Can a dealer be cherrypicked?

The hunt refers to what we all try to do and that is to make truly stunning find such as a rare date or extremely rare variety or even maybe even better find a coin that rewrites the condition census for a variety. Very seldom is having a successful ?hunt? the result of shear dumb luck (yes it does happen) most often it is the result of building the appropriate library and study. Those of you, who like me, that have setup at coin shows to sell coins have had the specialist collector come to your table pull out his book on whatever type of coin the specialist was interested in and go through your corresponding inventory. This is one form of the hunt. There are those that enjoy this type of hunt. I prefer what I call the ?backwoods country auction route.? I use to live in Maryland would routinely attend auctions in and around Frederick and Hagerstown as well as a relatively routinely held auction in the town of Hampstead. My first really big find was at a very small auction held in the fire hall in the town of Wolfsville. The newspaper advertisement said coins to be auctioned. When I got there, there were only about 10 coins were included in the auction, boy was I upset. As I looked them over the 1873 half dollar in G-VG condition kept drawing me back. Then it hit me ? ?open 3?. It couldn?t be, back then there were less than 11 believed to exist. In an attempt to verify what I believed I franticly drove back to my house and went through my library pulling every book I felt appropriate off the shelves. I could find NO PHOTO of an open 3. So I went back convinced I was right and won the coin for $20. My hand was shaking as they handed it to me. That coin I sold in a Superior Auction for $2,000 plus buyer?s fee.

I purchased a three-legged buffalo for $1.75 in another auction held in a fire hall in Myersville. This was a well attended auction and involved only coins. The material being offered included a lot of keys and semi-keys. And listed there all by itself was a 1937-D buffalo. Now why would they list a simple 1937-D all by itself. Then I said oh it couldn?t be could it? When I looked down at the obverse it had all the diagnostics of a three-legged buffalo. I never looked at the reverse until I won the coin. The reactions of those there when the bidding reached over a dollar was humorous.

Other auction finds include the following:

1872 DDO Half Dime - $35

1960 DDO Proof Dime - $13

1960 DDO Proof Quarter - $9

1942 DDR Half Dollar Unc. - $15

1966 DDO SMS Half Dollar - $12

A wonderful 1922 no ?D? cent (Strong Reverse or Die Pair #2) in VF for $125

I also have a 1977 half cent from Rhodesia that the American Numismatic Association Authentication Bureau certified as a business strike (it took three months!). This was a lot offered in an auction in Australia as an impaired proof and went unsold. I had a gut feeling it might be a business strike and contacted them. They sold it to me for the reserve of $400 Australian which then was about $300 US.

My greatest find did however involve shear dumb luck. It was at an auction held outside Burlington, Vermont. The auction involved over 1,000 lots. And we had eight hours of viewing the day before the start of the two day auction. Go ahead and figure it out. That is less than 40 seconds to ask for a lot, have them find it, hand it you, you examine it and hand it back and start all over again. At the very end of the viewing day I got to the box lots. One box contained 13 Ancient coins. I immediately recognized an Aes Grave Semis (which David Sear has since authenticated and graded Fine). I noticed there were a couple nice Ptolemaic pieces, a nice Roman Republic Denarius and a real nice Roman Empire, AE Sestertius of Sev. Alexander. I know these coins were worth several hundreds of dollars and I was ready to do some strong bidding. I won the box for $25 plus buyer?s fee. The dumb luck resulted when NGC informed me that one of the Byzantine coins in that lot of 13 coins was in fact an Armenia AE Follis of Kiurike I/II Kouropalates from 10th/11th Centuries AD. This coin is believed to be the finest known specimen of about 19 known specimens and could be worth $15,000.

The question some of you might be asking is; do I feel I am doing anything wrong? Because I acquired all these items at auction open to all to examine the material before bidding and the only difference between bidders being their willingness to study their reference material, no I do not feel I did nothing wrong. Please realize at these types of backwoods auctions all items are sold as is with no refunds. They have sold fake and altered coins, cleaned coins and over graded coins and never point this out to the bidders. If one tries to return an item you get ?All Sales are final!? So since they are not totally up front with the bidders, I do not feel compelled to tell them everything I know and something they can find out on their own or could pay a knowledgeable dealer to tell them.

Then there is the second part in the title to this post - is all fair in love, war & coin collecting? This is an interesting question and from what I read in Numismatic News and Coin World over the many years there are a lot of different opinions.

This question relates to the concept of Cherrypicking. Or the purchasing of an item when a buyer knows that item is worth a lot more than what the seller is asking for it.

There is only one way to look at this question. On which side of the counter/table is the seller? If the seller is in front of the counter/table it is not the dealer but someone looking to sell off some sort numismatic holding. In this case there is no question that the dealer/buyer has every obligation to treat the seller fairly. It is understood that in the worse case the dealer may only know as much seller but it is expected that the dealer know more than the seller.

As an example of this, I was a bank teller in a small town bank and many knew I was a serious coin collector. I was approached by a bank customer to offer some advice regarding a $5 gold coin his secretary had and needed to sell. I said sure. I went to his office and he showed me the coin. I was a wonder early piece (around 1800 +/-). I told him to get it slabbed and send it to B&M (when it was B&M). I said I would love to buy the coin but could not afford it. He ended up getting more than twice the highest offer he got in town and thanked me several times (no money ? but I didn?t need it).

So what if the seller is behind the counter/table? Well then the seller is the dealer. It is the dealer?s responsibility to know all there is to know about every coin he is offering for sale. Thus a true dealer can not be cherrypicked. What do I mean here? I mean the following:

All US colonials should be attributed e.g., be assigned its Maris, Miller, Noe, Ryder, etc. numbers.

Large cents be assigned Sheldon, Newcomb, etc. numbers

Half cents be assigned Cohen, etc. numbers.

This would continue through all US coinage.

World coins would be assigned KM numbers or numbers assigned in catalogues for a given country.

There is no reason for dealers not doing this, if dealers don?t do this it can only be because they are lazy or too cheap to purchase the appropriate reference material and a magnifying glass. C