I want to tell a story about what happened at a coin show today in part to brag, and in part to describe a real joy I have in collecting.
I always enjoy walking into a store and digging both hands into a "world coins" bucket, just to see what I can find. Running into a key date Rentenpfennig or an XF 1949 Pfennig of any denomination gives me a thrill, as well as picking up coins with legends in Arabic, Japanese, Chinese or whatever, and then taking them home to use the Numista date tools to find out what they are.
But today I had an experience that may be my best yet. At a local coin show, I was perusing through an album of world coins that was sparsely populated with coins of any extraordinary value. Per usual, I was focused on the Weimar and French colonial coins, of which I picked up a few for low prices. Then, to my surprise, I ran across a coin which depicted two art deco-style heraldic lions supporting a shield containing -- from top to bottom -- a crown, an iron cross, and another iron cross. The coin bore a 1923 date.
The dealer, unfortunately for him -- fortunately for me -- had labeled the coin "Albania -- Republic, 1 Gulden". The coin was, accurately marked, in XF-AU condition, with even somewhat of a good luster. The price was $2.00.
Anyone who knows the coin I'm describing would know immediately, as I did, that the coin is a Free City of Danzig 1 Gulden coin, minted during the interwar period when Danzig was an internationally administered and protected territory. Representations of this coin go for between $40.00 and $245.00 on online auction sites. One is selling now, although in slightly better condition than mine, for $181.97 on Ebay.
So, I paid the man, drove home, immediately got out my submission form to NGC, and am sending the coin off Monday for grading. Sure, I could have said something to the dealer, but this dealer seemed confident in the fact that he couldn't care less about his foreign coins, and wanted to sell me the latest Silver Eagle -- because silver value's what it's all about, naturally.
This coin, with its paltry silver value of $3.90 as of today, probably wouldn't have caused this seller to bat an eye. Mayby photographing it, sticking it online, and seeing how much he could get for it would have been too much trouble for this seller.
Then again, maybe I should have said something, and paid the guy a fairer price. But hey, at coin shows, I've been bit before. So why can't caveat emptor become caveat venditor once in a while?
You should post a photo. As embarassing as this is, I've never seen a Free State Danzig coin before, although I am familiar that they exist, like their stamps.
I got really interested when you mentioned Art-deco. Best style in the world.
Kenny
- Verifying your Asian and British-territorial coins everyday with the best quality photos and the best information.
Good pick up. If the dealer is too occupied in catering to the "melt" crowd to learn at least the basics of coin collecting then he absolutely deserves to pay the price of his ignorance.
Non illegitimis carborundum est. Excellent advice for all coins.
Make Numismatics Great Again!
A few years ago, when I decided to start collecting coins I based my choice to collect world coins on the very factor that y'all talked about, as well as the beauty of the designs avalible. Most dealers here are focus on US coins and only bother with world coins when they take them in buying collections.
There for they unloaded them for whatever they could get quickly. Even silver coins were cheap and easy to obtain, before the "melt" market exploded.
Even now I can buy most silver (and gold if I could afford to) by offering 5 or 10% over melt value.
I have no mercy when handling dealers in this manner, because I know that they have no mercy on the unknowing public when they buy.
And lets be honest, this dealer lost nothing, except "potental" value. He, no doubt, had less than a dollar in this coin.
So brag away, my friend. It is one of the many joys of our hobby and I dare say, one of the driving forces!
Great story and nice find. Its really great to find something that nice whether it was mis-labeled or not. And on top of it, it was a dealer not a yard sale or something which the person had no possible way of knowing what he had.
Quote: axchouGreat story and nice find. Its really great to find something that nice whether it was mis-labeled or not. And on top of it, it was a dealer not a yard sale or something which the person had no possible way of knowing what he had.
Oh quite so. Dealers are fair game. They are professionals. However, preying on naive members of the public is not nice.
I'm just glad to know I didn't break some sort of unspoken code by not mentioning anything to the dealer. My philosophy is the same as what's being said here -- if someone else has independent knowledge and expertise and fails to use it, that's fine by me. I doubt a dealer would think twice about super-up-charging me for a coin if I didn't know its relative value.
Of course, the value of a coin, as Matt discusses on his other thread, is always relative -- so perhaps this gentleman would have thought $2.00 was a good price for the item in BFE North Carolina. Then again, I just bought a slabbed MS 66 East German 10 Mark at double its book value, which probably makes me stupid. The thing for me was, though, that I really needed that coin for a collection, and had never seen one in as good a condition; plus it was already slabbed, saving me the 18 dollars.
I find that for as many coins as I get at far below "book value", I probably even out by spending far above "book value" on some coins I want. Its all about having the coin for me, anyways, not really the money -- no pun intended.
Quote: tewcdI just bought a slabbed MS 66 East German 10 Mark at double its book value, which probably makes me stupid.
Not at all. As I argue, the "value" of an object is subjective, and is determined by its desirability to an individual. That coin was valuable to you, and so you paid what you considered it to be worth TO YOU. To someone else it might be worth nothing. For example, I don't collect or even like slabbed coins. So I don't value a slabbed coin higher than an unslabbed, indeed if anything I may even value it lower - by value I mean what I am happy to pay.
I tend to agree on slabbed coins for the most part. The only reasons I like/want a slabbed coin are (a) if the coin is just exceptionally rare and deserves the best possible publicly-available protection, or (b) if the coin is perfect and unblemished, and I want it to stay that way.
I've never thought about it, but I generally do have a bias towards coins with a good patina to them. Bright, shiny, colorless coins tend to be boring.
