Best Of

@ajaan said:
Our Love Is Rarer Than A 1909 S VDB Lincoln CENT

Our Love Is Rarer Than A 1909 S VDB Lincoln CENT

@OAKSTAR said:
"Big Man In Town"

Money I don't have any, I'm down to my last penny.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Hkx-Txg04M

@OAKSTAR You're beginning to show your age. 😝

@jmlanzaf said:

However, I also counsel against complacency which largely consists of rationalizations.

Dr. jmlanzaf - what would we do without your wisdom?

this is an interesting thread - now, I have a couple folks on ignore - but it's great

Cougar playing:

@jmlanzaf said:

@PeakRarities said:

@jmlanzaf said:

@M4Madness said:

@NeophyteNumismatist said:

@davewesen said:
Why not pay what they are asking?

Generally...when I see something on eBay, I can do better if I cut the dealer a check directly.

I do the same. If I see a coin on eBay, I try to find the seller's personal website to save eBay fees. Some have websites and some only have ebay stores. The ones with websites price cheaper outside of ebay. BUT, the last coin I bought had the exact same price on ebay as the dealer's website, and they wouldn't even knock the fees off for buying direct. Lol!

The dealer likely only saves 5% or so in fees if you pay with a CC or PayPal. 8% is you send a check, which are a nuisance and don't have the same sheet protections. Personally, i do not encourage people to buy direct from me. They always want 100% or even 200% of any fees i save and i end up with slightly more risk for the same or less money.

See, this is where you and I just have fundamentally different viewpoints. E-checks are not a nuisance at all, and neither is Zelle. I make every effort to encourage direct sales by marking up my ebay prices higher than my website prices, and its not difficult to find your way to my website from my ebay page. Why would I want to give ebay 9% for doing nothing other than letting me use their infrastructure? I have to do all of the work to try to make 9% in the first place, so I essentially have to double the markup if I want to sell there.

When the average coin is in the 3k-5k range, it seems like Ebay is getting way too much for taking none of the risk. They have the cap on 9% fee at $4,000 before it goes to 2.35%, and in my opinion that should be set at $1,000 or $2,000. All of the "protections" in place are for the buyer, and it seems like my listings barely get any views unless i pay their extortion promotion fees that start at a minimum of 2%, on top of the 9%. I suppose it's just a matter of perception, but with a lower value higher margin coin I guess it wouldn’t sting as much.

E-checks and Zelle are fine and don't allow charge backs. I was talking more about actual paper checks.

You are free to not use ebay at all. You do, however. Why? Because of eyeballs. So, while you complain about the costs, you actual value the service. You just don't want to pay for it. And, actually, you don't even want the customer to pay for it.

In general, I don't care whether the sale is direct or through eBay. However, as i pointed out, the problem is that everyone wants a 10 to 20% discount to save me 5 to 9% in PayPal fees. There is no real advantage to me in doing that, especially since I don't mind paying ebay for their most excellent and reasonably priced service.

A couple weeks ago, a customer offered to buy a $20,000 comic off ebay and "PayPal immediately" and "save you the ebay fees" if I gave him a 15% discount. So, as usual, I had to explain to him that the total ebay fees on a $20,000 comic are 3.6%, almost the same as the PayPal fees and so I was simply losing 15% (along with the seller protections".

For everyone who dislikes ebay, it's easy. Don't use ebay. Dare you. 😉

You think I have an attachment to ebay? I use it becuase its extra visibility, but if I had any incentive to not use it, I would close my account in a heartbeat.

Eyeballs? What eyeballs, I've had listings up for weeks that have 22 views. I seldom have an item sell there, anyone who pays attention ends up on my website. Had a sale last week, I was pleased to see that a fairly generic double eagle sold for $3,500. Buyer had limited, but positive feedback. His account shows that hes a jeweler/precious metals dealer in miami.

The coin sold for $3,500 but after fees I netted about $3,100. It's on my website for $3,250. I felt bad that he paid the inflated price, so as a gesture of goodwill i threw in a one of the Peak Rarities T shirts I recently had made, and hand wrote a little note thanking him for his business.

Shupped the coin priority mail, and a return was initiated the day it was delivered. His reason? "Coin does not match item description or photos"...🤦‍♂️

Mind you, this is a really nice 64+ that sits closer to the 65 line. He didn't like the "tarnish" that wasn't shown in the photos (just a bit of stacking table dirt frequently seen on gold). Funny thing is, my pictures of this coin were EXCELLENT and did in fact show the dirt on the high points. The buyer obviously has little experience with gold coins and doesnt realize that most original coins have some dirt on the high points. I'm curious to see if he returns the shirt, because if he doesn't I'll be out the $18 or so it cost me for that, plus the $12 it cost me for Priority mail with signature. Some may want to block this one to avoid a future headache...

The listing-https://www.ebay.com/itm/156253574068