price paid codes

as you get a larger collection, it will be harder to keep track of prices paid for each coin.  if you are selling 5 G4 Mercury dimes, keeping track of what you paid becomes difficult when you go to sell them, unless you include the price paid on the holder.

many dealers will use a price code that hides the price they paid for the coin from the buyer, but makes it easy to make on the spot deals.  knowing your margin without having to look it up goes a long way to helping a buyer buy your coin.  we've all tried to buy from the guy who had to find his price sheet for each coin you make an offer on.  he might be the most professional looking dealer on the floor, but the buyer will have no confidence in the deal if each offer has to be "researched" on the spot.

find a phrase or word that is 10 letters long and has no repeats and NEVER change your code.  if you change it, you have to go back and recode everything.

here are some codes to get you started thinking:

my long hair
america now
great coins

a 2 letter code on a coin that is selling for over a $100 means the margin could be pretty good and invites low bids - to keep a buyer from trying to guess the code, use dead letters, those not in your code, at the front of your price to pad the code.  i typically use 4 letter codes, sometimes 5.

if my code is "great coins" and i paid $15.00 for a coin, it translates to "GT".  now with the addition of some dead letters, it becomes "DLGT".  you have no idea that coin i want $125.00 cost me only $15.00.

go back and look at some of the coins you bought and look at the dealer codes.  did you pay a triple digit sum for a coin with a double digit code?

-Steve



Edited by asciibaron - 10 Apr 2007 at 11:23pm