Scenario Game...What would you do?

[robbuckalew]

Scenario:

You are doing a little yard sale hoping, spending all day looking for some nice treasures. After hours of hunting with no real finds, you stop at a small house with a table of old coins. One coin catches your eye. It happens to be a REAL $20 Double Eagle, the price tag says $40 What would you do?

 

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[packerbacker]

Ask.........."Will you take $10 for it?".......

 

[RON (PA)]

Assuming that an old lady is selling the coins so that her heat does not get shut off....I would offer her $20.00.

 

[Cachefinder]

$20 would be my offer

even though I will pay the $40 if she insists.

Cachefinder-

 

[packerbacker]

Apparently all children, from now on, will be born with no anal openings. They have all been used up here at T-Net.

 

[robbuckalew]

Apparently all children, from now on, will be born with no anal openings. They have all been used up here at T-Net.

 

[Bassfish]

Create a distraction and steal it........







jk

 

[lafatlife]

Knowing it is worth more, pay the asking price and both are happy!!1

 

[TexasDigger1]

grab it before someone else beats you to it.....

 

[BIG61AL]

Well I would buy it on the spot. The more real scenario would be someone with a silver half from the fifties that is worn to hell, scratched, dinged, bent and a $50 price tag or a set of ten common wheat cents again damaged/worn for $15. Very rarely do I see good collectable coins that are worth buying or at reasonable prices. I find eBay a much better place to get coins.

 

[robbuckalew]

this is just a test of honesty...I am not saying anybody is wrong.
I just wanted to see how many would.....

 

[Montana Jim]

I think it's funny most people except a few of us would return a long lost class ring - but would rip off an old lady because she did'nt know any better.

Personnaly, I would keep the dang long lost ring and tell the lady to keep her coin with some clue to it's value. Her stupidity makes her easy prey... I could'nt live with myself.


There is a big difference finding something lost 20 years and taking a coin right from her hand... IMO.

 

[Likely Guy]

I'd offer her $50, (Canadian). No, $60.

No, we'd have to split the difference.

Wait, "Little old lady was not the discription....it was small house and old coins...."

Small houses don't have garage sales, people do.

robbuckalew, please clarify your scenario.

 

[Noodle]

"... small house with a table of old coins..."

Buy it for their asking price, "$20." They're asking, you give.

Since there is no little ole lady involved, that's what I would do.

I'd figure the young sellers were stupid. And greedy. They probably figured it was copper.

At the very least, they were too lazy to look up the true value.

Go for it, absolutely! -Noodle

 

[Likely Guy]

My karma would suck. Not worth it.

PS: the 'Angel' is telling you to go for it!

 

[tomclark]

If it's worth 40 bucks to the seller I will gladly pay it and that's that. There are ignorant but happy sellers and buyers of all types of collectibles. Honesty has nothing to do with it at a sale like that. If same coin was at an auction and won it for 40 bucks anyone would be ecstatic and have no moral qualms. Yes, I said moral qualms. Now if it were my friend or relative or even a friend of a friend or relative I would tell them to research the coin before selling it for 40. This coming from a person that paid thousands more on purchase of a home because the "little old lady" didn't know what it was worth and I couldn't offer her what I knew she would take........

 

[Noodle]

One time I know what I did do, and it bothered me, but there was really nothing I could do at the time.

In El Paso, TX, around 1978, I went to an estate sale. It was in an older smaller home in the Mexican part of town, and the home had evidently belonged to grandparents because there were generations there to claim ownership of the articles. In the kitchen area I saw a drop-leaf oak table, nothing grand, just a utility item. It was marked $25. I bought it for the asking price, and as I began to move it out of the kitchen area/house, little munchkins ran up and began to cry (literally) because Grandma's table was leaving the estate. Gawd, did I feel bad.

But I took it home and lived with the dirty deed I had done. Still have it and love it. Refinished it and cannot part with it. Somewhere there are some little Mexican kids that remember Grandma's little kitchen table and wonder where it went. It's in Louisiana.

If it was up to the kids, I would have left it, but evidently the parents needed the $$. I still feel sad. Oh, well...

 

[Kilika]

Since when is it our responsibility to educate those people who are too lazy to research the value of items they are selling at their garage sale? If they had a Juicemaster juicer with a $10 price tag, and you knew you could turn around and sell it on ebay for $80, would you feel obligated to tell them their price was too low?? Would you offer them $40 for an item they only wanted $10 for? And where do you draw those lines? Getting something valuable for 50% off makes you a good bargain hunter, but getting something for 90% off makes you an unethical thief Or do the rules change because its a valuable coin instead of a Juicemaster?

I also read the recent thread about showing/sharing finds with property owners and "out of state MD'ers 'stealing' the 'village heritage' out of the public park" because they found some coins from 1810. How much enjoyment were the 'locals' getting from that 'heritage' while it was buried in the ground? Did those nasty rotten MD'ers somehow 'steal' the locals satisfaction of knowing every time they stepped on that peice of grass that there was an 1810 coin underneath it?? Do property owners suffer some kind of loss because an MD'er keeps their favorite coin in their pocket rather than risk losing it to a greedy landowner? They didn't even know it was there! And it would still be lost in the ground if the MD'er hadn't put in the time, effort, and expertise to find it. I'm not saying all landowners are greedy, by the way, and I do agree there is a certain satisfaction sharing/discussing the history of an item with someone who may know (the landowner), but each person has to determine what is of value to them. The monetary value of the item? The historical value? The satisfaction of sharing a bit of history with the property owner? The satisfaction of a clear conscience? I don't know about you, but I don't always make the same choice in every instance, it depends on the situation. But I do know I try to make the best decision with the information I have at the time, and I sleep fine at night.

The real reason I felt compelled to respond to this thread was because of the response above.
So, Ryaan21, did you just eat an extra bowl of 'cranky' this morning, or are you always such an A$$?

So much for keeping this board a friendly and respectful place for everyone to express their opinion. Sorry Ryaan21, but in my opinion, your response was way out of line.

Kilika

 

[savant365]

Scenario:

You are doing a little yard sale hoping, spending all day looking for some nice treasures. After hours of hunting with no real finds, you stop at a small house with a table of old coins. One coin catches your eye. It happens to be a REAL $20 Double Eagle, the price tag says $40 What would you do?

Back to the original question:

I would be very leary of anyone selling a REAL gold double eagle for $40. I like to gamble though so if I thought it was real I would haggle it down as low as I could and then go see if my gamble paid off. If it turned out to be a fake, well thats my bad luck, I lost on my gamble. I wouldn't go back and demand a refund because I knew what I was doing going into the deal. BUT if it turned out that it was the real deal or even one of those omega stamped $20 coins, that are worth a few hundred dollars even though they are fake, hooray for me I gambled and won.
There are no ethics involved here, it's simply a calculated risk. Are you willing to risk $30 or $40 to make $3,000 or $4,000 or more. Its called savvy not ethics and it's just good business.

HH Charlie

 

[deepskyal]

If you ever watch "Antique Road Show", this type of scenario actually happens more often than you think. One woman bought a stone about the size of a baseball for like 5 bucks and it turned out to be jade worth several hundred thousand dollars.

Another case was a woman dumpster diving, finding a painting thrown away and it too had a value in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Nothing has value until someone places one on something. If it's worth $40.00 to someone, I'll pay them $40.00.

But like Charlie...I'd be real suspicious of the item and feel it I was gambling buying it. If I determined it was real, I'd ask the seller if they had any more they wanted to sell.

Remember the saying...One man's trash....

Al

And I think you were a tad out of line also Ryann, let's keep these posts friendly. Believe it or not, school age children come on this forum.

Al