A story of Green

 

After spending a whole week sitting at my desk, I look forward to getting my hands dirty with grease, dirt, or some sweat.  As it turned out, I just got them covered in green.

 

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Last week someone left a section of the paper in the stall, since I cant stand not occupying my time with something, I was pleased to see it there.  However, I was bummed when it turned out to be only the classifies ads.  Still, I did have some free time so I decided to scan it anyway.  I saw a tiny add that read,  "Coinorama.  80 collectors selling coin collectibles. Scottish-right center.  July 23-24 SD"     Cool, I thought.  I can take some of Dad's coins there and sell them.  There was a bit of irony in that the stall is the place that Dad used to do some of his best thinking, I wondered if this was a sign?

 

Saturday rolled around.  I got in my morning run, met with a friend, got home and pestered the kids to clean the house.  By noon, my mind turned to the coin show. 

 

I went out to the safe.  After the usual 4-5 tries opening the safe, (well, think about it, does CCW mean that the dial is supposed to go that way or the numbers are supposed to count down? If it says ‘3 times to 8’ and you are starting at 2 going CCW, do you go around three times past 2 and then to 8 or stop on 8 at the 3^rd revolution?)  I finally got the door cracked.  Amongst all the paperwork and stamps, I pulled out several random stashes of coins.  A bag of dimes, a bag of quarters, and a bunch of other random dollars and a few foreign coins.  All of this was stashed in various crannies in the safe.  Since it was not my collection, I had to refresh my memory of what was there.

 

Additionally, since I was going through all this.  I thought that I would sell both Therese's and my coin collection too.  (After the big fires here in SD, I saw that all that “stuff” could be reduced to almost worthlessness in a moment. On top of that, my dad had passed away and I had just gone through all Dad's good '“stuff”' (( as tidy as he was, we took 11 pickup truck loads to the dump)) and now there is still so much “stuff” stored at our house now that we really are just done holding onto '“stuff”') So I pulled out the usual "high security" shoe boxes that contained our treasured coins.  Shoeboxes are so much better than big safes.  Easier to transport.  No combo to break into!  What robber would think of looking in a shoebox anyway? (I must get this logic from my mother not my father.)

 

By the time I got all this “stuff” together, it was quite the pile and in a vast array of different ancient containers.   Building on my valuable experience gained watching TV's "Pawn Star" (LV pawn shop that tries to buy all sorts of “stuff”), I concluded that in order to get top dollar, I would need to organize and at least know what was there and a rough value.   People look so stupid when they plunk down a bit of “stuff” with no idea what it is and it surprises them to find out it is $20K worth.   Of course, the pawnshop never offers them that much.  So I started counting, recording, sorting, and looking in coin books, until the sun went down.   Dad had some of his '“stuff”' in bank bags.  Now that seemed a good idea and I had a bank bag collection from Jr HS days.  So I got rid of all the shoeboxes and placed the assortment into strategically different bags. Sheesh!  All this "“stuff”" was already costing valuable time.  This is on top of all the time every previous collector had gone through doing almost exactly the same thing.  Counting. Checking. Rolling.  When we were kids, Dad had a little leather piggy bank.  Dang that pig could hold a ton of pennies!  It was like a little piñata and we loved helping to feel and count the cash.  Frankly, on a Saturday afternoon, it was far from fun.  It really was work!  Cataloguing three different collections took time.  Also, there really are two different markets for the same coin, there is the metal value and there is the collectors’ value.  The lines between the two are gray but like any treasure, that slim chance that a particular coin or set may just be the rarest set in the world and worth thousands, is enough to cause me to slow down and verify things with the coin price book.  A perfect example:  the US Half Dollar was silver up to 1963 and had Franklin on it.  In 1964 it changed to Kennedy. In 1965, the Kennedy coin became only 40% silver.  Now if you were following closely that means that the 1964 coin looks like the 40% cheepo but it really had the higher silver content making it 2.5 times more valuable than the cheepo.  I must have pulled out about two dozen or $50 additional dollars worth mixed in with the cheepos.  One thing I learned is that if you have any coins individually wrapped and labeled “VF” as in ‘very fine’ it had better be a rare date otherwise VF is just a nice way dealers have to sell you a coin that might as well be in a bag of other coins. There are three other grades above that that may make the coin worth more than the silver.

 

Of course, my plan of going to the show Saturday afternoon was shot.  All of the coins were now in several different bank bags. I had my son Matt carry some of the heavy bags out to the garage. 

 

After church on Sunday, I was thinking of going down to the coin show.  I got Matt to load some sacks into the car.  Some I put in a backpack.  I had my list all organized and ready to go with all three collections meticulously accounted for.  It was a lot to keep track of.  A quick look at the Google map and I was ready to go.  At the last minute, I loaded dad's gold Krugerrands in too.  Compared to the sacks of silver coins, this was just a few. On one hand I was thinking I had enough to worry about with all the silver coins.  On the other, I was starting to think about the risk of having it all in one area.  But I would have kicked myself if I could have sold it all on one big swoop and gotten it out of the way rather than taking another weekend to do it.

 

At the last minute before leaving, my wife Therese graciously volunteered to go with me.

 

On the way down, we discussed our strategy.  That said, a big part of me thought that I would get the usual run around.  Something like, “Oh we don’t really buy stuff here.  You have to come to our shop during the week in Bakersfield.”    The plan was to leave the goods in the car and go in with the list and shrewdly bargain the socks off these guys, pitting each one against the other in a frenzied bidding war!  We decided to hide the mother load of the loot in the spare tire area of the car.

 

When we got there, I took a big loop around the parking lot, casing the joint out for any 'would-be' highway robbers. The coast was clear and we parked in a strategic spot straight out from the entrance.  No other cars close.  We slipped out of the car and nabbed the backpack that had only partial of the loot in it.  It must have weighed 30 pounds!  Not too conspicuous! Ha ha ha  Therese was carrying the ever-present Ironman draw bag with dozens of proof coin sets inside.  I walked about 10 yds out in front staying away from any tinted cars.  Despite our best security efforts, some guy exited his car about 20 yards away from us.   We were still a good 75 yeards to the door.  No one else was around.  Not a good situation.  Not wanting to look nervous, I snuck a look at him.  He was not the usual poindexter coin collector.  In fact, he was just the opposite.  He was more the biker type with wrap around glasses.  I felt my pulse go up.  We stepped up the pace towards the door.  I glanced.  He was following us!  I went into a high level of alert! After a few, zigzags, I realized that we were really all just headed towards the entrance.  Whew…

 

As we entered, I scanned the lobby.  Security was about Devcon 1.5 out of 5.  No video surveillance. No shake down.  Just a few codgey old geezers looking for $4 each to get in.  The odds of us being sent back home with all this “stuff” was becoming apparent.  The Biker guy had not removed his wrap around glasses and was standing in line behind us.  I casually moved down the table to keep from having my back and backpack to him while Therese paid.  Pretending to scope out more fliers on the table, I noticed a few of the event type security people wearing yellow shirts.  It was hard to tell from where I was at but I finally could see that they were armed security.  That said, they did not look like the typical cops working in the off hours.  There was a man and a woman and they looked more like the folks that roll along with armored cars.  We voted them more likely to shoot their feet on the draw. 

 

We slapped on our event stickers indicating we were fresh meat and slid into the show.  It was the usual collection of retired folks sporting their wares.  Therese and I were trying to get the lay of the land.  I whispered an update to our strategy which was to walk around the whole show (it wasn’t that big about 15 minutes maybe).  She agreed.  We went down the first isle.  All the vendors were anxiously looking at us to stop at their table. Therese pointed out that some vendors also posted signs that they were buying.  Things were starting to improve on the possibility of selling some of this valuable “Stuff”.   Being new to this game, I did not know if they just wanted the cherries of the crop or that they would take the whole thing.  We only made it two tables down the next row when the strategy broke down.   We decided to sit down and talk to a nice man sitting there.  He looked like the typical 60 year old Brooklyn financial type.  Could have been Jewish, who knows?  But somehow, he looked very friendly and not the “sinister schister” type.  His table announced that he dealt in silver dollars and would buy.  That was a good start.  We started chatting.  We asked if he was buying and he asked if we had some silver dollars.  I fumbled around for my list.  His eyes got big when I said we had about 80 silver dollars!  So he asked to look at them.  I unzipped the backpack and started rifling around all the little bank bags inside for the dollars.  (all the little bags inside of other bags was a lame approach because in my nervousness, it just made me fumble more.   I was happy my pretty wife was there to distract him.  Therese and him were making conversation as I was pulling out rolls of differing types.  He started counting all the stacks of dollars that were being dumped out of the plastic bags, plastic rolls, and paper rolls.  Therese was keeping an eye on him and caught him with 6 in one stack instead of 5.  It was an honest mistake. It turns out that my list did not match the amount on the table.  I started to sweat as a dug back through several bags.  It was not so much nerves but my mind was racing and trying to cover too many things at once.  “Do I keep digging and look like a fool? Do I act nonchalant and just say, ‘Well, that is it!”  At the same time, I had no idea of how this horse-trading worked.  Was it going to be like the shell game?  Moving things around so fast that it was difficult to keep track of the valuable coins vs. the ones only good for the silver.  It is not like they are there to teach you how to sell.  I really didn’t know how he was going to value the coins.  Was he going to give me spot metal prices or what?   After a bit of a conversation, he explained all the things that were wrong with certain coins.  He punched his calculator and wrote down a number on the pad.  I tried my best to get him to consider a higher price but he had the upper hand and was able to explain that he needed some margin to make a profit.  I finally agreed to his first number.  He reached behind himself and pulled out a worn cardboard box that blank checks were shipped in and then he pulled out a wad of $100 bills.  Thankfully, Therese used to be a bank teller and she was quite comfortable staring down at all that.  On the other hand, I get loopy looking at a stack of $20’s.  While the two of them, whipped through hundreds, I scanned the crowd to see who was watching us.  When T was happy, I grabbed the hunskies and shoved the wad in my pocket.

 

By now, he was aware that we had even more than 80 coins.  When I pointed out that we actually had several small amounts and a few bags of dimes and quarters, he got really excited. He started to whisper and tell us that we possibly had about $26k on us.   This only caused me to be more anxious.  I was way out of my league.  As I dug for the missing dollars, he got on his cell phone and was calling a buddy.  When he got off the phone, I looked at him and said that I could not find the other dollars.  I made a joke about the fact that we obviously were not professional experienced coin sellers.  I was so much a rookie and it was quite “obvious” that we were new to this game.  He went into a long explanation about the fact that he did not have enough cash to cover all that we had to sell but that we could visit his buddy who was very reputable indeed and owned a shop close to our home in Rancho Bernardo.  At this point both Therese and I could tell that he was pretty trustworthy and was looking to help us as much as possible.  He also explained that if we got cash, we had to keep it below $10k to avoid IRS paper work. Then he asked if we had all the bags of coins here.  I told him the rest were in the car.  He asked if I wanted a security escort to go out and get them.  He also wanted to know if I needed a wheeled cart to bring them in.  I said no to both questions.  To lighten my load, I pulled out a few bags of coins from the backpack and gave them to Therese.  I then headed out into the parking lot.  I was even more on my toes going out, partly because the coin dealer got me all wound up with the security escort and his excitement of how much “stuff” we had.  What he didn’t know was that on top of the $26k in coins, we also had 17 gold Krugerrands worth another $20K.  It makes my palms sweat just typing it.  Cmon, how many times do you hold in your hand more than a few hundred bucks!?

 

I weaseled my way back to the car not taking a direct path again.  The parking lot was vacant of any pedestrians.  I popped the back of the car and got the bags of coins from the hiding spot.  After slipping each into my backpack, I zipped it up and proceeded to grab it with two arms. It was heavy!  This was the first time I tried to hoist all of it together.   It was at least 60 pounds.  I had to rest it on the tail gait and sit down to put it on my back.  There was no way I could walk 75 yards back to the door curling all that weight with my arms.  Walking back to the door reminded me of being a freshman in college when I used to carry every book I owned.  I was leaning way to the front to counter the weight on my back.

 

As I strolled back into the show, I tried to stand more upright and look casual but the strain on my back was heavy.  I made my way back to Therese.  They both laughed at me carrying so much on my back.  By then, the nice man realized that we probably were looking to sell the whole thing here and now.  So he was very kind and told us that he would go over to his other friend’s table and negotiate a price for us and see how much his friend, Chris, would buy off of us.  Sitting there waiting, Therese encouraged me to talk to the table behind us.  Two guys were just letting into a serious pile of chili cheese fries.  I apologized for interrupting their lunch but asked if they were interested in Proof sets.  They asked to see what I had.  They were more picky and just wanted the best of all and would not buy the dozen or so that we had.   They were just about as ‘unfriendly’ as our first dealer was friendly.  In fact, the first dealer came back and saw that I was already speaking with the other guys.  He didn’t look too happy.  No doubt the regular guys knew who the real schisters were at the show.     I ditched the unfriendlies to finish business at the first dealer. 

 

He was kind enough to explain that his friend, Chris, was able to buy quite a bit but did not have enough cash for all of it!  Then he said that Chris would buy all the proof sets too. 

 

Now in order to move, I had to load the whole enchilada into the backpack less 80 silver dollars and one proof set.  I waddled over with the load smacking me in the front of the legs with each step.

 

Victor introduced us to his friend Chris.  Chris reminded us of Therese’s dad, Lou.  He was 70, had a Texas drawl and a very nice Pilipino wife who was sporting several audacious bits of jewelry.  We found out over the course of several conversations that they were ‘retired’ and lived in San Diego since 1962. 

 

Chris said, “So whaddya got?”  I was temped to do the whole list thing again but then shoved it back into my pocket.

 

I said,” We’ve got bags of dimes and quarters.”  Chris reached behind him and pulled out a coin counting machine saying, “let’s do the quarters first since I have the machine set on those.”  That is when things started looking like Vegas.  First, the bag of quarters was dumped in there.  The noise drew the attention of most of the tables in earshot. While Chris and his wife were sifting the coins to kick out any clad coins, Therese and I were busy dumping any other silver quarters in there too.  The zip lock bags went fast and then came all the ones in paper rolls.  Everything went into the counter, we quickly had a pile of used paper and plastic rolls.  I was thinking about what a waste it was that over the years people had counted out all these coins and placed them in the paper rolls only so that we could tear them open as fast as we could to try to keep up with the machine counter!  We were quite the site as I was piling up baggies of other currency all over the place looking for quarters. 

 

When the quarters were done, we started on the dimes.  There were even more dimes in paper rolls which slowed us down.  The worst ones were the rolls that someone placed scotch tape on to secure. There were four people working this machine trying to keep up with the frenzied pace of it all.  This process happened several more times with all the different type of coins.  He even took the war nickels that had silver in them during the war years.  His sorting slowed way down and he said something in a mumbled Texas twang about these nickels being worn out or acid washed.  I looked over and saw that familiar look of all the coins that dad had dredged up coin hunting at the beach.  I told him Dad had a metal detector and they were beach worn.  That seemed to satisfy him and he shoved the whole mess down the throat of the coin counter. 

 

Each time we would finish, he would jot down a number on his paper pad.  This went on for about 45 minutes maybe an hour.  I was tire.  He was building up steam still.  He was a pro for sure.  At one point someone interrupted and asked the price of one of the coins in his display. He paused, looked, and spouted out, “$1500” and then when straight back to work.  I almost think he was having fun! 

 

When we got all the currency out of the way, he added it up, multiplied the face value by some factor and announces a price.  I had learned my lesson at the last table and just kept my mouth shut.  A few black bank deposit bags were produced and he counted out about $10,000.  It was a big fat wad of money that took two hands to pick up at once.  Therese and him counted it a few times over with Chris’ wife watching the counting like a hawk.  When everyone was happy, I grabbed the wad and pulled it toward the backpack.  Now I had a dilemma that hadn’t occurred to me.  The cash wad was so big I could not shove it in my pocket.  I was temped to put it in Therese’s purse but thought that too obvious and put her at risk.  So I just shoved the wad deep into the backpack and looked up like this happens every day.  I suppose you have to be a banker or dope dealer to get used to all this cash.

 

After that, there were about a dozen proof sets that we owned.  Mostly Therese’s, some were mine.  Proof sets look really cool.  They are in clear cases and all the coins are shiny as a mirror.  I suppose they were all the rage at one time but we missed that window and now they were just a tad over face value’s worth.  They took quiet some time to process as each set had to be researched in a publication that had the values published in the smallest font possible, #4 I think.  Chris and Therese were handling the transactions.  I am not sure who was in the lead but neither of them showed any signs of slowing.  Side note (You see, my wife’s side of the family, the Messners have always been keen game players, mostly cards.  When I was dating, a significant rite of passage was to play cards with them.  Of course I lost at most of the games.  I am too slow with the hands and with the counting.  In fact, I still lose when we play cards as a family.  The kids have been better than me since they were about 10 years old!)  I think Therese was having fun too.  I very much think her dad would have been very proud of her at that moment.  I just watched like a lamb at a sheep shearing contest.  All the fur was flying and everyone else seemed to enjoy it.

 

After they had plowed through all of that, I sheepishly pulled out all the foreign currency.  I thought for sure that they would not want to deal with that but the old guy didn’t even pause for a breath.  He pulled out another fat book and started digging for more prices.  There were perhaps a dozen Swiss Francs, Italian coins, some French.  I assume it was all from living in Italy.  There were some goofy looking old pesos.  I would say he gave me credit for about ¾ of the whole mess.

 

Next was all the silver.   Dad had some coins that were not currency just ounces of silver.  By now you must be getting tired of reading all of this, just think about sitting there!  I kept pulling out more and more random stuff to see if he would buy it.  Chris and his wife were mumbling about how much cash they had on hand.  The pace kept up.  Whew!

 

When it was almost all gone. He tallied up everything and another wad of cash exchanged hands.  By now, the guy who was operating the booth next to us was rolling his eyes!   We sat there about two hours and the whole time, this guy was trying to act nonchalant and watching us go back and forth.  Not a soul sat at his table.  I think the guy next door was wondering how the big Texan got so lucky.

 

The old guy Chris, had not forgotten that we had the Krugerands.  He said to his wife in a low voice again, “How much cash do we have?”  without waiting for an answer, he looked at us and said, “you want cash right?” 

 

I said, “Uh-huh!” 

 

So they counted their reserves several times and finally whispered,  “We can buy 7.” 

 

I couldn’t just jump at it so I asked, “ At what rate?  “ 

 

“Twelve” he said meaning $1200 each.  It was a very fair price.  In less than ten minutes, we exchanged almost as much cash and gold as it took us two hours for the silver!!!!

 

The big lesson here is if you really want to invest in metals as an inflation hedge, scrape all of your cash together and get gold.  Remember the silver weighed almost more than I could carry. The gold I could have carried in my pocket.

 

Finally, it was time to get out of there.  Therese and I sincerely thanked them and got up.  I was glad, in fact relieved that we had sold so much!  There was no time for celebrating as we still needed to safely get to the car.  There was no telling how many people could have been watching us exchange piles of coins for piles of bills.  Therese stayed close to me and when we reached the entrance where the armed guards were, I asked Therese to stay there next to the guards with the cash and wait for me to bring the car around.  Walking out to the car, I felt like the cat who accidentally snuck into a dog kennel.  I slinked my way out dodging and weaving through cars again.  I walked around our car and approached it from behind.  I even stuck my face to the glass to see inside the tinted sections.  Dang! It would be so cliché for a robber to hide in the back of the car.  I felt silly, but then I have only once held about $6k when I was buying a car.  The backpack contained over four times that amount.  I drove the car right up to the front. I scanned my mirrors several times as I put the car in Park.  A few minutes of waiting and Therese showed at the door with one of the armed guards.  Thank goodness I thought.  I started the engine and put it in Drive as she headed out the door.  As we pulled out of the parking lot, I recalculated several directions to get on the freeway.  I chose the route that had the fewest stops.  As we drove onto the freeway, we were making conversation and I was constantly checking the mirror.  In fact, I spent more time looking back that looking ahead. In less than a mile, we exited onto another freeway.  I did my best evasive tactic hanging out in the lane that would take me in the I opposite direction as long as possible. When it was clear that no one was going in the direction I really wanted, I switched lanes back abruptly.  I finally settled down seeing that no one was even close to us on the whole exit.  We were safe … but then how close do you really have to drive to follow a 1999 white CRV?

 

As I started to come off the ceiling, I think I thanked Therese at least five times.  I am sure happy that she very sharp with numbers and counting money.  I think it would have been less nerve wracking to do another swim-start at a triathlon than to deal with all that cash again!   I don’t have the exact amount here but let’s just say that we over shot the limit that we were supposed to before reporting to the IRS.  ….but who knows for sure.  It is all a blur now.  ;-)

 

Post log:  Sunday was just about shot and I had not done a lick of ‘therapy’ work in the garage.  I think I actually sat down and had my usual ½ bottle of beer with a sense of satisfaction that we had sold (gotten rid of) all that wonderfully valuable “stuff” that no doubt had been stored, and moved, and stored and moved countless times over the decades.  Ironically, there is just a five inch tall wad of green paper.  Even more ironic, I was glad for the green paper and not for the piles of precious metal.  Now how is that possible?????