ivflight
11-18-2010, 05:23 PM
I've been watching pm prices for about a year and a half and am starting to wish I had gotten off my butt and done some purchasing. Today I visited a local coin shop to check out their stuff. Before then I had never even touched gold or silver.
I thought they would be very protective of their stuff (I even rolled up my sleeves when I sat down). The whisky-haired owner wasn't shy about setting out about $10k in coins in front of me while he went back to storage to grab some more. I was somewhat disappointed to see that he didn't have anything uncirculated, and pretty much all of the silver was tarnished in some way (not like the super-shiny stuff I see on apmex). The owner explained some things to me (I didn't even know that almost all gold coins were 22 karats).
Anyways, I just wanted to ask what the safest approach is with coin shops. I plan to bring in my own scales, calipers, and maybe a graduated cylinder to measure mass & density. Are there any questions/requests I should be making before buying? Any types of gold/silver I should avoid/seek?
Thanks!
I thought they would be very protective of their stuff (I even rolled up my sleeves when I sat down). The whisky-haired owner wasn't shy about setting out about $10k in coins in front of me while he went back to storage to grab some more. I was somewhat disappointed to see that he didn't have anything uncirculated, and pretty much all of the silver was tarnished in some way (not like the super-shiny stuff I see on apmex). The owner explained some things to me (I didn't even know that almost all gold coins were 22 karats).
Anyways, I just wanted to ask what the safest approach is with coin shops. I plan to bring in my own scales, calipers, and maybe a graduated cylinder to measure mass & density. Are there any questions/requests I should be making before buying? Any types of gold/silver I should avoid/seek?
Thanks!