About negotiating for your collectibles
If you are a collector of anything you know that the price of your collectible is based on both a market valuation and what you are willing to pay. There are a lot of market valuation tools for the numismatic collector. One of the more popular ones is The Coin Dealer Newsletter and associated publications that track market trends.
In 2012, I wrote a two-part series about how coins are priced (see Part I and Part II) where I discussed not only how the coins are priced by the different markets for purchasing coins. Last year I wrote about other venues to buy your coins and then earlier this year I added information about estate auctions. All have their audiences, which expands the buying options.
One important factor I discussed is how to negotiate. In “How Are Coins Priced (Part II),” I wrote about negotiating from the perspective of the collector. At the time, I had just started my collectibles business and did not have the experience from the other side of the negotiation table to understand from their perspective.
I thought about this when I stumbled upon an article in Sports Collectors Digest about negotiating. The author spoke to collectors and dealers about their negotiating styles and conditions for negotiating. While the information about negotiating from the collector’s perspective is not that different than what I originally wrote, the impression from the dealer’s perspective is what I have witnessed.
My experience and the article provides two aspects of negotiating from the dealer’s perspective that I want to highlight here.
First, I want to emphasize the concept of BE POLITE! While most people are polite, there have been times I have wanted to punch a customer in the mouth. While I do not mind a little aggressive negotiating being rude will not make me want to work with you on the price.
Second, understand that you are not only buying an item but selling each collectible comes with a cost. Aside from the cost of the inventory, the dealer has overhead. At a show, the dealer has travel expenses. In a shop, there are expenses with maintaining the store.
Even auctions have expenses. Seller fees can be from 25 to 50-percent of the sale price in many professional auctions. Even eBay charges a final value fee for selling on their site and sometimes there are listing fees. While you might complain about paying more than the postage for the shipping costs, there are labor and material costs for packaging your winning item in addition to the postage.
To highlight the issue, the author spoke with a baseball card dealer who said:
The same thing could be said for numismatics as well.
An interesting Peace
While browsing on eBay, I noticed a few auctions of what I thought were philatelic (stamp collecting) cachets with Morgan and Peace dollars honoring different aspects of history. Not knowing much about them, I placed some bids based on the estimated values of the coins.
The difference between a First Day Cover (FDC) and a cachet is that the FDC is stamped on the first day of issue usually with a special commemorative postmark. A cache is a souvenir cover that is not postmarked as the first day of issue.
Another interesting collectible that combines philately and numismatics is called a Philatelic Numismatic Cover (PNC) or sometimes just coin cover. The U.S. Mint has produced coin covers for the 50 State Quarters, Westward Journey, and Presidential Dollars series as well as the first Sacagawea dollar. These are fun collectibles and something I will talk about in the future.
When the auctions were over, I won one with the 1926-S Peace dollar. Although the description seemed in order, I did not know what to expect. When it arrived I think it is more interesting than advertised.
First, the item is not an envelope by a heavy stock card that is 9-inches long by 4.875-inches wide. It is to honor the anniversary of the United States agreeing to join the World Court on January 27, 1926. The card includes a 5-cents stamp commemorating International Cooperation Year that was issued on June 26, 1965, and a 33-stamp that was in use when this was created in 2001. It is postmarked on January 27, 2001 in Washington, D.C., the 75th anniversary of the event.
The Peace dollar is definitely circulated and would probably grade in the Very Fine range if sent to a third-party grading service. It is encased in plastic which is sandwiched between two panels of cardboard to make up the card. The back of the card has a longer narrative of the history.
Originally, I was only interested in it for the coin since I am a fan of the Peace dollar. But seeing the card makes me wish I would have bid higher for more of them. The other problem is that I do not know who made them. This card looks similar to ones described as being from the Postal Commemorative Society. However, I have seen several different descriptions to make me unsure.
If anyone can provide more information, please post it as a comment below. I would like to learn more!
Weekly World Numismatic News for Mother’s Day
Chocolate coins in honor of the 150th anniversary of the historic Coin Press No. 1 are on sale at the Nevada State Museum’s store. (Courtesy of Jeanette McGregor via the Nevada Appeal)
Chocolate is one of the most complicated flavors, evident by the inability to produce artificial versions.
Scientists have discovered that The smell of chocolate increases theta brain waves, which triggers relaxation. And dark chocolate has been found to have health values including containing antioxidants, widens the arteries to increase the flow of blood and prevent the buildup of plaque, has anti-inflammatory powers, and when eaten daily can reduce the risk of heart disease by one-third.
Every second, Americans collectively eat one hundred pounds of chocolate. But Americans are only ninth when considering the per capita pounds of chocolate consumed by country. The top honor goes to the Swiss people who consume an average of 19.8 pounds of chocolate each. Americans only consume an average of 9.5 pounds.
(Courtesy of Forbes)
Why this obsession with chocolate on the Coin Collectors Blog?
Aside from being Mother’s Day, the Friends of the Nevada State Museum has created a chocolate coin in tribute to the 150th anniversary of Coin Press No. 1. The Museum, located in Carson City in the old CC Mint building, continues to use Coin Press No. 1 to strike medals for visitors as part of demonstrations.
On your next visit to Carson City or the area, stop by the Museum, strike your own silver medal, and buy one of their commemorative chocolate coins. I have heard they were described as “wicked good!”
And now the news…
May 4, 2018Rare collectible coins can be worth far more than their face value – and the rarest 50p design regularly sells for 160 times what it’s worth. But which coins should you look out for in your change? Which? 
→ Read more at which.co.uk
May 5, 2018Recycling flows defy price rise because jewelry holdings 'already depleted'… GOLD COIN and small-bar investors in the West have begun selling metal while household sales of 'scrap' jewelry have fallen to 10-year lows according to new data. → Read more at bullionvault.com
May 6, 2018Philip Foreman, 51, started his collection a year ago → Read more at kentlive.news
May 9, 2018While Joel Kimmel may not be attending the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle on May 19, the Ottawa-born illustrator’s connection to the soon-to-be royal couple will be forever etched … → Read more at ottawacitizen.com
May 10, 2018" /> <meta property= → Read more at globenewswire.com
May 10, 2018The Friends of the Nevada State Museum, in tribute to the upcoming 150th anniversary of the Museum’s historic Coin Press No. 1, have “minted” chocolate coins for sale at → Read more at nevadaappeal.com
May 10, 2018Archaeologists digging in an historic part of central Moscow have found all sorts of objects in recent months, but perhaps nothing as interesting as the oldest example of a pickpocket's coin to come to light in the city. → Read more at bbc.com
I’ll take On Big Money for $200
A few weeks ago while watching Jeopardy!, I noticed they had a category “On Big Money.” The premise was to name the person whose portrait is on high denomination currency—notes with a face value of $500 and greater.
I wrote down the questions and decided to create my own version of Jeopardy! How many can you answer, or ask correctly? Remember, in Jeopardy! you have to answer in the form of a question.
It’s Saturday… let’s have a little fun!
Click on the image to see the question.
$200
Click to Flip
Reference: Marbury v. Madison
$400
Click to Flip
John Marshall, Fourth Chief Justice, 1801-1835
$600
Click to Flip
McKinley was assassinated on September 14, 1901 in Buffalo, NY
$800
Click to Flip
Cleveland is the only president to serve non-consecutive terms.
$1000
Click to Flip
Chase was Treasury Secretary when he was appointed by Lincoln in 1864
How well did you do?
For those unsure of the questions that coincide with the answers, click on the value of the question in the tab to see the explanation.
The $200 Answer
William Marbury
The $400 Answer
Chief Justice John Marshall
The $600 Answer
2013 William McKinley Dollar
Later that day, Theodore Roosevelt was sworn in as the 26th President at the Ansley Wilcox House in Buffalo. This made Roosevelt the youngest person (42 years, 322 days) to be inaugurated as President.
The $800 Answer
2012 Grover Cleveland First Term Dollar
2012 Grover Cleveland Second Term Dollar
The $1000 Answer
Salmon P. Chase, 6th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court
What do you think? Is this something you would like to see more of? Let me know!
- Coin images courtesy of the U.S. Mint.
- All other images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Small Cash and a Pill
Sometimes it can be fun to search through junk boxes or bags of foreign coins. While you can see a lot of the same coins accumulate in these bags there are others that look interesting.
During our local coin club meeting, members bring in coins to sell to other members. One member, a very prolific collector, had a large plastic bag of circulated foreign coins. I was first drawn to the back by some of the shapes I found. I grabbed a handful and one coin fell on the table that really caught my eye.
It was a small coin. A very small coin. Nobody had a caliper but it was really small. Even though I was looking at the different shapes, I found this very small round coins intriguing. What was it?
Although I should become better at recognizing languages that are not based on the Latin alphabet, I asked my fellow club member if they could help identify the coin. He said that he could not identify the coin but recognized the lettering as being from India.
With that knowledge, I did not have to search the entire Standard Catalog of World Coins to figure it out. Start at the beginning of the Indian coins and see what we could find.
After a few minutes of looking, I found the listing. Then I found a second one that was very similar. Which coin did I have and where did it come from?
Travancore One Cash coin (KM #40). Undated but was struck from 1901 through 1910.
The coin is from the Princely State of Travancore. It was located in the southwest of the Indian subcontinent. Travancore became its own state in 1729 when it passed under Muslim control. Its economy was driven by making an alliance with the East India Company to freely use its ports for trade. Because of this arrangement, Travancore was never a part of the British Empire and continued to remain independent until 1949 when India was united as one country.
Only two rulers issued coins in the State. Rama Varma VI lead from 1885 through 1924 and Bala Rama Varma II ruled from 1924 through the end of the kingdom in 1949. Coins were issued by the kingdom to make up for lost revenues when the British became distracted by other world events.
Regardless of which version of the coin, it is a “ONE CASH” coin made of copper. The obverse is a sankha (conch shell) in an 8-pointed star with the reverse reading “Onu Kasu’ (one cash).
One version, under the rule of Rama Varma VI, was .65 grams of copper (KM #40) and the other, under the rule of Bala Rama Varma II, is .48 grams of copper (KM #57). Since my scale is not that sensitive, I had to find another way to diagnose this coin.
According to the SCWC, KM #57 was struck on a thin planchet that measures .8 mm. After making sure that my digital caliper can measure 1 mm, using a piece of metal that is 1 mm thick, I would be reasonably certain I could determine which coin I have.
Measuring both coins, the caliper read 1.02 mm giving evidence that this is the early version of the coin (KM #40)
Given the difference of only .22 mm, the only way to tell the difference would be either to weight the coins or use a caliper.
Since I had the caliper out, I measured the diameter and found it to be 10.72 mm.
For fun, I had to determine whether it was smaller than the 1904 Panama 2½ Centesimos coin, better known as the Panama Pill. Previously, I wrote that the Panama Pill was 10 mm in diameter. After finding the coin and measuring it, it was 10.12 mm in diameter making it than a little more than a ½ of a millimeter smaller than the Travancore One Cash coin.
Travancore One Cash coin from the early 20th century versus the 1904 2½ Centesimos coin, better known as the Panama Pill.
On a quick look, it appears that the most common “small” coin size is 15 mm. Some are slightly larger but not many smaller. The only other coin I found is a British 1½ pence coin that was struck for Ceylon, British Guiana, British West Indies and Mauritius that is 12 mm in diameter, I cannot find any smaller.
Surrounding the United States Dime is a 1904 Panama 2½ Centesimos coin (Panama Pill) and a 1901-1910 Travancore One Cash coin.
If anyone knows of smaller coins, please let me know.
About negotiating for your collectibles
If you are a collector of anything you know that the price of your collectible is based on both a market valuation and what you are willing to pay. There are a lot of market valuation tools for the numismatic collector. One of the more popular ones is The Coin Dealer...
read moreAn interesting Peace
While browsing on eBay, I noticed a few auctions of what I thought were philatelic (stamp collecting) cachets with Morgan and Peace dollars honoring different aspects of history. Not knowing much about them, I placed some bids based on the estimated values of the...
read moreWeekly World Numismatic News for Mother’s Day
There is nothing that says Mother’s Day more the chocolate. Chocolate is one of the most complicated flavors, evident by the inability to produce artificial versions. Scientists have discovered that The smell of chocolate increases theta brain waves, which triggers...
read moreI’ll take On Big Money for $200
A few weeks ago while watching Jeopardy!, I noticed they had a category “On Big Money.” The premise was to name the person whose portrait is on high denomination currency—notes with a face value of $500 and greater. I wrote down the questions and decided...
read more![[PB]](https://i0.wp.com/coinsblog.ws/library/images/Photobucket.png?w=1080 "CoinsBlog on Photobucket")
![[Google Photos]](https://i1.wp.com/coinsblog.ws/library/images/GooglePhotos.png?w=1080 "Old Blog Images on Google Photos")
Contact Me
Recent News
- United States Mint Opens Sales of 2018 American Eagle Silver Uncirculated Coin on May 24 May 18, 2018
- “Dollar Day” Session of Legend’s 26th Regency Auction a Record Breaker! May 18, 2018
- Rittenhouse 1792 Half Disme, 1861-P Paquet $20 at 2018 World’s Fair of Money May 17, 2018
- PCGS Detects Deceptively Altered Colonial Rarity May 9, 2018
- PNG Day 2018 Plans Announced May 9, 2018
Loading ...
