Consigning Coins 0

[BillyB26]

I just received an email regarding Stacks Bowers program of paying for all your coins to be graded by NGC if you consign with them. I do have many coins that aren't graded that I will consider selling. I am new fairly new to selling coins. Would this be a smart thing to do? Does anyone know how much of a cut they take for selling your coins? Thanks for any advice

[Coinbuf]

Sorry I don't have an answer as I've never consigned to Stacks, but I think its safe to say that there will be some additional charge for them to have your coins graded.  Auction fees can be negotiated if you have very expensive, high demand, or a very high volume of coins to consign.  Last I knew the sellers fee was 10% of the hammer, but that may be higher today.  Best of luck, just a side note you can sell your coins here in the Coin Marketplace section of the NGC forums.  There is no charge to sell and you don't have to have the coins graded and slabbed to do so; follow the rules and provide good quality photos and you might find a buyer or two.  The down side is the limited number of people that will see what you have for sale here.

[BillyB26]

Thank you. Maybe I’ll try that.  That is good information 

[JKK]

I recently handled a sizeable liquidation involving a lot of grading, and did not actively consider Stacks. The question interested me enough to go to their website and see if I could find out what they charged to sell coins. I couldn't. It could be I whiffed on it, or it could be it was on a video that I blew off (as I normally do with videos of anything), but whenever someone is reluctant to tell me a number, it suggests to me that they know I won't like the number and that they also know I have good reason not to like it. I came away not feeling like I should have considered them.

[kbbpll]

No experience at all selling coins, let alone with Stacks, but that sounds like a typical sales strategy to me. Keep the numbers mysterious until they can hook you with the sales pitch. I saw that email too by the way.

[BillyB26]

8 hours ago, JKK said:

I recently handled a sizeable liquidation involving a lot of grading, and did not actively consider Stacks. The question interested me enough to go to their website and see if I could find out what they charged to sell coins. I couldn't. It could be I whiffed on it, or it could be it was on a video that I blew off (as I normally do with videos of anything), but whenever someone is reluctant to tell me a number, it suggests to me that they know I won't like the number and that they also know I have good reason not to like it. I came away not feeling like I should have considered them.

JKK, did you do this all on your own or did you consign? 👍🏻

[JKK]

1 hour ago, BillyB26 said:

JKK, did you do this all on your own or did you consign? 👍🏻

I consigned. I thought of considering more houses than GC and Heritage, but didn't want to drag things out. All but one of the older coins needed to be slabbed. After a detailed comparison and estimate of fees and methods, we went with GC, but it wasn't entirely clear-cut. One thing about both is they were up front with the costs. It shocked me that Stacks was not.

[BillyB26]

Ok. I’ll keep them in mind. I’m going to eventually be doing the same, but I’m taking a slow approach to it

[JKK]

25 minutes ago, BillyB26 said:

Ok. I’ll keep them in mind. I’m going to eventually be doing the same, but I’m taking a slow approach to it

All the lot I liquidated was gold, so that affected decisionmaking. GC has more fees for coins that hammer under $1K, and we were close to the wash point, so one of the major factors was I felt we got more personal attention from GC than its competition. Heritage basically said: you'd do better to just sell us most of these. While I wasn't in a position to say for sure how correct that was, it made me a bit edgy.

[kbbpll]

11 minutes ago, JKK said:

Heritage basically said: you'd do better to just sell us most of these.

That surprises me a little. I was aware that there was an option for them to buy your coins outright, but pushing it on you seems, I don't know, a little shady I guess. Did you bother to try to figure up whether or not you would actually "do better"?

[JKK]

Just now, kbbpll said:

That surprises me a little. I was aware that there was an option for them to buy your coins outright, but pushing it on you seems, I don't know, a little shady I guess. Did you bother to try to figure up whether or not you would actually "do better"?

There was no way to do that unless I put my client to the expense of sending the coins to them. Once you do that, you've got sunk costs and they have you in a situation of bias toward the easiest option. I made my best guesses what those offers might look like, which was all I could do, then compared. I wouldn't say they pushed it, but what that told me is that this collection was small potatoes to them and they really didn't want too much to bother with individual listings. It also told me that they felt there was profit in the coins and they would prefer to have that profit; if that was true, then I felt my client should have that profit. None of that was what they meant to convey to me, I'm sure, but that's what I came away feeling. I'll never know whether I made the right call, but we did get my client almost exactly the outcome I'd predicted, which made me look kind of good.

[Simple Collector]

To the OP. You need to make sure your coins are worth having them graded. If you are not comfortable with judging the grade of your coins, go to a reputable dealer to  help you screen them. Grading can be expensive so you need to make sure your coins are of high enough value to cover grading and auction costs if you expect to make a profit.

 

good luck.

[Conder101]

The major houses don't quote a flat figure for the sellers cost because it is negotiable depending on the size and value of the consignment and if there are any significant or major rarities in the consignment.  Your sellers fee could possibly range from 10% to -5% or more (you could get back MORE than the hammer price)  Since they don't know what you have the best they could do would be to quote their highest fee and that could chase consigners away.  Also a lot of people think they have prize highly desirable items when they actually don't..

I believe the major houses are now wanting minimum consignment values in the $5K to $10 range, and they would really like the coins to have a minimum value around $1000.  Yes they will take coins valued at less, if the overall consignment is larger  or there are some high end items consigned.  And most of those lower value items will go in the internet auctions.