quick check will give you good estimates of values. Just understand that looking at each and every coin is not going to happen. It's offered as a lot and that's how I'd price it. Nickels by the roll and cents by the roll are easily priced on ebay.....pretty quickly too.
I'm assuming the seller does not expect retail, right? If so he needs to open a shop.
bob
"Junk" like this has an established value.....if it is the type of material you are familiar with it wouldn't be that much of a problem.
There are sellers at local/smallish shows that deal exclusively in this type of material and they are always busy.
THere is money to be made in this stuff if your buy offer leaves you enough room...I wouldn't spend a lot of time with it if I bought it.....just sell the lg. cents in lots of 10, etc.
It would go away surprisingly quickly.
Folks love this stuff.
For giggles, this is what I would figure as the "value" (what I could make relatively easily if I bought that lot):
1. 100 U.S. Large Cents, mostly Poor, Fair, AG-VG all with readable dates. $200 ($2 each)
2. 1,000 Indian Cents, mostly Poor, Fair, AG-VG all with readable dates $300 (30 cents each)
3. 500 Shield Nickels, mostly partial date or no date. $100 (20 cents each)
4. Bag of 4,000 Buffalo Nickels $250 (6 cents each -- I assume these are dateless)
5. Bag of 4,000 Buffalo Nickels, all with readable dates $800 (20 cents each)
6.-8. $55 90% silver $550 ($10 per dollar face)
9-10. $200 face in silver dollars $3000 ($15 per dollar face)
11. 200 Gem BU Rolls of Lincoln Cents, early memorial issues: $100 (face)
So that's about $5300 max, before rounding down for time and effort.
I'm not a real dealer and that isn't a real offer. But it should be fairly close to reasonable, and took about 10 minutes, mostly spent poking around eBay to find recent sale prices.
10 minutes to quote
100 hours to prep for sale
ANA 50 year/Life Member (now "Emeritus")
But then they'd know who you were and astute collectors of such material want to remain anonymous for security reasons.
From my experience it takes a long time to sell nice collector grade coins like this, let alone a bunch of low grade and problem pieces as I see here.
When I was dealer, I bought an accumulation of Indian cents that were dated from the early 1860s to the 1900s. There were a fair number better dates in the group including a few nice 1871 and 1872 pieces that graded from VG to EF. There was an 1877 that had a full “LIBERTY,” but it had been lightly cleaned. My only certification option at that time was to send it to ANACS because it would have been body bagged at NGC and PCGS.
I sold the semi-key dates fairly quickly to a wholesaler dealer who was buying for retailers. The 1877 went to Northeast Numismatics, who had a customer. The common dates in the 1880s and 1890s took much longer to sell despite the fact that many of them were no problem pieces in the Fine to EF range.
The trouble is most collectors and investors don’t want anything but the key dates. The common dates are of little interest to them unless they are “condition rarities.”
Since it usually takes a long time to sell this material, you need to take that into account when you buy it. The situation is amplified when you are buying really low grade stuff like this.
Your wages per hour in getting this all sorted out & ready for sale would likely be quite paltry.
Coinlearner, Ahrensdad, Nolawyer, RG, coinlieutenant, Yorkshireman, lordmarcovan, Soldi, masscrew, JimTyler, Relaxn, jclovescoins, justindan, doubleeagle07
Now listen boy, I'm tryin' to teach you sumthin' . . . . that ain't no optical illusion, it only looks like an optical illusion.
My mind reader refuses to charge me. . . . . . .
When I was dealer I heard that there was a steady demand for type coins in Good. If such collectors actually exist, I never ran into them at the shows. If they were there, perhaps my prices were not low enough.
A whole lot of labor goes into a buy like this; and then if you don't sell it in bulk, a whole lot of carting the stuff around to sell it a piece of a few at a time over who knows how many years.
Coinlearner, Ahrensdad, Nolawyer, RG, coinlieutenant, Yorkshireman, lordmarcovan, Soldi, masscrew, JimTyler, Relaxn, jclovescoins, justindan, doubleeagle07
Now listen boy, I'm tryin' to teach you sumthin' . . . . that ain't no optical illusion, it only looks like an optical illusion.
My mind reader refuses to charge me. . . . . . .
Meant to say " a piece or a few". Fatfinger syndrome strikes again.
Coinlearner, Ahrensdad, Nolawyer, RG, coinlieutenant, Yorkshireman, lordmarcovan, Soldi, masscrew, JimTyler, Relaxn, jclovescoins, justindan, doubleeagle07
Now listen boy, I'm tryin' to teach you sumthin' . . . . that ain't no optical illusion, it only looks like an optical illusion.
My mind reader refuses to charge me. . . . . . .
Maybe the best things is a nice melting pot, as the world will keep spinning even though most of that stuff will just turn into fresh metal.
I contemplate sometimes having $X to "waste" and going to coin shows, buying the stuff that has been dragging at the bottom for 50+ years, sold on QVC type shows to the uninformed, etc. and just melting it, selling the metal, taking that money, doing it again and again, until the $X is finally used up, but making the world a better place.
Thanks everyone for the great responses & recommendations.
Now here is the rest of the story which are full of red flags that convinced me to pass on making an offer.
The following is the first part of the seller's email:
"We have the following, please let us know what you would pay for each individually numbered group, and we will consider your best offer. We’ve been grading coins for over 40 years and I used to work for PCGS in Orange County. We are near in xxxxxx.
Many of these coins were purchased at a “bulk wholesale" Stacks and Bowers auction many years ago.
We respectfully request all communications in writing to minimize mistakes or misunderstandings and thus protect both parties, buyer and seller.
Thanks."
That sounds sketchy.
Yeah, if he's been doing coins for 40 years he should damn well know what this stuff is worth.
Tell them no thanks.
BS meter just went off.
Probably all coins searched for errors/varieties as well.
I have never seen a bulk wholesale lot at Stacks with so much low grade material. I would think (I don't know) that Stacks would bulk wholesale such material to a wholesaler not clutter up their auctions or showroom with it.
I've bought collections exactly like that. They are a lot of work, but they do have a value and can be sold.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, evn when irrefutably accurate.
That offer is obviously intended for dealers, and I am not sure many would be interested..... Then you follow up with the 'red flags'...I think most will 'walk' after that. If purchased, it will be someone starting or fairly new as a dealer... they could make some money, but the effort will be substantial. Cheers, RickO
You can pay me and I'll sort it for you.
With the exception of silver coins this is the type of junk that is being held up simply by the greater fool theory.
Like it or not there are fewer new collectors each year than there are old collectors dying.
Redbook or some other source may say these common, heavily worn coins have value but only if you can find a bigger fool than yourself.
All the baby boomer B&M dealers and collectors have countless boxes of these loose or in in 2"x2" mounts. The avalanche of this junk to market is just starting and will get much worse over next 10-20 years.
If you can get 50% of above quoted estimates for non silver coins you should dump them now.
The story continues:
1. Seller was ticked off when I passed on the deal.
2. I told him I had $X to spend & didn't want to insult him w/a low offer.
CONTEST:
I have the email sent to the seller showing the exact $$ in question.
$4800
$3500
Successful buys on BST board from NotSure, Nankraut, Yorkshireman, Astrorat, Ikeigwin(2x), Bob13, Outhaul, coinbuf, dpvilla, jayPem, Sean1990, TwoKopeiki, bidask, Downtown1974, drddm, nederveit2
$5000...
$4500
DPOTD-3
'Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery'
CU #3245 B.N.A. #428
Don
$3,000
My offer would be $791.
Donato
Donato's Complete US Type Set ---- Donato's Dansco 7070 Modified Type Set ---- Donato's Basic U.S. Coin Design Set
Successful transactions: Shrub68 (Jim), MWallace (Mike)
Absolutely true! There isn't going to be anything rare or exciting jumping out at you after you outlay the cash.
Your only hope would be the rolls............assuming they were not opened and searched prior to sale.
Pete
Face value for the coins, plus $1.95 for the bottle of Nic-a-Date date-restorer.
7850 less nic a date effect @ .60
4,712.50 final amount offered
Best place to buy !
Bronze Associate member
$4000
$2000
$1500
6000 is my guess.
I bet they wanted 10 or more.
$1000.00
Call around on the "wanted to buy" pages in CW or NN. At major shows like Baltimore the right dealer would go through that group quickly.
$4350
$1850
$3500
Game ends.
Some great & close guesses. Thanks for playing.
Here is a partial email between me & the seller:
Because I have only $2.5K to spent, and I didn't want to insult you with a low offer.
Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android
On Sat, Feb 3, 2018 at 9:17 AM, xxxxx reply 2da7
2da73f176xyxxe3c328da39fdcdxxxx123aec66d@reply.craigslist.org wrote:
Then why advertise that you’re buying if you can’t even make an offer on a wide variety of choices?
Very weird.
Too bad you don't have some credit line with a bank.
I've said this before, but there IS an easy market for this material in BULK flips. That is to all the metal detector clubs that host competition hunts, monthly prizes, etc. For our one club, I need 70 silver dimes, 70 Indian cents, and 70 buffalo nickels for the year's monthly prizes. I also need a 10 coins for door prizes and more for raffles. For our hunt, I need over 1000 silver dimes, 600 wheat cents, and a host of other coins (silver dollars, seated, barber, large cents, commemoratives, etc). Obviously the nicer the better, but most just like winning an old coin. Usually the only requirement is genuine, not holed, etc. Lower quality is NOT an issue. I can name 5 clubs within 3 HOURS of one another that host 7-8 hunts a year total.
If someone made me great offers on this "junk" each year, you'd have an easy recurring sale and me a lot easier job as Treasurer. Multiply that by a 100 clubs.
I'm starting to think I'm going to have to start a low margin junk business catering to every metal detecting club myself as a hobby side business.
Nevermind, I found the answer up there.
Collector, occasional seller