- 02/20/2020
- Warren Mills
- First Edition of 2020
Questions from our Mailbag
Hi Warren,
I bought some very nice coins from RCNH over the years and then lost interest for a while. I sent the coins I acquired from you about ten years ago to CAC and had great success. Almost every coin received a sticker. Two years ago, someone got my ear and I began buying coins again. Almost every coin from RCNH I had, I traded for higher quality examples. I decided to have my new dealer send my coins to CAC for evaluation. Wow, I was shocked that none of them worked out. Why and how can this happen? Was I spoiled to think that every dealer worked like you? Now I am regretting getting rid of my nice RCNH coins for high grade baubles.
-P.K.
What a sad letter, but one I’ve seen or heard about too often. I asked P.K. to send me his coins for my review. The cleaning, altering and in some cases outright damage, were appalling. I am always disappointed that collectors are talked into trading great coins for inferior coins. Part of that is also on us at RCNH. We sometimes lose track of customers and they go elsewhere. That’s why we are making a concerted effort to contact our older clients to protect their collections.
Remember years ago, when dealers would be cracking out coins for upgrades? Now they hope to buy nice coins that were never sent to CAC by customers, so the dealers can get a sticker on them and sell them for big profits. It’s the new crack-out game. Customers that are not aware of CAC are getting abused financially. Even those that have nice CAC coins are being talked into trading them for higher grade non-CAC coins that are much lower quality for the grade.
I recently contacted one of our long-time customers and sent in 23 coins he acquired from us over the years. You can read about the results in the previous
Rare Coin Enthusiast. Bottom line, he’s now added an extra $100,000 to his collection by having them resubmitted for upgrade, CAC or both. Don’t be an unknowing victim of deceptive dealers.
Most coin values have gone down over the last 15 years, and coins need to be examined for a strategy to get back to being as whole as possible. Some collectors will throw up their hands and decide to sell their coins. Others will decide to hold on for a market rebound. Some will trade back the inferior coins for something better. In P.K.’s case, he consigned back some coins on a piece by piece basis for his dealers to sell for him. I told him not to accept anything in trade and to keep me updated.