I was just wondering. When I was searching for swap partners I noticed some people who have a lot of old coins to swap (18th and 19th century, mostly), or silver ones, stuff like that. I would love to swap with those people for those coins, but I have nothing good to offer in return. So my question is how do you get so many cool coins to swap? Buying them just to swap seems a bit odd, and those are rare in bulk lots (for me at least) so I find it difficult to have enough to spare on swaps.
-they buy one lot with many coins for their collection, and those of the coins are doubles (or they don't like the condition so they prefer to exchange them)
-they found better ones for their collections now
They also means me in those cases
Kristian
Everything in my collection can be sold if it would make someone happier than me :)
I go to coin shops. A lot of them have a can under the counter they put foreign coins in. They usually don't search these coins. For silver see if they have any they are going to melted down. You can buy them for melt value. If they send them to be melted , they don't get full melt value. For a bag full try to get them for (.800 silver) value. It will average out pretty close.
Buying cheap bulk lots you're not going to get much out of it. Most of them have been cherry picked by someone who's bought a decent bulk lot and is selling off all the lower value coins.
But if you save up go to a dealer and spend $200+ on a really good bulk lot, then you're likely going to get something good out of it.
It may seem like a lot to a new collector, but if you save up and buy one decent lot it can set you up for months. You can pick out something to keep, pick out some decent coins to swap, and split up and sell the rest to get some of your purchase price back.
If you don't believe me then look at what I picked out of my last bulk lot that I paid $250 for, and this is just the stuff I'm keeping. You may notice the album is called "free coins" That's because this is what's left over after I'd got my money back by splitting up and reselling the rest. Also all my swap list came from the same bulk lot and I've got heaps still sitting at home to either re-sell or swap
Verweis : "neilithicman"Be prepared to spend a decent amount of money.
(...)
But if you save up go to a dealer and spend $200+ on a really good bulk lot, then you're likely going to get something good out of it.
It may seem like a lot to a new collector (...)
Well, I've been collecting for a while now, so not really a new collector. More like a collector who happens to be a student and hasn't got tons of money to spare
When you say going to a dealer, you mean a physical one right? No ebay or anything?
I am fortunate enough to live in a somewhat big city so I am sure I can find a lo of dealers around. Though the ones I usually go to don't sell lots like those. Only one sells lots and it's like 7€ for a kilo of common Portuguese and world coins (nice for collecting dates and expanding on my other countries' collection but not what I want right now).
I get nearly all older coins from eBay cause the only coin dealer in the city where I live is an unfriendly person selling just expensive stuff (and selling cheaper stuff for very expansive prices).
I think if you could get some older coins from Portugal for example ( where you live if I'm right) into your swaplist you can get some nice Swaps with people from other parts of the world who may give you old coins from their countries.
Did you ever look for those on a fleamarket? Or do you know a coin dealer having somekind of "junk box" for cheap coins?
