Cornering or influencing the market

[Paul]

This past hour I have just had some thoughts going through my head - corner the market

As a collective we now stand at just shy of 2000 members

The recent Strike of the Day was only 1817 mintage

We as a whole forum, had we each bought one could each we could influence the entire market. Control and sway its future

Win Win for everything 

A modern day Hunt brothers scenario if you like !

I reckon someone with a good bit of money could easily corner the market sticking to buying up each issue that comes onto the market.  

If the slowly started purchasing all available, and continued to do so, removing from the market a % of them of them over the few years.

The price would then rocket as few would be available at which point the purchaser could start to off load his coins at prices vast to what he bought them at.

Someone with deep big pockets could do this with the 1937 full sovereign or as numistacker highlighted the 1989 full sovereign

I am quietly contently buying 2002 2005 2012 and 2017 full sovereigns where i can,  paying that little bit extra % today for hopefully a good upside in years to come

I'm sure there are examples of this happening, maybe even between dealers manipulating the bid/ask price by doing phantom sales between themselves to manipulate the price guides and market.

On the flip side The coin market is funny in a way - for the coins with the lowest mintage numbers are those least likely collected - in other words not that many collectors are even trying to find examples. This means low demand and that means relatively low prices. 

As a forum collective, sharing of info etc does this warrant a favourable beneficial discussion ?

[Jimmock]

That will be your age,catching up with you!! ? Are you going to share them?

[Pete]

I have to admit to having a rather fuzzy memory but when the Perth Mint Lunar Dragon 2012 one ounce silver coin was announced it sold like wild fire.
The price rocketed almost overnight so one would intuitively assume buying early ( right time ) and holding would pay big dividends.

I was following at the time the Australian forum called silver stackers so just did a search on their website and copied here the following extract from January 2012 -

... When they first hit ebay as they were all sold out before release, they were going for 150, they then sat around 80 for a while, i waited till below 70 to worry about them and got a roll for 60 each.
The cheapest i have seen is 57 in recent sales ...

These prices are AUS so to convert into £ divide by 1.6 so AUS 60 = £37.50 and AUS 150 = £93.75

Checking our usual German suppliers this coin is currently available for €27.50 or about £25

That kind of makes me nervous about following the herd and just because a coin is sold out then rockets in price doesn't necessarily in the longer term make it a good investment as the above clearly illustrates.

[whitesands1]

From the posts on the Forum and for the number of coins we know have been returned because of damage there must already be a significant percentage owned by Forum members. 

18 would be 1% and some of us will not be far off handling 18 already!

I think you could be onto something @Paul.

[shawy2510]

I believe between 4 of us on the forum, we own around 11% of the Rwandan Gold Rooster 

Would love to find 1 of these

[Guest]

My experience says a market that is strong is one where many owners own one coin only and nobody hoards.

Prices cant be influenced and multiples are tough to buy. 

I have had thoughts about cornering the market in some things but it is not easy to do.

One way of making things like that possible would be to form a buying collective that registers as a dealer and obtains dealer pricing. If dealers can sell at 20% discount sometimes they are buying at 30% discount and that discount buys increased isolation from market downturns and increased profit on the upturn.

[tbone]

I say we buy all the 2017 gold libertads on the market   I'm only half kidding btw...

[tbone]

Apmex taking advantage again, 1/4 up to $470 US if paying by card.  I checked about 20 minutes ago and they were all sold out, but probably just updating the prices They appear in stock again with the higher prices.  Good sign for those that bought early, I guess the cats out of the bag on these...

[Gav]

This past hour I have just had some thoughts going through my head - corner the market
As a collective we now stand at just shy of 2000 members

Now this is an interesting idea, not that practical because of a few reasons, the main one would be exiting. But you are touching on a topic that is very relevant because many forum members are actually considered experts and or influence many others to buyers outside of the forum. They have the influence to swig buyers to purchasing a certain coins or buy from certain mints. That is the real power of the forum.

If this idea of yours could work the nautical Rwanda coin would be an excellent opportunity to test it on. There aren't many but there are enough guys that could pick up a significant amount to dominate the market. Trading the coin at higher prices so that the price gradually and steadily rises so that the perception of the coin is seen as an asset that is safe and easy to sell at a profit.

We have to be careful because if it back fires we could do more harm to the whole coin market. Coin collecting is changing and people want coins that will appreciate in price, ever time any coin doesn't do well the whole coin collecting market suffers. The more coins that do appreciate the bigger the market as a whole grows. If it was a given that coins are a safe and good investment then there would be a much bigger market.

I would recommend that we as a community only speak positively about coins and not negatively because by trashing a coin we actually trashing coin collecting as a whole.