If you are a coin collector or someone who likes to invest in precious metals, there are less-than-ethical, even dishonest, sellers of coins and precious metals out there. My goal in this article is to make sure you’re not purchasing overpriced coins or worse, falling for a scam, while you’re enjoying your hobby or spending bucks on gold and silver.
In national publications, and the Sunday newspaper Parade supplement is a perfect example of this, there are often some of these types of ads. One of them features “mint” bags of perhaps walking liberty half dollars or buffalo nickels. I haven’t seen one of these personally, but my first red flag is the way the price and quantity are calculated! A quarter pound of buffalo nickels is just how many coins? I weighed a quarter pound of these, and it’s 27. These advertisers, if you call them, state there are 18-25 in the bag. You’re being shorted right there! Many of these will be worn out, dateless coins. Buffalo nickels WITH dates are available for $22-$40 per roll of 40.
A week or two ago, I saw another “bargain” in a full page ad. This was for 100 “free” wheat back cents. The shipping was only $29! It doesn’t take a calculator to figure that your free coins will cost you 29c each to get them to you! Wheat backs can be bought for 4c to 6c each in rolls of fifty, making a roll a $2 to $4 purchase. You just can’t afford many bargains like this one!Another Parade scam I’ve seen involves “gold brick” packaging of the current “gold colored” presidential dollars. There is a double whammy with this offer: these are also at inflated prices and since there is zero precious metal in them, they will never be worth more than a dollar each!
Many times, there is a small ad in newspapers and magazines offering you two or three “classic” coins from a New Hampshire company for very little money, often times for the “shipping” costs. If you respond to this ad, you will get your coins. However, they will then begin to send you coins regularly for your approval, and these are priced about triple the retail cost. This is in a fun way to get coins, but they are no bargain!
There is at least one national advertiser out there who wants you to become confused about just who they are. They have a name very similar to the web address of our national mints, where our coins are made. The U.S. Mint is found online at usmint.gov. It is an official agency of the United States, and although they make many mistakes in fulfilling orders, they are trustworthy. Make sure any website you visit with a similar name is actually the official U.S. Mint.
Coin shows on TV, the few times that I have watched them, usually have inflated prices, especially modern coins (state quarters, silver and gold eagles, etc.) At best, I have seen a few offerings of older coins (Morgan dollars, Franklin halves) that were only “slightly” overpriced. These offerings can often be beat with diligent searching.
Now, for the nastiest trick of all. There are many television commercials and ads for “replica” coins, like large sized buffalo nickels or the St. Gauden’s $20 gold piece. These may be “layered” in .999 pure gold, or may have “11 mils” of gold or silver. These coins are made of the same worthless base metal that our current coins are made of, and are thinly layered with one of these precious metals. Since gold and silver are so malleable, they can be stretched really, really thin. Because there is so little precious metal content, these coins are worth a tiny fraction of the high prices presented in the ads. Watch out for “layered” and “mils” in a coin description!
As a general rule, coins for sale in general interest magazines and newspapers are overpriced. Imagine the overhead involved for a company to run ads in a national publication. No wonder their product is overpriced! They have to cover those costs in one way or another. Coin publications such as Coin World and Numismatic News have reliable advertisers. These publications are geared toward knowledgeable collectors and these guys would not let one of these big scams exist in their pages!
The Brown County Coin Club meets on the second Tuesday of each month, at 6:30 pm, at Principally Coins and Metal Detectors, at 3002 Early Blvd, in Early. Meetings provide a great opportunity to learn all about coin collecting. We hope to see you on April 8 for our next meeting. Call Bill Cooper at 325-642-2128 or me at 325-217-4129 for more information. I would relish the opportunity to explain the problem, if any, with the coin offer you’re considering.
