UK vs USA prices

Hi,
I buy them cheap also. I always give one to a bride to wear in her shoe on her wedding day.
greg

 

I have about 5,000 sixpences for 10c. each .... but they are the post 1947 silver free ones. Which is why they have not been melted down.

 

I always give one to a bride to wear in her shoe on her wedding day.

I used to supply an American jewellery supply dealer with 10 to 20 thousand post 47 sixpences for just that purpose. Those parcels were really HEAVY, but even after shipping costs I could double my money

 

You could always take in an inexpensive ancient coin and tell them it has to be worth BIG money since it is even older than the Old Man!

 

lol I guess I was assuming everyone had their own shop lol not that he wanted to sell to someone's shop heh heh

So....here's an idea...being an old sixpence...like really really old! I have a few sixteenth century pieces I picked up in Bath that are older than the old man And I could see them getting all hot and bothered about that.

Americans love age....an ancient deed, papers/letters from pre 1700 would be something fun to take in and easy to pack.

Btw on those sixpence....I buy bags of coins (mostly British pennies) which I throw in a bin and label
"Lucky coins" I might pay 5 cents US for them and I sell them for a dollar I pay very very little for the 1900 to 1947 sixpence (last year with silver in them for those who don't know) so my margin is great there as well. The pre 1900 I pay a bit more for, but again great margin. The pre 1600....I knock those up significantly. I only have six right now but I have sold two sight unseen at four times cost. Americans love old chit.

 

Btw again....

http://www.history.com/shows/pawn-stars/articles/want-to-be-on-pawn-stars

 

I think part of it is that America simply isn't that old. We've only been a country a few centuries and there are some towns in some parts of the country that were incorporated within the last 20 years. On the West Coast, old can be 1940s. There are no Roman ruins here, and no one digs up Roman glass in the back yard. Pieces from your Civil War predate ours by close to 300 years.

Hmm, now there's a thought - Roundhead musket balls.

 

Musket balls are just over a dollar each here - bought my godson one, he does civil war re-enactment. He has a six foot long musket.

 

I think part of it is that America simply isn't that old

This was something that puzzled me when I was visiting American relatives when I was 14. Why did they think mid 19th C was old when my school was partly 16th C. and the local village church was largely 12th C. and no one seemed to consider them all that special. I hope I was polite enough not to point this out. There was plenty of interest that did not need to be old, so all good.

 

I've read that it can be difficult just to get into the place - perpetual queues.

 

America not being that old is exactly why I sell so much "old" stuff. People are fascinated by anything with a date that predates 1850. In England that's just vintage right? Heh heh

 

Seems like it. In Britain it's all the old tat granny's granny left in the lumber room. Most of it never made it onto a ship headed to the US with our grannys' grannies, so we don't have it. Pottery did, but not nearly as much of it survived.

 

There is a lot of stuff in Britain because we have not had a war fought on the land here for centuries, and at that time it was relatively inefficient.

There was a lot of bombing in WWII but it mostly hit poor homes and poor people,, because they lived nearest the targets in major cities, and in general did not have a lot of good stuff to be destroyed.

Occupation and invasion by Germans, British, Americans and Russians did a far more thorough job at ground level over much of Europe. My house is the best part of 100 years old so I think of it as modern, as houses go. Once your budget gets to about twice the national average for house prices, Georgian and older houses are quite plentiful. You just get used to it.

 

Heh heh, My house is 120 years old and considered ancient. Built by a Brit, which is what started this obsession and my shop. I go to England and find myself in barns older than America. It's all relative.

Frankly it's good we don't have the age here...If I lived in England or Europe, I swear you'd find me digging up my backyard constantly looking for "stuff"

 

People do that here if there was an old house somewhere on the lot; bottle dumps yield all sorts of interesting things. There wasn't anything where my house is besides possibly crops and cows. I don't want anything the cows left behind!

 

We dug up our cistern....about 2000 bottles all between 1940 and 1900 it was fun to dig. The thing is huge! about 16' deep and wide. We're going to put a circle staircase in the middle of it and make it a wine cellar some day.