A flipping good strategy - advice, hints and tips please

[FourNinesFine]

My primary interest is stacking. Moving funds from the FIAT system, into PM.

Since being on TSF, my eyes have been opened to the vast world of 'collecting' and the numismatic side of silver. Now, it's not something I'm interested in from a collecting perspective; that's just not an itch that I need to scratch through the medium of PM. However, I'm keen to learn more about it from a 'flipping' point of view.

Buying a piece in a pre-sale for instance, holding it for 6 / 12 months and flipping it for a profit, sounds like good sense. That way, I retain the margin for investing in my true stack.

Now, a couple of things strike me here. For some of the members on here, I appreciate this will be a whole business model and I'm not pretending that I can just rock up and boom!, I'm 'mister buy-and-sell' overnight. Similarly, I appreciate that if it was as simple as 'buy X', wait 'y' amount of time, sell to 'z'... then every man-jack would be doing it.

But that said, I'm sure there must be some basic good practice and / or things to avoid.

I'll level with you, there's no denying that I've come late to the party when it comes to investing in PM. With that in mind, I've been looking at how to maximise the opportunity, now that I'm on this road. My initial strategy has been to reduce wastage and unnecessary household spend in order to create a sensible investment budget. Step 2 is 'side hustles'. Exploring opportunities to increase income streams, even if only on a modest scale, that I can channel into my stack. Picking up the odd numismatic coin with a view to flipping is something I thought may fit the bill.

It may turn out to be an unsuitable venture. If the only real gains are based on bulk buying and economies of scale, that's just not where I am at the minute in terms of available funds. Similarly, if an in-depth knowledge is required, then I'll happily step aside and leave it to the experts.
(At which point I'll pursue my dream of opening 'Maritime Metals Insurance' to help those poor souls that lose their stacks at sea.)

If any of you do have any pointers that would set me on the right path, I'm all ears.

Thanks in advance.

 

FNF.

[metallica73]

I don't think you can make many gains short term flipping just with bullion imho (without having large volume and capital to begin with anyway)

Can only go off of my experience is that numismatic plays are the way to increase a stack via flipping. One example was buying the SoTD plain edge Sovereign for £550, last I saw was selling for close to £1k, another was buying queens beasts and holding.

My only advice and it is only my personal opinion - avoid proof silver at all costs.  The odds your premium piece of silver doesn't become a milky bullion piece in a years time are 50/50

[Pete]

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
Had I bought "X" at the time "Y" then I could easily sell and make a nice return.
Unfortunately with PMs you are banking on 2 things - spot price and collectibility.
When spot rises appreciably all bullion coins rise in value so if you can buy relatively cheaply during dips then in theory you will be able to realise a profit when selling. The tricky part is knowing a dip meaning a sharp rise thereafter - those of us who bought silver 10 years ago are still licking our wounds. Familiarise yourself with the charts. Even if you succeed in buying at some lows the very difficult next stage is figuring out when to sell and you will never predict the peaks. If you sell too early and prices continue to rise then you will never forgive yourself and equally holding for a peak might see you losing all your gains and you will kick yourself for being greedy.
Semi-numismatic and numismatic coins are like art.
Their price is reflected in scarcity and demand and just because you reckon a coin is worth "W" it doesn't automatically mean there are buyers out there prepared to pay this at the time you want to sell. Some methods of selling will also take a chunk of change from your gains.
Some stackers have been fortunate in buying certain series - Queens Beasts for example - but how can you predict which series is going to be highly desirable and there are so many mints today issuing new series every month.
Before Brexit you could buy a few tubes of nice silver 20-25% cheaper than you could obtain from any dealer in the UK.
It would be so easy to sell and make a return of say 20% but not anymore.
Selling prices will also vary day to day and I see some coins selling on eBay one day for £40 and a week later the same coin for £120 so what is the current price ?
I have coins that had I sold around the time I bought them would fetch well over £200 each but today I might only get £35 which is close to what I paid.

Selling individual coins also takes time and effort.
Photographs, listings, researching the prices, wrapping, posting etc.
In order to make £5 profit selling a one ounce silver coin probably takes a minimum of 30 minutes of your time, maybe more, so that's not even minimum wage.
It takes much less time if you have a production batch of course.

Finally to sell these days you have to be competitive so be prepared to operate on modest margins and provided your time is free then yes you can make a few quid 

[Paul]

 

[Paul]

 

[FlorinCollector]

IMO - I think you have just missed the boat. During covid the flipping of numismatic coins boomed. Coins that many on here would not touch in normal circumstances were being bought up and flipped for many times initial price. I think we are now entering back into normal times. I think the biggest gains from RM releases are in the past. Many will go back to not touching these coins as the last few get burned with what they are holding. 

This is just from the numismatic point of view I have no experience in trying to flip bullion. One main point about flipping is for the best price you need to have it relatively fast because people will pay a premium to send it off for grading to get the first releases label. If you are buying from the RM and you do not get the first batch released you will see your paper profit reduce significantly as each batch is released. Add in RM quality issues and it really is a lottery - if you can get the coin first and good quality then you win. 

[FlorinCollector]

Also one more point to add. Precious metals may very well continue the run upwards but you have entered at the top of the market. As Pete says some of the older people on here have been stung with this and are still holding it today. Most likely they will never see a realised gain on that when everything is accounted for. Id say your best way to earn an extra income or speculate on an asset is to find an asset that is currently not on a hot streak and has maybe been battered down for some time. 

[dicker]

Flipping is alien to me, and something that doesn’t appeal.

Personally, I don’t think there is a great deal of much money in it, and it is not scalable.

No one knows what will / will not become more or less valuable but cost price averaging is a sane strategy on bullion coins.

 

[GoldenGriffin]

If you're to buy a numismatic collectable piece, then I'd recommend buying what you would enjoy over the years, expect to hold on to and cherish.

If you plan to sell it in the short term, you could end up not having any buyers and locking up your money - or having to sell to a dealer who will give you close to spot price for it.

Buying a numismatic collectable coin isn't necessarily about making money.  If you're buying to sell later on, you may lose money.

Bullion is different and you pay closer to spot price and it keeps track of spot price if and when you're ready to sell.

I suppose you've got to ask yourself what risk are you willing to take and in what circumstances will you need to sell and what could you afford to lose?

Edited April 18, 2022 by GoldenGriffin

[Guest]

I think you have to have some intuition about what will be a hot coin to flip.  For instance, the 10 oz Beskar bars were limited mintage and a hot Mandalorian theme.  So you know they are going to be ripe for flipping.  I have never sold anything.  So when APMEX introduced the sale in their app, I bought one.  I paid $399 but I hear they were initially available for $349.  They are at least $600 now.  If I had been a flipper, I would have bought the maximum of 5, kept one, and flipped the other 4.  I probably would have made about $700.

[Gordy]

I find with flipping you need to be patient and spend a lot of time online checking out new releases, different sources of said coins and be prepared to act quickly and spend a bit money, recently the RM have released so many new coins that they are backlogged with getting the orders out quickly, I'm still waiting on a 5oz Henry VII and they bring out the new James I... 

You'll not likely get rich with flipping but it can be a very useful tool to enabling you to grow your stack/collection/whatever you want to call it without having to fund it as flipping a few of one coin/bar can pay for the one you keep, it's catching the market at the right time and finding the coin that will move quickly when selling before the market for said coin dries up..

I said a while back I flipped a good few completers in a very short space of time but i never tried to replicate that with the new TB bullion Lion as I just didnt think it would be a coin worth trying to flip in bulk... esp when it is still readily available (as were completers btw) i just found them at a good price when they were selling for around £70.00 each, now, you'd be daft to pay £70.00 for a completer

Used as a hobby to help you buy more is great, used as an avenue to compliment your income, not so great

I'll flip anything if it can be a good % profit but anything I want to keep for long term will only be moved on as a flip if i am able to source another one from a different avenue that a lot of buyers havnt found, it happens, but not loads..

 

[CANV]

Flipping bullion is fairly pointless.  You might as well punt spot gold or whatever takes your fancy  on one of the spread betting sites on your phone 

[Paul]

Just my 2ps worth, a two decades worth of feebaying none PM's

there are far, far more profitable and lucrative income streams to be had for way less money involved

why tie up £1000+ in a single item to make £25 ?  

There's tenner items you can sell for twenty sourced from China 

 

 

 

 

[Gordy]

8 minutes ago, Paul said:

Just my 2ps worth, a two decades worth of feebaying none PM's

there are far, far more profitable and lucrative income streams to be had for way less money involved

why tie up £1000+ in a single item to make £25 ?  

There's tenner items you can sell for twenty sourced from China 

 

 

 

 

agreed, but selling a £1,000.00 item for £1,025.00 is not flipping, thats just getting rid of an item you no longer want 😂

[dicker]

16 minutes ago, Paul said:

Just my 2ps worth, a two decades worth of feebaying none PM's

there are far, far more profitable and lucrative income streams to be had for way less money involved

why tie up £1000+ in a single item to make £25 ?  

There's tenner items you can sell for twenty sourced from China 

 

 

 

 

I completely agree.  I occasionally buy books from charity shops that have vastly more profit potential than flipping coins. The books are rarely more than a fiver!

[FourNinesFine]

Thanks for all the input and responses. I think this pretty much confirms my initial thinking, so don't expect to see me in the trade section hawking the latest RM special release any time soon.

Cheers folks!

FNF.

[GoldDiggerDave]

Give it a go, we all end up paying  for our stacking and numismatic education. 
 

 

[FourNinesFine]

18 minutes ago, GoldDiggerDave said:

Give it a go, we all end up paying  for our stacking and numismatic education. 
 

 

That's a different way of looking at it. Thanks. 😀

[Paul]

24 minutes ago, GoldDiggerDave said:

Give it a go, we all end up paying  for our stacking and numismatic education. 

 

5 minutes ago, FourNinesFine said:

That's a different way of looking at it. Thanks. 😀

 

 

 

[FourNinesFine]

37 minutes ago, Paul said:

 

I'm pretty sure my biggest mistakes tend to be my fashion choices.

 

[ady]

1 hour ago, Paul said:

 

 

 

 

He who has never made a mistake has never done anything.

[StackemHigh]

If you don't mind waiting i'd find a a lesser numi coin that hasn't been exploited yet and buy a few of the best examples you can find and wait for the market to catch up. I've kind of done that with old crowns. Bought in at around £200 to £250 worth now double. A chap i meet in leeds a few years ago had a liking for old pennies now he is a expert on the coin and has been very, very sucessful.

[Bratnia]

On 18/04/2022 at 12:39, FourNinesFine said:

If any of you do have any pointers that would set me on the right path, I'm all ears.

Late in seeing this thread/post, so necro-bumping

If you hold just gold then the drawdowns can be deep and prolonged, i.e. the time period between a former highest high price, and how long/deep that price can decline before recovering back to that former high price. Buy at £x and the price might dip, and stay down for many years before it again returns to £x price.

For 'flipping' you want drawdowns to be relatively short lived, to achieve that blend a combination of stocks and gold. The image is for US data, small cap value shares such as VISVX stock index fund, and gold. Its a animated gif that alternates between showing drawdowns for just gold and for 50/50 yearly rebalanced (flipped) stock/gold

You might rebalance (flip) monthly, quarterly, six monthly, yearly, whatever. Use the ongoing weightings as a guide as to whether you're buying or selling. If for instance 50/50 initial stock/gold value has drifted to being 60/40, then you'll be selling some stock to buy more gold.

You don't need to realign precisely to 50/50 weightings, if for example at 60/40, perhaps £30,000 of stock value, £20,000 of gold that a full rebalance would have you revising to £25,000 in each, and see a 'good deal' where you can buy £3000 worth of gold, then selling £3000 of stock value to buy £3000 of gold revises your portfolio to £27,000 stock, £23,000 gold, and you might leave it at that for a while before making other trades.

As you're UK based I'd suggest VMIG for the stocks, preferably held within a ISA, a FT250 stock index tracker fund/ETF (that automatically reinvests dividends). Britannia or Sovereign coins for the gold, as they're capital gains tax exempt. At least that's how I play it (well my intended choice, previously I've held/traded just gold ETF's but now intend to move over to including Britannia's). For me, living near London, Tavex looks to be the best choice of local dealer, a tube ride away and where for Britannia's their spreads are competitive, typically around 3% above spot to buy, 0.5% below spot to sell back again. My particular interest with TSF is the potential to potentially buy/sell at even better rates (tighter spreads).