BE SURE TO VISIT MY NUMISTA!
As all of my faithful readers and those of you who stop by every now and then know, I buy coins at the flea market. Any coins you see that I didn't buy come from change or as gifts. This coin came from the foreign/miscellaneous coin bin at the shop I buy from the most. I usually only buy silver, error, or other more expensive coins from him, but that week I had decided to take this advice and buy as many zinc and aluminum coins as I could. I managed to get around 40 aluminum coins and 2 zinc coins, one of which wasn't originally zinc, but was missing it's copper plating. I also bought 10-15 foreign coins that caught my eye, most of which will be posted in the coming days and weeks. Here comes the exciting part. The coins were marked $0.25 for 1 or 5 for $1.00. That means I would have paid around $11.00 for all of the coins. Since I buy something there every time I go to the flea market he gives me a very good deal on almost everything I buy. This time, though, I had a specific price in mind. I was looking to spend only $5.00. I got the coins I wanted into piles based on what they were (aluminum and plain foreign) and said "How much for all of these coins?" He smiled and said "$5.00!". At that point he got a plastic bag and started shoveling coins into it. The reasons for his enthusiasm and his willingness to let $6.00 of possible profit disappear are these: 1. I buy from him all the time and we have a friendly relationship. 2. Most of the time these coins get overlooked and some sit for weeks, months, or even years before being bought. 3. Most dealers regard these types of coins as excess inventory and are happy to get rid of them as soon as possible for almost any price because when they buy collections they almost always get more. With all of these factors I probably could have bought half of the coins in that box for $5.00. Well, maybe not but it would be worth a try. Whew, this has been a long post and I'm pretty tired so before I fall asleep this coin that I have said almost nothing about is worth
I think its actually worth a little more than what you gave it. $3 is a pretty fair price for this coin and in this condition. Zinc is a very soft metal and oxidizes very quickly compared to other coins, I think this one is XF just from the looks of it! Thanks for the link to my post! Kudos!
ReplyDeleteWell, now I've got a few conflicting prices. Man said around $0.20, you say $3.00, and this: http://www.ngccoin.com/poplookup/WorldCoinPrices.aspx?category=26988&worldcoinid=79444
Deletesays $2.00. I'll edit it to say "about $2.00" to kind of meet in the middle. You're welcome for the link and thank YOU for the advice on buying aluminum and zinc! I got some WWII era Japanese coins as well as some Austrian, Philippines, Korean, Spanish, Italian, Vatican City, French, Isreali, Hungarian, Taiwanese, and Czech coins. I catalogued them all on Numista (http://en.numista.com/echanges/profil.php?id=24698) which was fun going through all the countries and seeing their history of coins. Egypt was the hardest to catalogue I had to go by date to catalogue them.