Capital Treasures

Buying coins online has never been easier. Besides the traditional online coin store there are also ways to get coins through eBay, Craigslist, Teletrade, VCoins and Heritage – to name just a few. Catching a great example of an early 2-Cent piece in an auction that nobody found on eBay is pretty fun – score!  Outbidding other collectors can definitely get you excited, as long as you don’t get too carried away of course…

However, there has been an increasingly number of an odd offerings of coins and collections available on eBay. Since the rise in the number of new collectors into the market, the jump in the price of gold and silver as well as the increase in value of good quality coins it has been more difficult to catch the good catch on eBay. With an increase in novice collectors there is an inverse increase in unique and exotic collections going up for auction. However, it’s still possible to get a great specimen from these auctions if you can avoid the bids with ridiculously soaring prices and you to try to be wary of these often entertaining but rather annoying features and descriptions on most of the so called great auctions.

Ye ‘ol Teasure Chest. 
Usually full of vintage coins… this also includes: long box, red box, black box, cigar box, mason jars, tin cans, coffee cans – well, basically anything in a can. These auctions are for fun, face it… it’s a novelty and it’s cute. But serioiusly, a great coin find in an auction online featured in this manner. It doesn’t take a lot of time and care to throw a bunch of coins in a box or jar. And you can be sure that you’re not going to get a great coin find in something this haphazardly put together.  

Remember,  mason jars are for canning food or drinking moonshine , uh I mean Kool-Aid. Coffee cans should be used for coffee and when you’re done with the coffee maybe recycle and reuse it for mixing paint or cleaning brushes.

Estate collection from [insert state here].
If you want to go to an estate sale or auction check out your local papers.  Make sure it’s truly a real auction estate company that you’re purchasing/bidding from. It’s pretty clear that the amount of inventory they are carrying or the nature of the auction that it’s from an real estate sale firm and not someone trying to dump old aunt Getrude’s junk off to you. Be aware that true estate collection auctions will usually carry a buyers fee on top of the standard eBay bid – usually 12% – 15%. This should be noted in the auction. If you feel lucky you should try out your storage bin businesses they often sell off storage bins by the unit for people that are delinquent on the account or have just moved on. I would recommend a local estate auction or even the ones held by the state, often drug seizure or escheat auctions from bank safety deposit boxes … they are both entertaining bringing out the collectors, dealers and crazies.

Stupendous Adjectives.
Any eBay item that includes such nice descriptive terminology as OLD, RARE, GIANT and it’s variational cousin GINORMOUS. Vintage is a given. This should also include STUNNING, MASSIVE, and SUPER.

Coin dealers. 
Yes, gasp, it’s true… These are along the same lines as the estate collection auction/sales are the coin dealer from [insert state here]… I know that there are plenty of good coin dealers that use eBay and various other online avenues to get their inventory sold. However, If they are a serious coin dealer then they should have a real, functioning website – not just an eBay account. Hopefully they have a real mom-and-pop shop with a bricks-and-mortar store. It would be great if they are long-standing ANA member with a current membership. More often they will run ads in the local paper, trade coin magazine/journal or have a booth at their local coin show or even at a national coin show not just on eBay.

 Visit and support your local coin store and coin show. Try to get to a national coin show just once in your lifetime.

Bonus items!!! 
Any coin collection that includes one or more of the following: stamps, rail road stock certificates and the favorite vial of gold dust/shavings. You’re supposed to be collecting coins or putting together a series of coins for a nice collection – how on earth does the junk bond or stock certificate from a company that no longer exists help in completing that set!?

If you want to buy stock certificates get an account through scottstrade, buyandhold or eTrade and buy some ibm, 3m, kraft, google, apple or cisco… then use any dividend return money for buying your coins. If you want to buy old stock certificates, stop by your local coin show or stamp show and visit the lonely aisle of exonomia dealers and buy their colorful collection.

Paper money.
A collection or item that includes paper money of any kind including the most sought after red and blue silver certificates, stack of $1 dollar sequential bills, star notes and any foreign colorful foreign money (any money outside the US has nice fancy colors). You’re looking for coins, not paper money… if you want to invest in paper money then don’t waste the bulk of your time with basic silver certificates, duplicate/sequential/odd serial numbers or star notes – you can get those from your local bank or often out of your own wallet.

Unsearched!!!  
It’s just not possible, even if you weren’t curious enough to look at the coins your obsessive compulsive nature would want to put them in dated chronological order. enough said, move to the next item.

By the pound. Buy the pound…
This term falls in line with the unsearched term but gets its own category because of the nature of this kind of auction.  By the pound, usually in reference to some burlap bag or “sealed” cotton bag full of ‘unsearched’ and ‘large’ silver coins by the pound… side note: it never ceases to amaze me how people at a buffet just stack food on the plate until it’s overflowing – seems like they forgot that it’s a buffet and that they can actually go back for more. By the pound infers hoarding and well being greedy…

Now, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with this trait however it’s highly unlikely that you’re going to get the best quality coin from the effort you put into the search. These auction types might also include unsearched wheat pennies – if they didn’t have the time to search through 1000’s or 10,000’s wheat pennies what makes you think your eyeballs can withstand the strain of looking for the key dates or double-die varieties.  Now if you do have a bad case of OCD and like to stack pennies in a row by date and mint-mark late into the night- go for it!  There are exceptions to the rule, I’m sure…

A great example is my father… he is retired military and loves this sort of thing as a simple past time. He kicks off his garden shoes, turns on the lamp, grabs the magnifying glass and pours himself a rum+coke and starts digging through them… if you don’t have the hours to doing this then spend your time better by organizing your collection in your mind, put it to  paper and get precisely the coins you want in an affordable condition or quality.