Mr. Mint -- Alan Rosen

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Posted By: Rhett Yeakley

"Mr. Mint" is the biggest joke in the entire hobby. I can't believe anybody actually deals with this guy. He is so overbearing, pompous, and arrogant-that he literally is impossible to be around. My brother (Rhys) and I do maybe 1-2 shows a year, usually the Pittsburgh Robert Morris show--I'm living here in Pittsburgh now. Last year we arrived late to the show and waiting for us sitting on our table was Mr. Mint. I had never actually talked to the guy before-only seen is big, overhyped face in every Krause publication I have ever laid hands on waving wads of cash around. Anyways, somebody told him that we were going to be there and that we had some older stuff. So as we are bringing in our boxes, he is making himself at home going through whatever boxes he wants, making a big stack of stuff that is "Rosens stuff." Then Terry Knouse Sr. (whom my brother & I know well) comes over and starts talking to us and asking us about cards, and he starts looking at a few stacks, and Rosen gets all red in the face and beligerently asks us to keep everyone else away from our stuff, because "he was there first, and hadn't looked at everything yet." So, Terry just sets the stuff down and asks me to "come get him when the Rosen is done" (pretty classy move on his part-I don't think I would have been that polite.) So, Rosen keeps going through our stuff, and biting off anybody's head that dares to approach our table. Once he is through, he asks for a price on everything, and we ask him to wait a minute while we think about it. He gets all mad and says that he doesn't have all day. So we seperate my stuff from my brothers stuff and my brother starts giving him some prices, and after some eye rolling, they ended up striking a deal on $2000-3000 worth of stuff. Then he asks me, and naturally I marked everything up on the him, because he had just pissed off our potential customers, not to mention our friends (like Terry). And then he starts telling my brother, that my prices are too high and that I should be giving him a good deal because he is "Mr. Mint". That was last year.

This year we decided to do the Pittsburgh show again, but only at the last second. So we arrived at the show, and thankfully Mr. Rosen hadn't gotten the heads up that we would be there. So we started unpacking our stuff, and while doing so we sold several things to some of the other dealers like Wayne Varner, etc. Mr. Mint strolls along about 20 minutes later, looking a little ticked, and starts looking through our stuff. This time however he "wasn't there first" and couldn't tell everybody to go away. About 15 minutes later he hands me a stack of 5-10 items and asks what I want for them. Another gentleman had asked me about some items he was interested in a few seconds before Rosen so I politely told Rosen that it would take me a minute or so to get done with the other gentleman, and then I could get him a price. He gets all red and throws the items on the table and says "forget it..." and as he is walking away he says "...hell of a way to do business, man." As he is leaving I asked him what his problem was but he just left.

Not too sure what we really did to piss the guy off, but now we have a reason to never sell to the guy again. I don't know everyone on this thread but hopefully most here that have met my brother or I would agree that we are decent guys with decent stuff, with fair prices, and aren't too hard to deal with. I don't know if he was mad that we hadn't gone to him first, or that we weren't in a big hurry to have Alan Rosen explain why we should be his wholesalers, but anyways Rosen showed his true colors, and thankfully there were 5-10 other dealers that witnessed it.

Honestly, I can't believe that he has lasted in the hobby as long as he has. Everyone that I have talked too about the situation, has similar stories to tell about the guy. Why do people put up with his crap? It is pretty funny though if you go back through old dealer surveys in the VCBC Rosen had one of the lowest scores annually, and always had among the worst scores in "friendliness" and "knowledgeable". Anyways, I'm done ranting, but Rosen is a friggin' joke.
-Rhett