Contest from the Darkside: Show me your best eBay auction spoof
shirohniichan
Posts: 4,992 ✭✭✭
The prize is small (a BU Canadian silver dollar [yes, it's .800 fine silver]), but I would like to get your creative juices flowing.
Show me your best eBay auction spoof. I will pick a winner based on originality and attention to detail. I may also enter my own spoofs, but (of course) they will not count in the contest.
Show me your best eBay auction spoof. I will pick a winner based on originality and attention to detail. I may also enter my own spoofs, but (of course) they will not count in the contest.
Obscurum per obscurius
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Comments
<< <i>Can you enter more than one? Also, does the seller's name have to be changed (to protect the guilty)? I already have one of the SGS auctions that only needs a little fine tuining, but I've got some more ideas.
Multiple entries are encouraged. You may want to change the names to avoid a flame war (in case the real culprit visits this forum). Enter away!
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1913 LIBERTY NICKLE!!!!!....
....Planchet for sale.That's right, YOU can be the first ( and only) one to own this magnificent peace of American history.
Of the 6 planchets that were prepared for the 1913 Liberty nickle,this was the only one that escaped the mint without being struck.The 1913 Libertys sell for millions of dollars each,and there are 5 of them.This is one of a kind so it would most assuredly be worth a couple mill by itself.The below prices were taken directly from the PCGS price guide for Liberty nickles.
MS63 MS64 MS65 MS66
<< <i>3912 1913 Liberty - - - - - 2500000 3000000 3250000 3500000 - >>
It's obvious this planchet is a bargain at any price !To make it even more appealing to you I will give you my personal guarantee that if you can get this certified by PCGS as the fabled and elusive 1913 Liberty nickle planchet I will buy it back from you for $400 !!!!That's 700% profit !!!This is CLEARLY the best deal you will find on ebay !!!!
Starting @ $50 with no reserve !!
You may ask "Well WJD,if it's worth a couple mill then why are you starting it at $50?"my answer would be that I believe in making a modicum of profit and passing the savings on to my fellow ebayers !
You may also ask"How do you know it's the planchet of the 1913 Liberty?"
Well,It's round,it's flat,and it's the exact diminsions of said 1913 Liberty!How much proof does one need?
Bid high and bid often !!Looks all good to me !!
I am sitting in the family room, looking out my picture window at the furry critters scampering by. My cinnamon apple tea and oatmeal ban muffin are so scrumptious I could faint with delight. Oh, a weasel just caught one of the squirrel babies and is eating it as eagerly as I am nibbling on my muffin! They are such rascals!
Pardon me for rambling. I am just an old widower with so much time on his hands since my poor darling Maude passed away a few years back. Where has all the time gone? Maude used to collect old coins and loved to sit at her desk looking at them with a magnifying glass. She was such a warm and caring person that I hate to have to sell her collection, but our son Bufford says we should so I don't have to forage for my own food in the woods behind our small cottage. Maude had the coins in her family since they came here from England back in the late 1700's and she made sure to take care of them.
For the first time, I do believe, I have gotten well organized for this round of listings. I am actually going to list these coins in order of face value, starting from the lowest through the highest. That may make it easier for you, if you are looking for something very specific. There are alot of early coins in here, and these are from the same box as many of the coins from the last round. There are only about four large boxes left after this, plus several albums and a few odds and ends. Bufford said he might sell off a couple of the coins he had been keeping, but I'm not sure if he really wants to do that. I did have several requests to list some more gold coins. I may do that at a future date if the price of gold keeps rising, but for now, I am going to list just one more. Next month, I may list off a couple of bags of coins that are just bulk amounts of common (I think) silver coins. I think it was a mistake before when I took similar sacks to a local dealer, because those were full of much older coins with a fat lady with long hair on them, yet I later found out I had received what is called "melt value" for them, which is much lower than collector value. Anyway, Bufford was so angry he burned their shop down and hosed the owners with his AK-47 as they ran out. My son can be such a handful! Bufford now has me listing all of Maude's coins here so I can get more money for him so he and his friends can play with their myths. I need to send Bufford to a speech therapist one of these days because he keeps pronouncing myth as "meth." Oh, how I can ramble. Where was I?
(4) EXTREMELY OLD COINS
Well, I thought I would do something different for this lot of coins. This will be an interesting experiment on my part, because I still have many more coins like these! Included in this listing are four coins, and they are from the same sort of time period in early American history. I will describe each one separately. The first coin is an 1814 dime. It is in a very worn grade, with the date barely showing on it and a couple of the stars and some letters on the back nearly wiped out. However, the picture on the coin is not as blurry as you might expect with as much wear as it has. In fact, in some ways, I rather like this old dime. It has a nice antique look to it. The second coin is an old quarter printed in 1806. It also is very nearly worn out, again with a couple of letters on the front and several on the back being a little bit smudged. However, the picture once again does have a couple of minor details left and is only a little blurry. Third in this lot is a half dollar from 1809, and it seems to be in a little better shape than the other three coins. None of the letters or numbers are blurred at all, and only the main picture is a little bit smudged out. My son Bufford believes there is actually some old mint luster at the edge of the coin! Finally, I will include a silver dollar from 1795, which should be the most valuable of the four coins. It is more worn than the half dollar, but still should have some value, I would think. Buff noticed that there is a criss-cross scratched on the front that somebody may have attempted to scrape off, since the area on the picture itself is shiny, while the rest of the coin has some dirt on it. Since these coins are older than average and therefore a little more valuable, I'm sorry that I can't start it off at an extremely low value, but I will try to make this affordable to any interested collectors out there. Please remember that this is for a total of four (4) coins, all sold as-is, so I hope they go for a reasonable price. I don't know anything about judging these coins, but Bufford estimates the that the 1814 dime is easily VG10 with a shot at F12, the quarter F15, the 1809 half AU55, and the silver dollar VF30 with a small planchet flaw and adjustment marks. I would tell you the Overton number of the 1809 half, but I remembered that I don't even know what an Overton number is. Silly me.
Parting with dear departed Maude's collection is so painful. Maude was an excellent nurturer and a pillar of strength in our household. These are the last four coins from her collection until I get more, and I stayed up late last night just staring at them and reminiscing on the wonderful times Maude and I had. It is time for me to pass them on to somone else so he or she can create wonderful memories of her own. If you are such a loving person, please bid on these coins and tell your domestic partner how much you love him. I have almost finished my tea and muffin, so I have to get my 12 gauge and shoot some rabbits for lunch until my PayPal account receives payment from my last auctions. If only I lived closer to Canada so I would not have to pay so much for medication!
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S'cuse me, can y'help me out wit some change?
Vaguely coin-related, since he's asking for money.
Sean Reynolds
"Keep in mind that most of what passes as numismatic information is no more than tested opinion at best, and marketing blather at worst. However, I try to choose my words carefully, since I know that you guys are always watching." - Joe O'Connor
My great uncle was the fussiest person I ever knew and appropriately he worked as a quality control inspector at the San Francisco mint from 1913 through 1938. He would see literally thousands of coins each day. He often told how he would know when fresh dies were being used and he would then set aside a few of the very best of those first strikes for his collection. He would of course pay for those coins when he left the mint. Uncle died in 1980 and his second wife, Henrietta died in 2002. They were both the nicest people anyone would ever have the pleasure of meeting.
As I was their only surviving heir, I inherited the San Francisco coins and have kept them in a very safe place since.
Uncle was meticulous in preserving these coins. They were wrapped in the same special paper that was used by the San Francisco mint to preserve the blanks on which the coins were struck. This paper was manufactured especially for the mint and I beleive was never sold to the general public. The paper itself is likely a desired collectible. The coins have never been removed from this paper as Uncle and Henrietta understood that coins could be harmed when exposed to the elements.
Not knowing how to best sell these coins and not knowing their value, I took one of the coins to a coin dealer in town last week. At the store I unwrapped the coin in front of the dealer. To the best of my knowledge this was the first time any one of Uncle's coins had ever been unwrapped from the special mint paper. The look on the dealer's face was truly amazing and he said that the coin was the finest 1921 half dollar he had ever seen. I must admit the coin looked brand new. It was so shiny, I could see my face in the coin from several feet away. The dealer told me he would help me sent the coin to a company called PCSG, if I remember the company name correctly, to preserve the coin. I thanked him for his advice but decided not to do this but rather to wrap it back in the special mint paper as the paper after all had worked very well for over 80 years.
I know Uncle and Henrietta would want to share these special coins with people who would most enjoy owning them and so I have decided to leave these coins in their unwrapped state, covered of course in the original mint paper. I do not know the dates on the coins but believe they will range from 1913 through 1938 and will consist of pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, half dollars, and dollar coins. I do not think there are any gold coins in this collection as Uncle did not earn that much money but I cannot say for sure.
In total there are 656 coins. I plan to save one as a keepsake so there will be 655 coins available. To be fair I will keep the coin that was unwrapped at the coin shop as you should only receive a coin that is in its original wrapper and has not been seen since Uncle preserved it.
There will be a strict limit of one per customer but you can also buy one for immediate family members. The price per coin is $1,100 which includes the cost of shipping and insurance. I will choose the coins at random as I can not handle special requests for specific types of coins. I believe once the coins are unwrapped they will loose some of their allure so I think you can understand that all sales must indeed be final. Please remember to not request more than one coin unless it is for a family member. Thank you. I know you will very happy with your purchase just like Uncle would have liked it to be.
I'm going to do another spoof on another very popular seller here too.....
While hiking through the everglades, I came across an old wooden shack. There was a man who lived there with only one leg. I stopped as I saw him take out a pair of sunglasses and stretched. His words to me were " I have here, several coins that the human eye cannot look at too long without making them blind." How this old man knew that I love coins, I will never know. He stated that in his youth he had gone to Costa Rica and was climbing up the side of a volcano when he found the remenants of an old steel chest. Age had done no justice to the half-sunken chest as it was partially buried in slag from the volcano. He stated that he was able to go back up and down the volcano for a week while working away at opening the chest. On the 8th day of the week, he was able to remove the lid and found himself staring down into a mass of colored melted metal. Knowing that there may be something worth salvaging, he stayed on the volcano only stopping to take a few bites of his barbecued mule that had died on the 3rd day. After working away at the hardened mass, he found coins from the famous Georgian estate collection that was presumed lost!
JUST THINK, YOU CAN BE ONE OF THE LUCKY 36 WINNERS OF THIS AUCTION
He was able to extract 39 coins from the lava melted mass, noting the care and consideration that the coins had been wrapped in the most delicate of tissue paper, when he noticed that the ground had become considerably hotter in the past few minutes. After carefully wrapping the extracted coins in his ragged shirt, he took one step and broke through the crusty lava flow causing him to drop 3 of the coins into the liquid magma that was eating away at his leg. He finally dragged himself to the bottom of the volcano, relieved that only those coins had been lost.
YOU CAN BE THE VERY FIRST TO OWN THESE TONED COINS THAT ARE NOWHERE ELSE TO BE FOUND IN THE WORLD!!!!!!!!
I listened to the old man ramble on for what seemed days. I told him that I would help him sell the coins to get him a prostetic leg and replace his favorite donkey.
HE ALMOST DIED TRYING TO SAVE THESE RARE COINS!!!!
Please note that these coins cannot be photographed due to the extreme brilliance and colors. My word is good on this.
There is no warranty, no returns
THEY WILL BE SHIPPED ON A BED OF WHEATIES!!!!
I accept money orders and cashier checks only!!!!
When payment has been deposited in my off-shore account, I will pack your coin in it's original tissue, tape it on the back of a mule and point it in your general direction.
MY RESERVE IS SET TO $250,000 PER COIN AS THESE ARE LOOK GOOD TO ME
Hell, I don't need to exercise.....I get enough just pushing my luck.
My Grandfather passed away in 1968 and he was an avid coin collector. When he passed he took the combination to the safe with him. I finaly convinced my Grandmother to hire someone to open the safe. These coins where found inside with many more. They haven't seen the light of day in 40 years.....
All looks good to me...
<< <i>My Grandfathers Coins...Estate Sale....
My Grandfather passed away in 1968 and he was an avid coin collector. When he passed he took the combination to the safe with him. I finaly convinced my Grandmother to hire someone to open the safe. These coins where found inside with many more. They haven't seen the light of day in 40 years.....
All looks good to me...
Maybe they're rare patterns.
Obscurum per obscurius
Attention collectors of scarce early Canadian coinage! Featured in this auction is an 1886 overdate with an early poratrait of Queen Victoria. This is the 1886 6 over 3 variety with a mintage of much less than the 540,000 pieces produced at the London Royal Mint during that year! Fewer survived because the dates had a tendency to wear off these sterling silver coins easily! This piece has been part of my collection for about ten years and is in Fine condition. I'm practically giving this coin away because this coin trends for more than double the minimum bid! Additionly, it comes with an inert, plastic holder for protection. Here is your chance to own a scarce, early Canadian piece at a more than a reasonable price! It is must for any serious collector! Don't miss out on a fine opportunity! Bid today! Good luck to the bidders!
I accept paypal, money order, personal check and Cashiers cheque. The shipping and handling cost is $2.50 worldwide. Please check out my others auctions.
RETURN POLICY: 7 day return policy if not removed from original package. Please send email of your intent to return.
YC
PS---Thanks for the chance! This is a cool giveaway!
Ebay.com
My Coins For Sale
WANTED Any Canadian coins with rotated die from 1982 to 2005