China Lake Coins & Currency

The location was hard to find because google had them located at an old location but when I got there I was suprised at the selection and education I recived from the owner. I am new to collecting and he has been collecting personally for a long time he even took tge time to show me some of his collection. Over all nice place and I will return again.

This has been the most knowledgeable and helpful coin store I have ever been to. When they couldn't readily identify an older Chinese coin, they went right to work! Reference books, internet searches, ebay compared items, when I was done I had more information than I could have ever hoped for in the first place.
They offer extremely fair prices, they know what they are talking about and gave me a great education on coin collecting and coins in general.
Staff was friendly and approachable, business had a large and varied collection of coins for sale and the owner is a coin collector himself and is obviously passionate about his job and prides himself on his knowledge.
Will absolutely return to this store whenever I need anything coin related.
A++ I recommend this place to ANYONE looking for anything coins, currency or silver and gold related.

I'm not sure where to start.. Ill just present the situation and let the reader decide.



About a week ago I walked into this store in an effort to come across a capsule for a coin that I had just received as a gift. The coin that I had received came in a capsule (mint condition), however I was looking for one that was just a bit tighter so the coin didn't rattle in the capsule. After walking in with the coin the owners proceeded to open the capsule (keep in mind that at this point the coin is still a mint condition, never been touched, $300 coin.) After opening the capsule and touching it with their bare hands we proceeded to try and find a tighter case. They forced the coin in a capsule and was then unable to get it out. From there, pliers were used to forcibly remove the coin from the undersized capsule.



Since there were multiple different capsules out, with little organization the owners quickly lost track of which capsule top belonged with the bottom. The end result was they forced the bottom of the original capsule onto the top of another capsule. I told them this is what I thought was happening, yet he still proceeded to shatter the capsule. From here it was determined that the capsule I was seeking was not available in this location, yet I had no capsule to put it back into to protect it. Needless to say I was quite unhappy at this point. The owners rigged up a bubble wrap contraption to hold the coin during the ordering process, and I left. The end result was a broken original capsule, a bubble wrap rigged box to hold the coin, and fingerprint/scratches all over my brand new, beautiful coin.



When returning today to pick up the capsules, one of the owners tried to state that he had in fact broken one of his capsules and not mine. (despite the fact that I walked in with the same bubble wrap contraption I had left with 4-5 days prior.) The other owner, however, felt this was fair and simply gave me the new capsule as a replacement of my original one. I purchased a second one as a backup.



So now my coin is encapsulated safely in the capsule, however it can no longer be considered mint because of the superficial scratches all over the face of the coin :-(.



The owners are very friendly and approachable, however unfortunately the professionalism isn't even in the same ballpark for coin collectors. Buyer beware.