6/2/08 - because of the unusual situations with both the bullion markets and the USA dollar exchange rate everything (11/16/2008) you should consider ALL of my posted prices to be provisional.  There may be changes in any category.  This notice will be posted on a few other pages but not all.  But this is your official notice. (Renewed 1/4/2010 - this is what low level chaos feels like.)  (6/8/2010 chaos continues to build.  Think before you act.  Think before you think.  Observe before that.  Remember to breathe.) 10/21/2010 so here we are living history.  How long has this crisis been going on?  3 years?  11?  40?  65?
This aviso renewed again 4/10/2011.  It hasn't been this eventful since the 60s.  And again 10/6/2011.  5 years of financial crisis.
And again 2/26/2012.  And of course 8/3/2012.  May 26 2013: gold & silver were up, now they're down, there are still prices in my coins inventories that are too low, but probably also some that are too high.

8/3/12
I do private auctions.  Ask me how you can participate.

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May 2013 pricelist
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D. INFORMATION
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E. OPINIONS & NEWS

5/26/2013
1. BEES - 30%+ honeybee dieoff in USA 3rd year in a row.  Europe has banned neonicotinoid pesticides suspected as a cause of colony collapse disease.  I see/hear no discussion of this issue at any level of government.  Something to write to legislators about.
2. OTHER BUGS - there is starting to be increasing talk about farming insects for food.  What better indication that food is getting tight?  Time to figure out how to break our addiction to food.
3. WATER - in North Carolina there are legislative (Republicans have supermajority) moves to confiscate municipal assets such as water supply and airports and to give them to governor (Rep.) appointed oversight boards.  It is thought that these moves are a prelude to privatization.  They are also trying to remove oversight of charter schools from the state Board of Education & to establish a separate charter board.  It seems they want to dismantle & sell off everything they can in the time they have.
4. FRACKING - there was supposed to be a deal here involving significant disclosure of the fracking chemicals but Halliburton (a corporate person) complained & they sent the bill back to committee.
3. AND - the director of public safety (top cop) is continuing to advise his clients (Republican party, etc. & others with business before the government) in his capacity as a duly licensed lawyer.  He insists that he is avoiding conflicts of interest but declines to reveal details of course because of confidentiality.  It is a golden age of cronyism here.
4. I NEED TO BUY your good coins & notes & military medals now.
5. Ask me about my recent negative interaction with paypal.

3/12/2013
1. NC POLITICS: Repubs have the gov & the leg & are going nuts trying to get as much done as they can as if they figure they're going to lose big next time so better hurry.  There is a higgledy piggledy aspect to their activities, seems to be a lot of surface pride.  They did a dandy gerrymander in the reapportionment but there is a degree of excess that I think bodes ill for the future.  We shall see.  Possibly the most dangerous thing they are working on is fracking.  We have frack unfriendly geology, the possibility of extensively poisoned ground water is being ignored.  They plan to remove science advisors from some of the pertinent oversight boards.  It is very strange.  Stampede to stupidity.
2. USA POLITICS: strangeness on that level too.  Kerry as Sec State was nothing but a personal bonbon, not a particularly outstanding person but helped Obama at the start.  Not that Susan Rice would have been better.  I guess its hard to find talent.  But never mind.  The idea of firing every member of Congress seems popular on right & center (there is no organized left here).  It seems 2014 might be a great year to throw out a bunch of bums, but again, where is the talent?  None on the right, second string all.  Not much in the center.  Time for a change but where are the changers?
3. AND THE WORLD: it is pretty droughty in a lot of places this winter.  We seem to have lucked out again in the flu season.  Food & water, that's what I want to keep my eyes on.  But I can't.  Too much work to do.  Spring coming soon.  Keeping my fingers crossed.
4. I NEED TO BUY your good coins & notes & military medals now.
 

12/7/2012
1. EARLY this year I kind of decided to work more and do other things less.  I proceeded to do that and over these past months have noticed my other things I do dwindle, including "expressing myself."  I've become pretty boring probably, can't be sure, don't have the time to think it through, I have, you know, work to do.  The economy, it seemed, demanded that I work harder/more to keep my head that far above the water.  Seems to have turned out OK, there is still work to be done.  I still don't "have time" for luxuries like "opinions" mostly.  Its funny, I used to have opinions about like everything.  Now it mostly seems silly.  Like complementary colors: blue does/doesn't "go" with muddy brown?   OK, whatever.
2. NOTWITHSTANDING, I think the hidden dimension of the Islamic civil war is the Sunni (Saudi) - Shia (Iran) aspect.  The Iranian push for nukes is probably because Saudi Arabia has probably already bought a few from Pakistan, Iran couldn't get them from anyone else but Russia & the Russians don't give them out.  Israel is in that viewpoint nothing more than a convenient-for-all distraction.  The whole Wahhabi push in the world is paid for by money from Saudi & propagandized from there, all those fundamentalist madrasas.  We support the Saudi project totally.  The number one enemies for Wahhabis are heretics, worse than unbelievers for them, Shia are worthy of death, that's Iran, that's why Iran thinks it needs the bomb, to balance Saudi Arabia.
     What kind of questions could be asked at a press conference of a bigwig regarding the possibility that there is already a Saudi nuclear capability?
3. REPEAT ADVICE: this seems to be a relatively good time to sell good stuff.  Good Chinese & Indian have become scarce, B-level material of those countries does well.  I need all kinds of numismatic stuff.

10/25/2012 Straight from my paper price list sent to people who refuse to use computers:
1. PEOPLE WHO GET THESE LISTS are used to paying attention to things so probably this is preaching to the choir, but I urge you to pay some attention to your local candidates.  Mostly they don't have enough money to get their word out, whatever it happens to be, which is too bad because there is the usual bell curve distribution of talent in that collection of people.  It has become extremely easy to get candidate information, takes some minutes, then you know.  On line that is.
2. SEEMS ALSO that all the extra money from the Citizens United decision us not in general making a whole lot of difference.  Something that may be going on is ad time has become so expensive that the locals are starving for publicity.  Here we have a governor race - no one is paying any attention.  Very odd feeling political season.
3. I THINK I SHOULD CONTINUE TO POINT OUT that in this period of choppiness numismatic opportunities seem to continue to show up.  Everything is changing for me in this business.  Most of the money comes from overseas, more than 95% from the internet, more than 50% from internet auctions I've been running.  Bids on selected world coins from certain countries are getting very surprising results.  If you want to raise some cash you might consider discussing consignment with me.
4. PERHAPS THIS IS AN AGE FUNCTION - noticeable numbers of my acquaintances, friends, relatives, seem to have become nutjobs on various topics.  It is interesting to watch those opinions develop.  Often they start with a question then wander down a line of rhetoric that leads to an opinion, then they decide they like that opinion and there they are: nutjobs.  I myself seem to have become a nutjob about exercise.  Think about it all the time, do it couple of times a day.

7/5/2012
1. ALL ABOUT BUYING STUFF - This is still happening.  People are sending me nice $50/+ things then I send an email & a picture or something and a lot of them are gone in a few days, sellers are surprised at the niceness of my payments.  That's the song these days.  Purchase or consignment.  Sell me something.  I continue to do business as the world teeters on the edge of something.
2. AS I WAS WRITING THIS THE Supreme Court health care decision came out.  As usual I'm not sure what it means in detail or aggregate.  It doesn't seem to be a winning point for the Republicans.  There is a kind of tilting at windmills aspect to the anti-healthcare campaign.  Funny to watch this.
3. WRITING OF WHICH, I am amazed by the formulaic lack of imagination of all of the campaigns.  Those ads are so lame.  The moves they make are lame, they don't look good, they don't speak well.  Stupid stuff designed stupidly by stupid people and aimed at stupider people.  Stupid rich people stupidly putting stupid money into stupid campaigns that go after the stupid vote.  Deep fried good old stupid.  They keep doing it because it seems to work.
4. STILL, I'd rather have fools I can vote about rather than just fools.  Big fan of voting here.

4/24/2012
1. ALL ABOUT BUYING STUFF - This is still happening.  People are sending me nice $50/+ things then I send an email & a picture or something and a lot of them are gone in a few days, sellers are surprised at the niceness of my payments.  That's the song these days.  Purchase or consignment.  Sell me something.
2. THIS OCCURS in a time of rising instability all over the world: this month is the same fragile situation as 2 months ago: nothing serious being done about the serious problems, fanatics chasing willothewhisps, sociopaths trying to get what they can from the situation.  The "plan" apparently is to allow people who can pull it together to survive the resource crunch & to let the rest of "them" ("us" if you're in some way communitarian) "go."  "We" need the water, sorry, not enough to go around.  We can't do it they/we will say, the problem is too big.  We kind of are proving to ourselves that our collective species intelligence is not advanced over that of bacteria, who grow their population until the resources are gone then they die.
3. WILL YOUR valuable collection be worth anything "afterward"?  Coins seems to be kind of special somehow.  Every other collectible category seems to have a smaller market than it used to but not coins.  Coins is bigger.  I don't know why but it is so.  Coin collecting was practiced in China 1000 years ago.  In Europe at least 500 years.  Vast new hoards of collectors in China & India.  I am starting to fill orders from Brazil.  They collect the world, they have money.  They are not personally confronting the serious situation.  They are collecting coins, banknotes, military medals.  I help them with that.
4. TODAY I am thinking about the quantum impossibility of accuracy, how the edges of things are all porous and constantly dissolving, crumbs falling off the cookie, into the rug, trying to create compost, someday a grass seed blows in through the broken window, owner of house gone, life goes on.  Owner perhaps had a coin collection, sold (most of) it to finance migration of family to some supposed safe zone.
4. HOW IS IT that all human organizations have the same things go wrong with them and become useless but refuse, like living organisms, to die?

2/26/2012
1. ALL ABOUT BUYING STUFF - I am finding that I am paying high-seeming prices for "good" stuff & not being sorry afterwards.  I am getting smiles from the consignors.  Many checks are being written, recipients are sending me second and third and 15th packages.  40 years, this is probably the best time to sell good stuff I've ever seen.  Why?  China, India.  Now.
2. THIS OCCURS in a time of rising instability all over the world as responsible parties find themselves in tighter than ever squeezes with diminishing capabilities.
3. WILL YOUR valuable collection be worth anything "afterward"?  Your gold, even?  I don't know.  Probably.  So maybe this is a good time to buy, like my gold bug friend says.  $6000 gold he says, its all numbers.  He is buying gold now, holding it.  Maybe he's right.  I like to spread my risk.
4. TODAY I am thinking about biblical-style jubilee debt relief.  I am feeling optimistic.  I think we will get a constitutional amendment that corporations are not people.  After that we can have a general forgiving of debts.  Greece won't pay, it will suck in all the neighbors.  I think there will come a point at which no one is paying timely anymore, all the money will disappear.  Kind of like inflation but all zeros.  Sound crazy and senseless?  More senseless than what is actually happening?
5.  GREAT TIME to sell good stuff.  I have buyers.

12/29/2011
1. MORE DATA (& "data") for this business: I put out 6 printed price lists this year, as opposed to 8 last year & 12 the year before.  Less than 10% of the gross came from printed price list customers.  The biggest increase came in the phone & email sectors.  3 clients accounted for ~30% of the gross.  1 client accounted for 20%.  Gross was down ~15% from last year, but net will probably be about the same.
2. 2011 HAD A boom in Chinese & British Indian coins, one could call it bubbly, the excitement has come & gone, base prices are much higher for good stuff, lot of formerly available items not present in the market.  Booms without busts, the current normal is boom followed by famine.
3. DESPITE FLUCTUATIONS the market continues relatively strong.  There is a general lack of good and medium stuff available, only the purchase of old collections gets anything "good" in.  I bought 5 such collections this year, or parts of them.  Want to sell me some of your stuff?  This year consigned material brought in 35% of the gross.  Of course most of that was the big Chinese silver coins but still, about 5x what it was the year before.  15%, commission, 12% single items getting $1000/+.  Come talk with me.
4. BEYOND electoral politics - all over the world we see manipulation of elections & electorates.  The tendencies are toward election of stupid people by riled minorities yielding stupid governments that do the wrong things badly & the right things seldom.  Something new apparently taking shape in the internet, we don't know what it is yet.  We can see how easy it is to get poll data now, perhaps a different way of making collective decisions devloping.  Harder to get away with really bad stuff now: everything likely to show up on the internet.  New Optimo Principi aborning?
5. BEYOND confrontation - not necessarily reconciliation, more likely grudging grumbly putting up with it.  The neighbor dog barks early Sunday morning.  Put up with it.  For me annoying things remind me to not get annoyed, do something else instead.  Take a deep breath.  Get some exercise.
6. SORRY about all the mistakes I made this year.  I'll keep making them and I'll keep fixing them.
7. I NEVER know, something good might happen.  Keep busy, maybe something will get done.  Health & comfort for you next year.
 
 

More opinions - 100s of thousands of words!

reisbiz@earthlink.net
phone: (919) 787-0881
mail: Bob Reis, POB 26303, Raleigh NC 27611, USA