We’d be lying to you if we said the market is on fire. There has been a flood of unnecessary shows and auctions since ANA in August. Too much to digest (coin wise purchases) from the ANA Show and auctions. Many dealers cash flows are horrible right now. Even though there are few neat coins to buy, do not expect dealers to pay strong/record prices if you need to sell for immediate cash.
We’ve also noticed auction prices have tweaked and slowed just a teenie bit. If you are selling dreck (DRECK: doctored, cleaned, UGLY coins, etc), then your lucky if you coins sell or bring cents on the dollar!
Our peers have been reminding us that the typically market slows in the 4th Quarter. We checked our records and for us, that does not happen. We do currently see sluggishness, but not a major slow down. In fact, we sold nearly $1 million dollars to collectors last week. Not one sale was six figures nor were any to our major buyers (we can’t find them coins right now).
Better gold sold strong (many coins did not make our web site) followed by the Dakota coins-which we are still posting. Those sold fast and furious! Where we ride in the market definitely is more insulated. The real top end quality really has not seen any significant slowing since 2008-even then it was minor.
We believe the market (our market-the top 5%) will be steady the rest of the year. Dreck will continue to be near worthless as people want true quality. We do not see gold doing another major run up. We do see further pushes upward on better and rare gold as the supply (especially CAC coins) is extremely limited. Of course any really GEM Bust pieces will do fabulous as well.
A note on generics, if you believe gold will break $2,000.00-now is a real buying time. Premiums have fallen again!
A SUGGESTION WHEN SELLING RAW COINS
Recently we have had many people approach us with coins to sell. Even though many had bought years ago-some from very big names, we had to break them some bad news, their raw coins weren’t worth what they thought. Most were cleaned or doctored in some way. We could see the looks in their faces, anger and the old your a crook look were glaring.
To save yourself all kinds of worry and troubles, if you have raw coins, send them to either PCGS or NGC to get them graded. Then there is no issue about what you have. The costs are minimal per coin-and yes, its safe to send the coins to the services via the mail (we do this every day). That’s generally what we recommend to someone who has significant raw coins they want to sell us. Its easier for us to pay them a stronger price this way too.
