I think a lot of the confusion with the years for the World Heritage stemmed from the fact that some of the 2015's were first released in 2014? Not to mention that I've seen conflicting info from various sellers, which just added to the mayhem. :lol: Of course, NGC also played a role, too.. I've got a slabbed brass Beijing Palace (#1) -- label incorrectly states 2015. I don't mind all that much, and I understand it happens with all kinds of slabs. But NGC really should at least get these things right. They've got a job to do, and it should be done correctly. Anyway, for those who don't submit to NGC, themsleves (like me), for various reasons.. I'm sure Andrew & b will be happy to accommodate any & all requests, whenever possible. Certainly pros & cons to both submitting yourself, versus buying something pre-slabbed. But in the end, I think it boils down to volume buying-power.. Not only for submitting a bunch of medals at once to keep costs down, but also when sourcing the actual medals. I know Andrew & b have connections & access that not all of us have.. If they aggregate our orders to a Chinese supplier who has them in stock, say, 2 of these, 3 of those, 1 of these, 4 of those, etc... then I'm sure they'd be able to get better pricing for us, than had we each individually gone to that supplier on our own. Sort of like a group-buy, really.. But with a bunch of different medals in one shot. I recently sent Andrew & b my latest wish-list. Basically I scouted around various sources to see which raw medals I'd like to have, and asked what Andrew & b could do for me re: acquiring them & getting them slabbed. I've done this a few times before with these two, and it tends to work out pretty well. At least on my end -- I simply leave the headaches to them, LOL. Some of you might have also experienced this, but I've worked with / tried working with 3 different / other Chinese sellers in the past.. It's not always easy, and/or it's not always as inexpensive as it could be. And it's not just the matter of a language barrier (which doesn't help). Anyway, would be cool if we got strength in numbers, via Andrew & b, which would help gain further accessibility & lower costs for all end-customers. Would be nice to have a seat at the table, so to speak.. Even if it's just at the kiddie-table at the start. :lol: Okay, enough rambling.. Place those orders & send them your wish-lists, folks!
Gatito, everything you had written makes a lot of sense and I also agree with all of it. With Andrew and Bob making ChineseMedals.com a serious pursuit, we SilverStackers members now have people who are lovers of Chinese medals as sort of go-between us and major Chinese medals dealers in China eliminating for us some of the usual frustration that can often happen when trying to place a small order here and there with these dealers. .
Been over a month now since the launch of the site.. How's the Chinese medals biz going? Any trends worth noting..? Ag vs brass vs copper vs Au? Raw vs slabbed? Higher relief vs lower relief? Higher price range vs lower price range? Size / weight? Enquiring minds want to know!
I can not speak for Barsenault or Andy but I have been involved with a couple of start up businesses and at least one of which was not the main business of the owner. Things tend to move slow with certain start-ups and slower still if they are not the main source of income. I suspect that at least a 1 year time frame would be required to better evaluate trends in the Chinese medal market from a brand new website that is low key. Other than the few of us here in the SS forum who tunes into this sub-forum, there's probably not a whole lot of people who know about ChineseMedals.com.....yet. All in due time, in due time. .
Business mainly focus on the gold panda goat and panda monkey silver proof. Left 1 gold for sell and might be 2 if the customer not pay by due time to my friend. Panda Monkey pre-order closed yesterday which sold 230 pcs to 4 dealers and customers even the formal design photo has yet to ready and publish. The die carving photo likely to be ready in end of this month. The balance of the medal is with us and the Mints. We agree this lunar panda series will on track after the 3rd medal. The collectors base of this medal has increased from goat to monkey which mainly due to the wow effect of the lunar goat panda and the good quality of this medal. Likely the launch price will be USD185 for 5-10 pcs on our webpages depending on stock level. Ebay price will be much higher due to the hefty ebay fee. I hope the mints will produce the balance of the 99 pcs and mints fully of planned mintage of 499 pcs and not increase our price. Otherwise we need to up the launch price a bit to cover extra cost and fast deplete stock level. The silver antique and gold monkey panda will remain 99 and 19 planned mintage respectively if approve by the mints. We sold some classical garden YMY, Nanjing panda, World heritage, panda goat and so on. Mainly on silver and brass. NIL in copper at all till today. Mix of raw and slab. High Relief more than lower relief. However, mammoth remain unsold for raw and slab which is odd even the price is super low as compare to ebay. We yet to get time upload more products (medal and coins) and try to make the webpage more searchable in major search engine. The price range of sold product at average of USD250. However, I did sold some medals and coins not in the webpage above USD1K. The gold panda goat is the most high value sold medal at the moment. There are many offline selling to end collectors and also dealers who has physical shop at Singapore and ebay sellers. World heritage brass medal does well which I still keep 3 set for stock in Singapore for Singapore market. Barsenault is busy with business trip which we yet to offer slab for world heritage at this moment. I will say we yet to really put more variety of the products in the webpage and ebay. We yet to gain the name in ebay like Tintcat, lucky, Naomi, lavender, ggoodluck. Slowly we might go into MCC (fiat coins). However, we need to build the bases for china medal first before to go into coins due to price fluctuation of coin is significant which is risky and we do not have much capital for this freelance. Size and weight are more on 2 oz and the world heritage. In fact, I expect the gold gilded old medal sell better BUT it is not. We still learning the rob and new to this side business
Agreed we still in low key mood and need more time which might be more than one year. However, We can proudly say that the Lunar goat panda was brought on board by Bob. This Lunar goat panda and the encouragement of some SS members here have brought me to Bob and became a business partner. However, we still collectors . Recently I just acquire more than 10% of the silver Xi shi medal in NGC and omp. I still not selling my coa no 44 and 50. Noami has 1 pcs and tincat has not more than 3 pcs of the silver xi shi base if I am not wrong. The xi shi silver medal of 50 mintage mainly on collectors hand. I am not sure any collectors has more than 5 pcs on hand. I believe xi shi will does well in future. Arif China coin Forum member who is MCC dealer in USA has cited that hard to buy back the rare gold proof panda from big collectors now. Personally, I think this will happen to certain rare medal if majority of the medal has landed in end collectors hand who buy not more than 3 pcs. For example, I did buyback panda goat silver omp in Singapore. However, I manage to buyback around 5 pieces only even 30 pieces panda goat were sold in Singapore.
Thanks for the info, Andrew! Interesting to hear what's been selling, as more of a collective group of buyers. Not everybody wants to publicly share every medal that they buy, for various reasons, and that's only understandable. Lots of dealers have a "Best Sellers" page on their website. I know of a silversmith who does that, too. Just more of a curiosity for me, than anything. And it makes sense for you two every now & then to analyze what customers have been throwing their money at.. Will help you to make even better decisions for inventory levels & planning, as well as product selection. As you get to know your customers' tastes & budgets better, then you can further anticipate what & how much & in what form will move quicker & easier. Of course, customers win that way, too. And I still think they should contact you guys if they ever see something elsewhere that they like. Maybe you can get it cheaper for them, or have it slabbed for them or something. And this, in turn, would perhaps introduce some "new" medals to other customers if they see it on your website -- and they would then buy, too. A couple quick things I noticed, if you don't mind.. - Horsies are 2014 http://chinesemedals.com/products/2013-zodiac-horse-oval-china-medal - You say raw 50mm Mammoth is unsold, but website says out of stock? http://chinesemedals.com/products/2015-mammoth-china-medal Anyway, thanks again for you guys doing all this. Makes things a lot easier -- and cheaper!
Can I also say that even if you are not a major distributor for some new coins or medals to try and get a few and sell at your site even if you do not make much money on those items. No you shouldn't sell at a loss! But having a one-stop MCCM/MCC&M online shop will help keep your customer base intact and growing. We also don't want you over-extended. Best wishes.
On business trip and vacation reply slow. The price up down for mcc are on hourly basis. It is high risk which we need capital and we not intention to hold it at store at all except own collection. I do have customers for mcc which not list in the webpage. I even partner with 1 silver 1 in Singapore who has physical shop in shopping centre. I need minimum 100 k if I need to hold 2 set of mcc from 2011 to now. This just a freelance which require stress free.
No. No intention to continue this series. The Omp 50 mm out of stock is due to we stop selling it. Not sold any single one is the ngc Slab
I was just perusing ChineseMedals.com and came across this awesome looking medal: http://chinesemedals.com/products/2012-mayan-culture-brass-medal-80-mm .
I noticed today on http://chinesemedals.com/t/silver that the slabbed MS69 (near perfect) 2014 Great Wall medal is less cost than the raw medal. Seems like a no-brainer to get the slabbed Great Wall medal. Why less than the raw...is that an error in the price of the slabbed medal? .
