Question about 2 coins

[Leatherneck-migration]

I am hoping someone can explain something to me. I bought 2 gold coins each for $1400 they are 1898-s $20 MS63 Liberty and 1897 $20 MS63 Liberty in 4/7/2006 from a large dealer that advertises on many talk radio shows. You would think only God is more honest the way they advertise. In fact one of their so called benefits are that they will always buy the coins back. What I was not told is that they would rape me when I asked them to buy them back. I am in a bad financial situation and tried to sell them back and I was told they did not want them unless I was willing to take a $400 dollar per coin loss.

 

WOW! Gold is such a great investment. I better stick to the stock market where at least I can make 10% per rather than loosing almost 29% per.

 

So My question did I just get taken by these honest men a year ago or is it something else? And if it is something else what is it?

 

Thanks for any help.

[robec1347]

Who graded these double eagles? If raw, and I assume that is the case, there is a great chance that these coins not only are not MS 63, but may not even be MS 60. Even if they are 63, you paid strong retail money at that grade and they are only going to offer well below that when buying them back.

[TomB]

In a best case scenario these would be properly graded double eagles in NGC or PCGS MS63 holders. If they are not as I just described then things could really get ugly if you try to sell them on the open market. The values for these coins are $970 and $980 in the Greysheet. Therefore, their offer of $1,000 each was actually likely a fair buy offer, but what you paid for them may have been too much. These coins trade in a manner related to the price of gold and I do not recall where gold was in April, 2006, but I can tell you that it wasn't much higher, if at all, than today.

 

You may want to look at the Heritage auction archives, which is not a perfect way to look at this, but can be quite valuable. The 1897 can generally be had for $950-$1,050 today, but cost $100-$150 more back in April, 2006. The 1898-S appeared to trade $50 or so less than the 1897 back in April, 2006 and similarly trades at about $50 less than the 1897 today, too. Please note that these auction records are for PCGS and NGC graded coins.

 

It is likely that you could have purchased an accurately graded, PCGS or NGC certified example of each coin back in April, 2006 for perhaps $2,400 or less. Therefore, at $2,800 for the pair, you paid too much.

[MorganMan]

Not trying to be mean or anything, but you did not get taken.

 

What you did was make an uneducated coin purchase.

 

Welcome aboard, stick around and you will be able to make purchases with confidence after you learn the ropes. Nowhere better than here to start learning.

 

 

MM

[MarkFeld]

There are probably exceptions out there somewhere, but I have yet to hear of or see coins offered through magazine ads, newspaper ads, TV or radio being reasonably priced.

 

The coins in question might have been bought at prices which were too high at the time, but either way, the current buy-back offers appear to be fair.

 

Edited to add: Something which might otherwise be a good investment can, instead, be a bad one if you pay more than you should when you acquire it and/or get less than you should for it when you sell it. Hypothetically, the fair market value of a given coin might rise from $1000 to $1500 in a two year time period. But if you paid $1600 for it when the going rate was only $1000, you would have done poorly instead of making a nice profit.

[DaveG]

Unfortunately, you've just had a very rough introduction to the difference between "retail" (what you pay) and "wholesale" (what they pay).

 

Many coin dealers have fairly small overhead costs, so the "spread" (difference between retail and wholesale) can be fairly small.

 

This dealer, since he advertises on radio, has higher overhead costs, so their spread is wider.

 

The old saying "You better shop around" is as true for coins as it is for washing machines.