Winning my first Teletrade lots and buying "certified" vs. buying "raw".

Many of you may be surprised, but in 35+ years as a coin collector, I made my first purchase through Teletrade last Sunday. To be fair to myself, I have been a collector for longer than Teletrade has been in business, but barely, a mere 12 of 35 years. In fact, until I joined Collector?s Society, I had never heard of Teletrade and only heard of Heritage in passing. Because of your enthusiastic reviews of Teletrade, I thought ?Why Not?? and established an account. Last Sunday, June 21, I participated in my first auction.

Perusing Teletrade?s lots, I thought it good to place bids on two of their more inexpensive lots. When placing bids on coins, I use NGC?s Fair Market Value as a guide even though I think this guide is over-priced. If I can get a coin at FMV or less, I consider it a good purchase. With this in mind I placed my first bid on a very attractive Red/Brown 1908 PCGS MS-64 Indian Head Cent that I felt should have been Red. I won the coin and with buyer?s fees and postage, I acquired the coin for slightly less than FMV. To maximize value, I try to buy coins that will cross over into multiple registry sets. With the 1908 Indian Head Cent, I have a quality coin for both my 20th century type set and my basic US type set.

My other lot, a bi-centennial 1976-s PCGS MS-67 silver quarter, half and dollar, I won for 54% less than NGC FMV. Tallying the registry points on these three coins, I had a whopping 1074 points for my type sets at slightly over 18 points for every dollar I spent. Talk about value, this was it.

I got to thinking about the second lot. Had I purchased the coins raw and submitted them, it would have cost me more than what I paid on Teletrade, especially considering I had no guarantee of a MS-67, a high grade for these coins. Now I enjoy submitting coins for grading, but this gets very expensive, AND I have been disappointed in the past by some of the grades I received. When I can, I always buy certified coins for my sets. The advantage of this is that you get a known coin for a known price, no body bags here. However, some certified coins are quite scarce. This is especially true for my Britannia and Wilhelmina 10 Gulden sets. In these cases, I have to try to hand pick the best examples I can and hope for the best. This can be expensive and frustrating, but as I chronicled in past journals it can be exhilarating also. With great risk comes the possibility of great gain.

Now with a successful Teletrade transaction under my belt, I can say with surety, I?ll be back doing business with them again. Happy Collecting! Gary