6/2/08 - because of the unusual situations with both the bullion markets and the USA dollar exchange rate everything (11/16/2008) you should consider ALL of my posted prices to be provisional.  There may be changes in any category.  This notice will be posted on a few other pages but not all.  But this is your official notice. (Renewed 1/4/2010 - this is what low level chaos feels like.)  (6/8/2010 chaos continues to build.  Think before you act.  Think before you think.  Observe before that.  Remember to breathe.) 10/21/2010 so here we are living history.  How long has this crisis been going on?  3 years?  11?  40?  65?
This aviso renewed again 4/10/2011.  It hasn't been this eventful since the 60s.  And again 10/6/2011.  5 years of financial crisis.
And again 2/26/2012.

A. SELLING:
April 26 2012 pricelist
17,000 other things for sale
New (if the background of this page is a different color than last time you looked there is new stuff) - update 4/24/2012
note on viewing pictures
site search

B. BUYING:
Buying
What's It Worth? - numismatic estate handling for live collectors & executors

C. SERVICES:
Attribution, authentication, grading, and appraisal services
Market research
Subscription

D. INFORMATION
Information
Links - friends, colleagues
Blog

E. OPINIONS & NEWS

4/24/2012
1. ALL ABOUT BUYING STUFF - This is still happening.  People are sending me nice $50/+ things then I send an email & a picture or something and a lot of them are gone in a few days, sellers are surprised at the niceness of my payments.  That's the song these days.  Purchase or consignment.  Sell me something.
2. THIS OCCURS in a time of rising instability all over the world: this month is the same fragile situation as 2 months ago: nothing serious being done about the serious problems, fanatics chasing willothewhisps, sociopaths trying to get what they can from the situation.  The "plan" apparently is to allow people who can pull it together to survive the resource crunch & to let the rest of "them" ("us" if you're in some way communitarian) "go."  "We" need the water, sorry, not enough to go around.  We can't do it they/we will say, the problem is too big.  We kind of are proving to ourselves that our collective species intelligence is not advanced over that of bacteria, who grow their population until the resources are gone then they die.
3. WILL YOUR valuable collection be worth anything "afterward"?  Coins seems to be kind of special somehow.  Every other collectible category seems to have a smaller market than it used to but not coins.  Coins is bigger.  I don't know why but it is so.  Coin collecting was practiced in China 1000 years ago.  In Europe at least 500 years.  Vast new hoards of collectors in China & India.  I am starting to fill orders from Brazil.  They collect the world, they have money.  They are not personally confronting the serious situation.  They are collecting coins, banknotes, military medals.  I help them with that.
4. TODAY I am thinking about the quantum impossibility of accuracy, how the edges of things are all porous and constantly dissolving, crumbs falling off the cookie, into the rug, trying to create compost, someday a grass seed blows in through the broken window, owner of house gone, life goes on.  Owner perhaps had a coin collection, sold (most of) it to finance migration of family to some supposed safe zone.
4. HOW IS IT that all human organizations have the same things go wrong with them and become useless but refuse, like living organisms, to die?

2/26/2012
1. ALL ABOUT BUYING STUFF - I am finding that I am paying high-seeming prices for "good" stuff & not being sorry afterwards.  I am getting smiles from the consignors.  Many checks are being written, recipients are sending me second and third and 15th packages.  40 years, this is probably the best time to sell good stuff I've ever seen.  Why?  China, India.  Now.
2. THIS OCCURS in a time of rising instability all over the world as responsible parties find themselves in tighter than ever squeezes with diminishing capabilities.
3. WILL YOUR valuable collection be worth anything "afterward"?  Your gold, even?  I don't know.  Probably.  So maybe this is a good time to buy, like my gold bug friend says.  $6000 gold he says, its all numbers.  He is buying gold now, holding it.  Maybe he's right.  I like to spread my risk.
4. TODAY I am thinking about biblical-style jubilee debt relief.  I am feeling optimistic.  I think we will get a constitutional amendment that corporations are not people.  After that we can have a general forgiving of debts.  Greece won't pay, it will suck in all the neighbors.  I think there will come a point at which no one is paying timely anymore, all the money will disappear.  Kind of like inflation but all zeros.  Sound crazy and senseless?  More senseless than what is actually happening?
5.  GREAT TIME to sell good stuff.  I have buyers.

12/29/2011
1. MORE DATA (& "data") for this business: I put out 6 printed price lists this year, as opposed to 8 last year & 12 the year before.  Less than 10% of the gross came from printed price list customers.  The biggest increase came in the phone & email sectors.  3 clients accounted for ~30% of the gross.  1 client accounted for 20%.  Gross was down ~15% from last year, but net will probably be about the same.
2. 2011 HAD A boom in Chinese & British Indian coins, one could call it bubbly, the excitement has come & gone, base prices are much higher for good stuff, lot of formerly available items not present in the market.  Booms without busts, the current normal is boom followed by famine.
3. DESPITE FLUCTUATIONS the market continues relatively strong.  There is a general lack of good and medium stuff available, only the purchase of old collections gets anything "good" in.  I bought 5 such collections this year, or parts of them.  Want to sell me some of your stuff?  This year consigned material brought in 35% of the gross.  Of course most of that was the big Chinese silver coins but still, about 5x what it was the year before.  15%, commission, 12% single items getting $1000/+.  Come talk with me.
4. BEYOND electoral politics - all over the world we see manipulation of elections & electorates.  The tendencies are toward election of stupid people by riled minorities yielding stupid governments that do the wrong things badly & the right things seldom.  Something new apparently taking shape in the internet, we don't know what it is yet.  We can see how easy it is to get poll data now, perhaps a different way of making collective decisions devloping.  Harder to get away with really bad stuff now: everything likely to show up on the internet.  New Optimo Principi aborning?
5. BEYOND confrontation - not necessarily reconciliation, more likely grudging grumbly putting up with it.  The neighbor dog barks early Sunday morning.  Put up with it.  For me annoying things remind me to not get annoyed, do something else instead.  Take a deep breath.  Get some exercise.
6. SORRY about all the mistakes I made this year.  I'll keep making them and I'll keep fixing them.
7. I NEVER know, something good might happen.  Keep busy, maybe something will get done.  Health & comfort for you next year.
 
 

More opinions - 100s of thousands of words!

reisbiz@earthlink.net
phone: (919) 787-0881
mail: Bob Reis, POB 26303, Raleigh NC 27611, USA