Trading gold or silver coins for sports cards? Why?

So I admit that I am a member of online forums and since I collect many things I belong to a forums for each category. There are others like me and we often buy, sell and trade on these forums. But sometimes I see people asking for gold or silver coins and in return they will send sports cards. My question is who would give up something with precious metal value for a piece of cardboard?

Lets say your starving and have no money but you have $1,000 worth of baseball cards. Can you trade the baseball card for food? Can you go to the supermarket and offer a Albert Pujols rookie card for a piece of meat? I would think the answer is no. Now lets say you have eight 1958 quarters, you could at least get a slice of pizza. Granted you would be taking a loss because silver is worth more but at least you can get food.

Sometimes it makes me wonder why people would think someone would trade them silver or gold for sports cards. Precious metals will always be worth money, if a star athlete gets injured will their cards be worth anything? I think you know the answer. Its just funny that collectors would think that a baseball or football card is worth that much. But you know the saying: "people think their stuff is worth gold"? Well I guess these people are that delusional.

Attitude adjustment and the arrogance of some dealers

This is a small continuation from my first coin show experience. Now I have said that I enjoyed the show and I don't mind going back next year when I have a larger want list of coins. But as I have stated before, I collect many things besides coins. I may be new to coins but that does not mean I am new to collectibles. So this article is based on one coin dealer that I was speaking to.

I walked the floor of the show once and decided to walk through the floor again to see if there is anything I missed. I passed by one table and noticed that there were some coins from the countries on my want list. So I looked at the coins and began talking to the dealer asking him if he had any more coins from the countries I'm looking for.

He wanted me to more specific so I showed him my list since there was no prices or anything sensitive on it. He proceeded to tell me that the coins I'm looking for are too common for his table. Then he told me and I quote "I have plenty of those coins at home, I'm not going to bring dollar coins here."

Excuse me, but who cares what who has at home. Did I ask him? no I did not. Did I ask him if he knew about the coins? no I did not. How dare this stupid dealer assume my coins are common or deem them too "cheap" for him to carry. I did not talk to him anymore about the coins as a matter of fact I responded calmly and left his table.

Now about the coins I have been looking for. I have searched high and low for the coins, no online auction sites or stores had them. No brick and mortar store had them either, as a matter of fact these were rare and downright scarce expensive coins. I took into consideration that the dealer had no idea what the coins I was looking for was. But to stand in front of me and insult the coins I was seeking for is highly unprofessional. Needless to say if I do go back to the show I would avoid this dealer like the plague.

My first experience at a coin show

So I went to the NYINC, New York International Numismatic Convention today. It was a little early for me considering I had just begun this hobby. But when a show only comes around once a year I decided to go and see how it was.

First things first, other collectors have told me its mainly world coins at the show and looking at the name I can guess thats what it was. Nevertheless I was expecting some United States coins since it was held in the United States. But what I wasn't expecting was the amount of Ancient coins. Wow, there were tons of ancient coins. So many that I couldn't identify and so many I had never seen before.

And the amount of high dollar coins made my small want list of coins seem meager. Now I'm not saying the coins I'm looking for are small fry stuff. Some of them are rare and downright scarce provided a dealer knew about it. But mostly all the tables had tons of world coins and barely any had U.S. coins. Thats not to say I didn't like what I saw as I still enjoyed the show.

So what did I get? Not much, not much considering most coins at the show were priced at three digits or more. Maybe when I'm more experienced and have a larger want list, the show will be even more enjoyable. But I did get some coins for a few world sets I'm working on. Mostly cheap stuff but still worth the trip.

Starting off on my quest for coins

You're probably wondering, how does a guy go from collecting baseball cards jump to comics jump to coins. Well collecting is in my nature and sometimes I get influenced by other sources. In this case it will be my parents who started me off on stamps. I have yet to strongly focus on stamps but maybe in the future I will.

Anyway back to coins, I recently looked through my parents collection of coins and went "well thats interesting." Though the collection was mostly world coins from Asia and mixed from Austria to Canada. I still wanted to focus on United States coins, it was just easier since I live in the states. I started looking at my pocket change to see what I can find. The crusty old pennies and dimes were not doing much for me so I looked harder. There it goes I found my first Lincoln wheat cent. Though its nothing spectacular it was something out of the ordinary. But of course being a collector I wanted more, and better things.

I looked back into the US coin history to see if anything caught my eye. And it seemed that silver was the big thing back then. Another look made me look at the Morgan silver dollars, Peace dollars and some old odd cents like two and three cents. I fell for it, I wanted to add some of these coins to my collection. But I had to start small, I had to learn what to buy and what to get.

So I went online to look around to see what was available. Lots of stuff were out there like Indian cents, Half Dimes, Buffalo Nickels and lots of other coins. In the end I decided to focus on Morgan dollars. Though its a huge set and there are some with prices in the stratosphere I loved the feel and look of a big piece of silver. Thats not to say I'm not buying other things since my first purchase was the United States Silver Proof sets from 2004 and 2005.