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Revenant

Member: Seasoned Veteran
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Journal Comments posted by Revenant

  1. On 9/16/2019 at 9:51 PM, Coinbuf said:

    I am under the understanding that the points are correlated to the price, someone please correct me if that is not so.  But is so then there must have been a recent or perhaps a long downward price movement that was not caught and corrected in one mass reduction.

    I think price is a factor (and this belief is supported by the fact that they always ask about reciepts / bill of sale on recent sales / purchases if I have them whenever I request changes) but there are a number of things that go into it. I find in many cases that ultra rare and valuable coins get handicapped so that owning 1 or 2 coins is less likely to give you the win in the category rankings and common coins also get buffed - also to help foster participation I think.

  2. 5 hours ago, ColonialCoinsUK said:

    Here in the UK you can get credit cards with no fees and 0% interest for 12 or 18 months and I have used such a card in the past to buy a couple of coins, as a paid it in full by the end of the interest free period I was able to spread the cost of the coin - anything similar in the US?

    Depends. Sometimes you get cards and there's an intro / teaser where you get 12-24 months of 0% interest for the first 12-24 months that you have the new card. Some cards will give you 0% interest for 6-15 months if the purchase is over a certain dollar amount. I had another card that would give me $100 in cashback as a bonus if I charged at least $500 or $1,500 to the card in the first 3 months I had it - I forget which but I think it was the $500. It can definitely be fun to take advantage of those deals sometimes.

  3. It was definitely a bit frustrating to let an 1880 and 1885 10G slip away when they came up after Ben's birth, but, when you don't have the cash, what can you do? I guess you could get them on credit in some cases but I refusing to pay fees and interest for hobby / "fun" purchases. If I can't buy it outright I don't like getting it.

    Hopefully you get another shot at some if those coins later.

    I had a lot of fun pointing out to my step-father recently that, while the collector's value and numismatic premium (value over melt) of his 1932 set is much higher than that of my 10G set, but, if you look at mintages and pop reports, some of the coins in my 10G set are objectively much rarer - which makes it more frustrating when you miss a chance at one. Lol

  4. 8 hours ago, jackson64 said:

    While some have gone up-- ( under $100 and moderns) many of the classic series have plummeted. My Walker set, for example, has dropped in its book value from around $40k to slightly over $25k ( before my recent upgrade pushed it back to near 30k).

    Ultimately I think all that just makes sense, just for the reasons you talk about. The collector base is getting older and you're having a generation (or maybe 2 now) grow up behind them in an increasingly cashless society that relies on debit cards and credit cards. I find it one of the ironies of my life that I collect coins and currency but I hardly ever pay cash for anything really. So the younger people aren't necessarily coming up with the attachment / affinity for coins that we had. I feel like the concept of a childhood piggy-bank is almost antiquated / old-fashioned now.

    I enjoy this as my fun money - because I enjoy this more than buying a lot of other modern junk or the latest iphone every year - and that leaves me feeling comfortable / happy with it. I think at this point I've probably sunk about $3,500 into my 10G set in the course of 10 years and that set has a melt value presently of around $2,300. 

  5. 3 hours ago, Fenntucky Mike said:

     I'm not sure what triggers the corrections or what determines when the corrections are carried out 

    Sometimes NGC will review a set's scoring and change the scores on their own / because they feel it's needed, but, in my experience, most of the time it happens when someone requests a score change. Sometimes you request a score change on one slot and they just adjust that slot. Sometimes you ask for one small change and they take it upon themselves to make broad changes to multiple slots / coins / notes.

    3 hours ago, Fenntucky Mike said:

    but they seem to normally be punitive in nature

    The simple fact that a change / update makes your score goes down doesn't make it "punitive" - I don't believe anyone is trying to punish you, the OP, or the people that compete in that category. For that to even be possible, you'd have to be able to identify a reason / something they're being punished for. The changes are geared towards making the competition and the rankings more fair and accurate -  but that's always subjective.

    There have been plenty of times when I have asked for scores to be adjusted when I thought they were out of line. It seems like, more often than not, my lead / position in the category usually gets  worse when I make these requests. That's just life. I remember with my Zimbabwe set I had to go back and forth with them a few times over a few months before they finally identified the problems in their code and got the point values set up in a way that had the scores and rankings make sense. Sometimes you just have to be patient, communicate with them and work with them (NGC).

    Just my 2 cents anyway.

     

  6. 17 minutes ago, rons said:

    How did you get that screen with all the "corrected" scores?  I have seen my scores vary but couldn't figure out what coins changed or why. It is most annoying. Best of luck in getting an explanation.

    If you look at the set page you should be able to find a tab that says "History," that lists all events that changed the score since you made the set.

  7. 2 hours ago, deposito said:

    I got 62,233 pennies as a first payment of $622.33 from a spiteful individual, dropped off at my office in 2009.  It was not easy to get a bank to take them; I had to handcart them to the main branch downtown.  I did not search them.

    I've never understood people who do that. You harm / inconvenience so many other people besides the person / organization you're mad at.

  8. 3 hours ago, deposito said:

    It is good to take your coins out, in natural sunlight, especially since yours are gold.  I haven't done the research, but I suspect regular gold in sunlight viewing is therapeutic even through the slab.  

    Good lighting is definitely important, both for photos and general viewing. I have, on occasion, just turned on the LED flash on my phone just so I could have a strong light that I can manipulate / move to really look over a coin. I did that with the new one when it came in.

    I have a special NGC storage box that I call "the gold box" that has all 16 of my ngc-graded gold coins - 8 of which are part of this set. I keep them together specifically so I have one go-to box for looking at all the gold. Some of my other projects - like my modern 1 oz silver bullion coins - occupy several full boxes on their own. One of these days I need to bite the bullet and put labels on some of these boxes so I can find certain coins I like to look at faster.

  9. 2 hours ago, gherrmann44 said:

     

    On the selling and buying of gold in the current market I found the following youtube video from a dealers perspective kind of interesting even though it may not match the fatty holder seller you described. It does however match my experience when I tried to sell a gold coin to a dealer and thought that I should have gotten more.

     

    Well, it was a $295-300 melt coin that they listed at $450 and which other dealers were listing at $397 in the same venue and the same grade, and he pulled the listing because he was going to be away for three days and didn't want gold to shoot up and his coins to sell for too little while he was gone for 3 days (and the price went down in thst time, as it happens).

    As much as anything, the tone with which he responded to email (in which I merely inquired as to whether the coin was still available and didn't even bring up price), made him come off like a jerk to me, and at that point I was done.

  10. On 8/24/2019 at 7:50 AM, Iceman said:

    Thank you....:bigsmile:    I just got the 42 ...10 and 25 Aurar about two months ago but I had others but these was the best ones out of the lot.

    So do you like having multiples / duplicates for series like this that are favorites of yours or had you picked up several over time in the search for one worth grading and now you'll sell the others?

  11. 1 hour ago, MIKE BYRNE said:

    Hi . If they say they can remove anything from a coin the can. It depends on what's on the Coin and the proper way it should look. What kind of coin is it? I can't make it out . They do a great job.hahaha on it?

    I'm not sure if you're asking sarcastically or not but I'm pretty sure it's a chocolate coin candy wrapped in foil. Maybe I'm wrong though.

  12. 9 hours ago, jackson64 said:

    I think we must remember that the average Ebay seller is looking at  around 10% costs for shipping, seller fees and paypal fees... so $350 seems about right when we consider melt at $300 PLUS $30 in fees placing the coin/fees at $330 for the seller. If he sells at $325 then once fees are factored, he might even be selling at below melt!

    That's true but I still don't know that they'll get it for the same reasons you talk about. At MS 61/62 those things are low. MS64 is low for that series and those dates. The buyers just aren't going to go much over melt, if they do at all, just like your auction buyers you talk about. So while I can see why they might ask it, they'll be lucky to find a buyer.

  13. 2 hours ago, gherrmann44 said:

    This has been painfully apparent to me as I own several gold coins that I bought during the last peak that I have wanted to sell for quite a while. Fortunately, I have not needed the money so I have held them all this time. That said I still have a little ways to go before I will break even. On the other side of the coin (pun intended) I have used the low prices of the last couple of years to complete my gold type set. 

    I've been lucky in that I bought most of my original gold buys when gold was around $800-1,200 before the 2011 peak and then later, around 2015-2018, during the lows that followed. So that keeps my break even points lower, except for coins like my MS67 1875, which I paid a healthy premium for because it was MS67.

  14. 7 hours ago, deposito said:

    You have probably explained this already elsewhere, but why Netherlands gulden?

    Click the link to the set and start reading when it says, "The reasonable question that might be asked is, “why this set?” "

    https://coins.www.collectors-society.com/registry/coins/SetListing.aspx?PeopleSetID=83873

    7 hours ago, deposito said:

    I'm with you.  It's tough to understand people buying modern mint gold when you can get coins about 100 years old or older in problem free uncirculated condition for the same, less, or barely more. 

    I own and enjoy some of the modern gold commems, including the Constitution / Bill of Rights bicentennials. I also have an MS70 1/4th oz gold American Eagle for the birth year of my first son and hope to be able to afford one for the birth year of my 2nd son, who was born a few years ago. So there are definitely reasons to buy / own them, depending on perspective.

  15. I tend to follow the rule of thumb that anything that is made for the express purpose of being collected / collected / saved will almost certainly never be rare and never have value. You can never really know what will have value long term because it's the stuff that flies under the radar, that no one saves, that will explode later.