12/24/23 Report - Reales and Escudos for Sale in Treasure Coast Stores. Getting More For Your Finds.

 

Written by the Treasureguide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.

Small Sample of Treasure Coins for Sale at St. Lucie County Stores.

I went Christmas shopping with my wife and while she shops I take a look at the Treasure coins for sale.  It seems that many of the jewelry stores in the area offer a good selection of treasure coins, including a good number 1715 Fleet coins.

At one location the coins included a number from the West Bay Trading Company.  They were in plastic envelopes and had the West Bay labels.  Many were small reales such as those you might find at Bonsteel or John Brooks.  For my taste, many were overly cleaned, but many people like them bright and nice and shiny.

The coins shown above are in pendants.  You can see the prices on a few of them.  

I noticed a few that were labeled as eight-reales that simply seemed too small for that denomination.  I'm not sure they were labeled correctly.  

Below are some more.  Many were professionally graded and encapsulated.  

Another Sample of Treasure Coins for Sale in Local Stores.

Even if you find rather than buy your treasure coins, browsing doesn't hurt.  You can find out the prices that are being asked and become more familiar with a larger variety of examples.

I can't imagine buying a treasure coin, but I still enjoy looking at them and learning.

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One thing that was confirmed to me this year is how important it is to sell well if you want to get good money for your finds.  Jewelers will only offer about 80 percent of the value of the gold in your jewelry.  They might advertise that they won't buy your jewelry for scrap, but they will give you more because they will buy it as jewelry, but the fact is that they will offer only about eighty percent of the value of the gold for the vast majority of items.  There are a few exceptions, but those items are very rare and include signed items such as those by Tiffany or some other highly desirable maker. For gemstones on rings, they'll generally offer nothing for most and only a fraction for very nice examples.  Then once they buy them, they'll mark them up three hundred percent or much more.  Of course, a lot of it, they melt for scrap.

I know they have to make a profit.  They have expenses.  They have to pay rent, salaries, taxes and all of that and still come out with a profit, but that doesn't help you.

They have their explanations to justify it all.  I told you about diamonds, for which they'll typically offer you very little.  They'll tell you about the new lab diamonds bringing down the value of natural diamonds, which are virtually indistinguishable from natural diamonds, for example.

One nice diamond ring I was told by a jeweler was a 20-, or 25-thousand-dollar diamond ring but a couple jewelers, including the one telling me that value, offered $7500 or less for the same ring.  It was explained that the main diamond in the ring had a small chip, and the diamond would have to be recut, and recertified, or whatever they call it, by GIA, etc. etc. before it could be sold.

And an antique necklace that I thought was very nice, I was told was old-fashioned and nobody these days would wear it.  That makes it hard to sell and worth almost nothing to a jeweler.

All of that might sound bad, but that is not my point.  You can sell well if you take the time and do the right things - if you cut out the middleman and sell directly to the person that will give you a good price - and that in most cases will not be someone who plans on reselling or scrapping the item.  

Sell antiques to people who most appreciate antiques.  And it gets more specific than that.  Sell that unique cat ring to a person that collects cats.  To get the best price for your finds, you have to find the right person.  You might or might not have the time or desire to do that.

The internet makes it easier to reach interested buyers, but it also increases the competition items that are common.  It also takes time to clean, photograph and post items for sale.  

Selling well is a huge topic that could take all day.  I've posted on that topic several times before, each time addressing only a small part of it.  You'll find some of those posts in treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.

One thing you can do is turn a virtually unsellable item into something more sellable.  Here is just one example.

Fossil Nuchal Turtle Scute Necklace.

And at the top of this post you will see several reales made into attractive pendants.  That is one way to transform a find into something more sellable and therefore more valuable.  

As I've said before, you can take classes on jewelry making and turn tarnished unsellable silver items into brand new items.

Or turn a fossil that almost nobody would buy into a necklace.  Add a leather cord and bail and that is how this hard to sell fossil nuchal turtle scute was sold.

A lot of it is just finding the right person, but you can also do a lot to transform finds so they can be sold for more.

One of the stores I visited yesterday while my wife was shopping was selling several pendants featuring 1715 Fleet Kang Hsi shards.  

I'll quit there today, but if you want to get the most for your finds, instead of selling them to a pawn shop or jewelry store you might take the time to find the right buyer and/or transform your item to make them more sellable.

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Good hunting,

TreasureGuide@comcast.net