hey there ,

I saw on the Internet there are shops selling coins by weight. That is, viz. 3 kilos of worldcoins per 48 euros without shipping (that is toda : 70.6896 USD). I think it could be great to by such a great quantity of coins for that price. I say so because coins are getting more and more expensive in flea markets and, well, 48 euros per about 900 coins seems to be reasonable, doesn't it ?? Well... I hope somebody may tell me something about that!

Best!
Adrià

Often times when this occurs it's usually because the coins are made from a precious metal like copper, silver, etc. So you're probably paying melt value or more which is typically substantially higher than face value. That is why you see them getting sold by weight... usually.

For novice (and especially young) collectors, such kilo lots are a neat idea. They may just have "discovered" coins as collectible objects, and don't quite know yet what coins they are interested in. Then such bags are a wonderful way of getting a whole bunch of pieces from all over the world. The new (or hopefully-soon-to-be ) collector can then go through the heap, find out what is from where, sort the pieces, and so on.

Unsorted lots can also be interesting for collectors who want to have one coin from every country. Be aware, however, that these lots hardly ever contain rare/expensive coins - whoever sells such lots will usually take those out. Also, make sure that the shipping cost will not exceed the price of the coins. Three kilos can be quite a lot ...

Christian

In USD and Imperial terms, that's over $10/lb. for weighted coins. I do not personally pay that much for weighted coins, even shipped to me! I would pay from $5 - $7 per pound for bulk world coin lots (ie, no U.S. since U.S. is easily obtained in my own country and $6/lb. is not even face value). The lots I would get, however, are more extreme in the area of the multiple tens to hundreds of pounds at a time.



Shipping is really reasonable domestically here for such lots as it only costs $.85USD/lb. in this kind of bulk 2-3 day delivery, or $.65USD/lb. for 4-7 day delivery. Depending on your source, as well, you could end up with some rather nice pieces from these lots. I would not say high-end circulated 1904 5 and 10 Rappen coins are rare, but certainly worth the price when bought for "pennys". But, like I said, the lots I buy are usually more extreme.

But, to the original post, I would not buy bulk coins at that rate, personally. Yet, without truly knowing what a particular supplier is going to have in his lots, you may have to spend a bit of money to find a good supplier. Still, I wouldn't at that price.

Since you seldom can find coins from other coutries just laying around, many dealers do send in for those. These are the dealers at flea markets. They sell those coins for about $0.50 to $1 each. Since you normally don't see those just every day, many people will buy one or two as a novelty. It may take time but they all eventually sell and those dealers make quite a lot of money doing that. Mostly just really common coins but still if you never see them, they do look neat. I've seen one dealer with bins full of them.