syorks

Yes Chris, you replied within minutes of me contacting you, thanks. Although I am very happy with the profit I am making... I have had my eyes opened as to what goes on in Pawnbroker shops. Talk about Fagin and his band of thieves ! Walking out with £1500 cash in my pocket was a bit scary, and I have two bigger deals to do yet.

Just found this - not a lot of help... http://en.allexperts.com/q/Coin-Collecting-2297/2010/2/Identifying-coin.htm

Thanks again for the comments. As I have said, I don't want to do business through Pay Pal - this is a bit of the e.mail they sent me when a transaction failed .... and they went on to delete my account and refuse to talk to me. My bank had not had any request from them. So if a few thousand £££ went missing, I wouldn't like to be relying on them.Anyway, I have contacted a few coin dealers, done the rounds of every "buy Gold" link I can find, and today I have started selling to a local pawnbroker, who has offered the top price of anyone, it's cash, and I can easily deliver, so doing it in four stages over the next few weeks. He claims he will be melting down... I doubt it myself, but I am happy for him to profit however he does it. I will make £2000 profit, and I have learned a valuable lesson. Now hopefully I will get the time to have a better look around this site !

Thanks Tom, I have just e.mailed CP and one other dealer who has been recommended. If/when I get replies I will make a decision as to what to do. Don't fancy leaving them till I'm a gonner, the wife will probably spend them at the shops.

Hello again - sorry for the delay, short of time at the moment. So, as I said, thanks for the replies. As much as I would like to name the coin dealer I had problems with, I had better not rake the whole thing up again. Lets just say he is a major gold coin dealer who thinks an awful lot of himself. I ordered from his companies web site, rang to check that I had got the full details correct, ie that the Gold coin came with a Royal mint certificate of authenticity, as was stated. The member of staff checked with the great man, and replied in the positive.... and then the coin turned up with no certificate. The arguments went on for months - he wanted an extra £20 for the cert. He refused to talk to me, "he doesn't deal with customers" was always the response. His staff seem terrified to bother him. I involved Consumer Direct, Trading Standards in my home town and his local office, the advice was always that I was 100 per cent correct and I should take him to the small claims court. I involved the BNTA... who also agreed with me, it went to their 3 monthly meeting, they found in my favour.... and he still refused to give in. I even offered to give the £20 to a charity of the BNTA's choice or pay £10 to resolve the matter - BUT NO ! Eventually another coin dealer gave me a certificate to save bringing the BNTA into disrepute, and the dealer in question is no longer a member, although on his website he still has a page dedicated to the BNTA, but says he was a member until 2008. Obviously from the comments about Gold proof sets, I will get just as much selling for the Gold value at the moment. I will have to have a think about it. I wouldn't try Ebay for the simple reason that I know that if there is a problem, PayPal don't like talking to customers either. Talk later.

Thanks for the messages ! I will digest what has been said and reply later. Thanks again.

Hello all. Delighted to find an Internet forum (on any subject) that doesn't look at all abusive. I had almost given up. I would like to introduce myself - I am sure I am fairly typical, someone who was brought up to love and respect coins and their history, but over the years have never had the time or the money to keep up with the hobby. I have two collections - it is the second I am looking for some advice on. FIRSTLY though, I am 55 now. From the age of around 5 to 15 I was very interested in circulation coins, and loved the fact that in those days you could build a collection from the change in your pocket, getting bags of coins from banks, or looking round junk shops. I also inherited a few older coins from my grandfather (not much value but interesting all the same) and bought a few pieces from my pocket money. I wanted to pursue a particular interest in British Tokens, but never had the money. My prize possession is actually a book - Nineteenth Century Token Coinage which sent a shiver down my spine when I recently found it at my mothers. So, that collection has currently been buried in my mothers wardrobe, where it has been untouched for 40 years. It will be mostly worthless, worn, dirty old pennies from 1860 onwards, but hopefully there will be a few gems... when I get the time to look. I know there is a small suitcase full of unsorted pennies, and the rest is in plastic drawers, I think they called them Bitzaboxes. SECONDLY, and more of interest at the moment.... in 2005 I had a bit of spare cash and decided to start buying newly minted Gold Proof collections from the Royal Mint. I had always wanted to own a Gold Sovereign. I didn't continue with this unfortunately because of a few problems dealing with the Royal Mint, I found them very unhelpful, so I just got a few sets - the 4 coin Britannia set, similar Sovereign set, a separate sovereign, and a 4x £1 Bridges set. I think that going for the Gold Proof versions was probably a mistake, as there is more interest in the value of gold rather than the value of proof sets. Roughly speaking, I paid around £3800 for these, they are currently SELLING for around £6500 from dealers, or worth around £5300 as scrap gold value. Obviously I would hate to see them melted down... but there are so many pitfalls when selling to anyone - the one dealer I have recently dealt with turned out to be a nasty little piece of work... better not say too much ! And there are the problems of posting, getting the money etc etc. It is almost easier to just take them to a scrap gold dealer and get the cash locally, or just leave them locked away. Before anyone mentions EBay... I am tempted but am put off by the amount of cons (not coins) on the site, as I see members have rightly highlighted here. I have never dealt with EBay, but have used PayPal for a couple of transactions and I was shocked when a small payment to a charity went wrong and Pay Pal e.mailed me and said "Don't bother us with this, we don't want to know", and similarly ignored the charity who had just entered into a contract with Pay Pal. They then deleted my account. So obviously I won't be trusting them again ! But I am also thinking this. I know a lot of Gold bullion coins are getting melted down. If people are being tempted to let Proof sets go this way, then I wonder just how many of these limited edition sets will be left in future years. Will their scarcity add to their value ? Anyone have any knowledge of the extent to which Gold proof coins are disappearing ? Anyway I hope I haven't bored you all. I will keep reading the forum and may hopefully be able to help in the future.