Buying Coins for Wholesale Prices at Coin Shows and Other Places

Many years ago, I was an underpaid assistant professor with a wife, two kids, a dog, and a mortgage. While thinking about possible sources of extra income, it occurred to me to sell my many duplicate coins that I had acquired looking through rolls of coins when I was in high school. Perhaps these could be the nucleus of a part-time mail-order coin business that I could operate in my spare time.

Assuming I could actually sell my duplicates, what would I do when these were gone? Would that be the end of my operation, or could I find a source or sources of wholesale coins?

With this latter thought in mind, I went to a small, local coin show in a nearby town. Entering the bourse, I saw that there were about 20 dealers with tables. I stopped at the first table, introduced myself, then told the dealer that I was starting a mail-order coin business and wondered if he might be able to sell me any coins at or near wholesale prices.

“No,” he said, “I can’t sell you any coins at wholesale and that goes for all the other dealers in here.”

As you can imagine, this was quite a discouraging response. However, a nearby dealer had heard the interaction and signaled for me to come to his table. “I can sell you coins at wholesale prices,” he said, “and the same is true for most of the dealers here.”

After saying this, he handed me a box of coins in 2x2s. “Look through these, and if you see anything you want, just pull it out, and I’ll make you a good price.” I did find several coins I wanted for my business, the dealer made me good prices on them, and it won’t surprise you to learn that I sought out this dealer at future shows I attended in the area.

Over the decade that I had my business, I found that most show dealers had coins they were willing to sell at or close to wholesale amounts. Often, the dealer would have purchased a collection for a few coins and once he had pulled these out, he would wholesale the rest to people like me and like the other dealers at the show.

By wholesale, the dealers at the show were referring to the prices in the Coin Dealer Newsletter (CDN), also known as the Greysheet because of the color of the paper it was and still is printed on. The CDN, with different owners today than it had back in my day, is a good bit pricier than it was back then. To get the wholesale coin prices in a digital form will cost you $27.99 a month or $279.99 a year. For this amount, you receive wholesale prices for U.S. and World coins and also CAC prices. CAC stands for Certified Acceptance Corporation and refers to a company that will, for a fee, examine your coins to determine if they’re high end for the grade assigned by either PCGS or NGC. If CAC thinks they’re superior, then the coins will be given a CAC sticker, generally known as a Green Bean.

NumisMedia Rare Coin Dealer and Collector Network is another source for coin wholesale prices. Like CDN, the NumisMedia digital wholesale guide for dealers is somewhat pricy if you’re just a collector looking to get wholesale prices at a coin show. The rate is $25 a month for a digital subscription or $20 a month for a new subscriber. The cost for a year is $150.

If you just want retail prices, then there are sources for this information that are free as well as sources that will cost you a bit. Both of the major certification services, PCGS and NGC, offer coin value guides. Both services have retail prices for all U.S. coins. In addition, NGC has guides to World coins, Chinese Modern coins, and World Gold coins. Other sources for retail coin prices include the value guide in this magazine and the prices found in the current edition of A Guide Book of United States Coins, aka the Red Book.

In my discussion of wholesale pricing guides, I did not mention one venerable publication that’s advertised as a guide to what dealers will pay a collector for coins they need for their inventory. From my experience, the values in Handbook of United States Coins (aka the Blue Book) are more reflective of what dealers would like to pay than they are of what a competitive dealer will actually pay. In other words, the values tend to be on the low side.

A problem that the Blue Book shares with the Red Book is that both guides are updated annually. This is fine for prices that change gradually, if at all. Constantly changing bullion prices, however, are often reflected in frequently changing prices for many of the coins that today’s collectors are interested in.

One guide to wholesale pricing that I’ve frequently used can be found at Heritage Auctions (ha.com). Heritage began as an auction site for coins but has expanded to include the world of collectibles. They now offer auctions of collectible items such as art, sports memorabilia, movie posters, wine, jewelry, and so on. From their initial venue in Dallas, TX, Heritage has spread to offices in such major U.S. cities as New York, Chicago, and Beverly Hills, as well as sites in countries around the world (e.g., France, Germany, England, and China).

If you want to know what a particular coin has sold for at auction recently, you’re almost certain to find it in the Heritage auction archives. As of when I’m writing this, the U.S., World, and Ancients archives contain the sales of 2.84 million items!

Another Heritage feature that I’ve used to determine current wholesale prices is a bit time-consuming but doesn’t cost a thing. Many years ago, I decided to put my collection’s complete inventory on the Heritage site. One of the coins in my inventory is an 1847 large cent that’s PCGS-graded MS-64 Brown and has a CAC Green Bean.

Added to my Heritage inventory, I put in when I got the coin, who I bought it from, and how much I paid. I also added pictures of the obverse and reverse of the cent. From the information supplied by Heritage, I could see the CDN value in the coin’s grade ($500), with a CAC sticker ($600), and its values one grade lower and one grade higher. Retail values for the date in three grades are also shown.

Following the information I’ve just told you about, there’s a listing of previous values for the date and grade from Heritage auctions, from other auctions, and then numbers of coins receiving the grade from PCGS and NGC. In other words, there’s lots of information about the 1847 large cent in MS-64 condition.

Note that you don’t have to actually have such a coin in order to access this information. For example, suppose that I wanted to buy a 1909-S Indian Head cent in PCGS MS-65 Red but didn’t know what a reasonable wholesale price might be for the coin in this grade. To get all the information I just told you about for the Indian cent, all I would have to do is add the coin to my inventory even though I didn’t actually own one. In this way, I could find out the CDN value in the grade I wanted, the values in one grade lower and one grade higher, the retail values, values with CAC sticker, and so on.

Over the years, I’ve done this for quite a few coins I was interested in buying. It’s slightly cumbersome but well worth doing if you have the time but don’t want to pay for one of the wholesale guides I described above. Just be sure to remove the item you’ve added if you don’t actually purchase the coin.

Actually, if you go to a coin show, you’ll find that dealers you become acquainted with will let you consult their Greysheet. Just don’t go off with it when you leave the dealer’s table!

Let’s assume you have a pretty good handle on wholesale values of the coins you’re interested in buying. What are some ways that you can score big at a coin show?

One tried and true method is to have superior knowledge of a particular series relative to a seller at the show. This often involves having superior grading knowledge.

At this point, you may ask, “Can’t I just depend on the grade on the holder if the coin is certified by a reputable service?” The correct answer is “Not always.”

Recall that 1847 large cent I told you about earlier? When I first got it, I sent it to ANACS, which at the time was affiliated with the ANA. They returned the coin to me with a grade of AU55. I wrote back (before email) and asked them to tell me where the wear was if the coin was really circulated. In response, they told me to return the coin, and they would check it again. When the coin was returned after this new appraisal, it had a grade of MS-60, which was ridiculous, as the coin had a good strike and was relatively devoid of surface flaws.

Years later, when I sent the coin to PCGS, it received the much more realistic grade of MS-64. Of course, this is just one example, and it occurred many years ago. Suffice it to say, I have seen many certified coins with grades that I didn’t agree with. Some were under graded, whereas others were over graded. Some were correctly graded but unappealing to most collectors.

I don’t mean to cast aspersions on the certification services, which I think do a fine job most of the time. I just mean that it’s a good idea to learn to grade for yourself so that you can see if you agree or disagree with the grade on the slab.

If you’re interested in purchasing uncertified (raw) coins, I’ll give you a little grading tip for Buffalo nickels. Back when I was finding them in circulation, a coin needed a full horn on the buffalo in order to merit a grade of VF.

If you have much experience with Buffalo nickels, you’ll quickly learn that some of the dates in the 1920s, particularly coins minted in Denver, began life as uncirculated coins without a full horn. In other words, they had weak strikes, particularly on the reverse. A dealer in Houston, Texas showed me an uncirculated roll of 1926-D nickels, each coin with full mint luster, that, if graded strictly by the amount of horn would have graded no better than either VG-10 or F-12.

As the PCGS grading guide put it, “Some 1926-D coins, and other dates, never had a full horn. Knowledgeable numismatists realize that some date and mint-mark combinations are almost never seen fully struck, so circulated examples of these coins do not have the detail expected for the grade.”

Of course, you can use this kind of knowledge to your advantage. If you encounter an old-time dealer with raw Buffalo nickels at a coin show, look through his stock for coins that are under graded by today’s standards. Chances are good that if you find any, they will be underpriced as well.

Continuing with Buffalo nickels, I once did business with a dealer who still believed that in order to receive a grade of G-4 or G-6, the coin had to have a full four-digit date. In the PCGS guide, both of the nickels used to illustrate G-4 and G-6 have incomplete dates. The cutline under the picture of the G-4 reads, “The rim is worn into LIBERTY and the field, with a partial date visible.” Under the G-6 coin, there’s a sentence reading, “The date is incomplete.”

I bought a couple of 1913-S Type 2 nickels from the dealer as AGs that were really solid G-4 or G-6 coins. They were bargain priced as AGs, and I doubled my money selling them as G-4s. My customers were well pleased with their bargains.

Although I’ve emphasized Buffalo nickels in this discussion, you can find similar examples in other coin series. If you go to a large coin show, you’ll probably be able to find some dealers with well-worn, certified 1913-S Barber quarters. Although most of the coins with AG-3 grades will show the lack of reverse detail you would expect on a coin of that grade, there may be a few that many collectors would call G-4. If they’re priced as AG-3s, they’ll be bargains. If submitted to CAC, they’ll earn Green Beans.

Another way to purchase coins at a show at wholesale or even less than wholesale is to cherrypick dealer stock. Cherrypicking coins means to look for coins with features that increase their values that their sellers are not aware of. An example might be finding a 1942-D dime in a dealer’s stock that’s priced at its bullion value, but it’s really the much more valuable 1942-D, 2/1 variety.

One of my cherrypicking winners happened more-or-less by accident. While searching coin dealer stocks for bargain-priced jewelry, my wife found a coin charm bracelet she wanted. On it were several inexpensive gold pieces and a countermarked quarter eagle ($2.50 gold piece). By countermarked, I mean that it had letters stamped into it. Countermarked or counterstamped coins were sometimes used for advertising in the 19th century.

Although many dealers and collectors treat counterstamped coins as damaged coins and value them accordingly, there are people who collect such coins and are willing to pay prices for them well beyond what a normal piece of the date and variety would sell for. I knew about such collectors and thought that the counter stamped piece might have extra value.

I bought the bracelet and consulted the internet to see what I could learn about the counterstamp. I found that the counterstamp on the coin (B. C. Hoff) was well known on coins of different denominations but was unknown on gold coins. As a result, I sold the coin for at least three times what I had paid for it. My wife wasn’t disappointed, as I replaced the missing quarter eagle with another gold coin or two.

The key to this example of cherry-picking is having knowledge that the seller doesn’t have. Specifically, I knew that counterstamps often added value to 19th century coins rather than subtracting it.

In fact, successful cherry-picking always requires you to have knowledge that the seller doesn’t have. One well-known source for that knowledge for coin collectors is the Cherrypickers’ Guide to Rare Die Varieties of United States Coins. Published by Whitman Publishing (whitman.com), there are currently two volumes of the Guide. The 6th edition, volume I covers half cents to Jefferson nickels, whereas the 5th edition, Volume II deals with half dimes to silver and modern dollars, gold coins, commemoratives, and bullion. There will soon be a 6th edition of Volume II, which will cover just half dimes through quarters, which suggests that a future volume or volumes are in the works.

If you’re interested in looking for unattributed coins with doubled dies, repunched dates or mintmarks, reverse design changes, or other varieties, then the latest Cherrypickers’ Guides need to be in your library. If successfully found, such coins are almost guaranteed to be priced at wholesale or much less.

To summarize: Most dealers will sell you coins at or near wholesale values. That doesn’t mean you can purchase all coins at wholesale prices. You can’t expect to buy popular and in-demand coins such as the 1909-S VDB Lincoln cent for a wholesale price when the dealer can sell it many times over at full retail.

It is possible to cherrypick dealer stock, either by grade or by unattributed variety. The secret is having the appropriate knowledge.

And sometimes you can cherrypick by accident. Just ask my wife!