I prefer "no fee". And if you're a really good AMEX cardholder, the yearly fees are waived. I'm not trying to start a fight here. I just purchased a very nice 5 slab gl***** & cherrywood csse from Ebay for my latest showcase collection I'm just starting of Art Deco coins. I've delt with the vendor before and her service is first rate
All things equal Heritage, GC, and Ebay exact fees. For Ebay, add in PayPal. Ebay cannot control risk as do the other auction houses. They do not take possesion of the consignment, snd its pretty much on you to fight a scam artist. Thats an unecessary risk for me to take when buying coins for my legacy and investment. I do like DLRC very much. The quality is very good, and you can negotiate directly on inventory items. They supplied most of my Liberty Seated showcase. congrats if you run a sucessful business in coins. Its not for everyone.
"Just because you were born on 3rd base doesn't mean you hit a triple"
I dont get the point for this post - Here someone is stating that coin collecting is a hobby not an investment. Thats true - It seems that the OP is stating that the best or only way to purchase coins is through auctions. I agree a alot of coins do sell through auctions but the majority of the coins that I acquire are from dealers and dealer at shows. I got some of the best coin from them and not from auctions. Nowadays most collectors get coins from auctions i.e Ebay, Great Collections, Heritage or other auction venues. I still like the old fashion way of buying coins - a good solid relationship with a dealer and he lets me know when I high quality coin that I am looking for is available. Yeah - the dealer makes a profit on the sale and I dont have any issues with that.
Call me old fashion but coin shows for me is the best venue to acquire coins from dealers.
I have purchased a few coins on Ebay and I have sold a few antique American pocket and wrist watches on Ebay recently for consignors. The biggest ticket item sold for $7,100. As I am not a big seller there, I get no breaks on the Ebay or Paypal fees, and the 10% auction fee maxes out at $450, not $250. So whereas I will sell watches for consignors there, I will not pay those fees myself. As several others here have already pointed out, all fees, other than the small listing fees, come out of the consignors' pockets. Thus, I do occasionally purchase things in Ebay auctions, and will continue to do so. The big problem with buying on Ebay is not the fees, but the endemic fraud. Perhaps coin purchasing is a bit more secure than buying watches on Ebay, if one buys only PCGS and NGC graded and slabbed coins like I do. However, if you are going to buy watches on Ebay, you almost need to know more than the sellers do about the kind of watches you are buying (I usually do), and even that doesn't make one immune to fraud. I have also been offered watches by criminals who did not actually own the watches they were purporting to sell, and my own bidders have been made fraudulent second chance offers that were made to look like they came from me through Ebay. (In these instances, the crook was able to obtain the identities of my bidders and the amounts of their bids! When I suggested to Ebay that their site could have been hacked, the imbecile I spoke with told me that was "impossible." Yeah, right! I ended up including a warning about fraudulent second chance offers on all my wrist watch auctions, and the crook stopped targeting me.)
Many Buy-It-Now sellers endeavor to effectively shift those fees onto their buyers through higher prices. I also strongly suspect that some of the more savvy Ebay sellers even quote very high Buy-It-Now prices in the expectation that buyers may contact them off-line and negotiate a lower price, privately. It works for the seller either way. If the buyer accepts the much higher price on Ebay, then the seller figures he can absorb the fees, whereas if not, he can circumvent Ebay's fees entirely by concluding the sale privately. So, in that case, Ebay becomes merely cheap advertising for the seller. That's what Ebay gets, IMO, for being greedy. This strategy works especially well if the seller happens to be a known quantity in his collecting community, so that many prospective buyers will feel comfortable doing business without the alleged added security, whether real or illusory, provided by Ebay. All that is required is that the seller has a name and location that can be Googled to obtain a non-Ebay e-mail address and/or a phone number. For example, recently, I noticed that a seller with whom I had done business before had the same coin that I wanted up for sale both on Ebay and on his own website, and for the same price. So I contacted him through his website and asked if he would cut his price by the amount of his Ebay fees (6.5%) if I sent him a check. He agreed. Why wouldn't he? I saved $200, which was actually 7.5% of the originally quoted price, and ended up with a price for a good coin that was better in line with recent auction results.
Beginning (again) in coins; 35+ yr collector/researcher/author in early American pocket watches; Civil War watch, coin and history buff; physicist by day, banjo picker and aspiring sci-fi fantasy writer by night.
IF THE BUYERS FEE IS 17.5 PERCENT THEN IS THE SELLERS FEE ALSO 17.5% ? WITH A HERITAGE AUCTION? SEEMS A BIT ONEROUS/EXCESSIVE AND I AM GETTING READY TO SEND THEM A CONSIGNMENT. ANY COMMENTS ON THIS WOULD BE MUCH APPRECIATED.
Collector of Buffalo Nickels and other 20th century United States Coinage a.k.a "The BUFFINATOR"
Comments
Get off my lawn.
Go fishing
``https://ebay.us/m/KxolR5
I prefer "no fee". And if you're a really good AMEX cardholder, the yearly fees are waived.
I'm not trying to start a fight here. I just purchased a very nice 5 slab gl***** & cherrywood csse from Ebay for my latest showcase collection I'm just starting of Art Deco coins. I've delt with the vendor before and her service is first rate
All things equal Heritage, GC, and Ebay exact fees. For Ebay, add in PayPal. Ebay cannot control risk as do the other auction houses. They do not take possesion of the consignment, snd its pretty much on you to fight a scam artist. Thats an unecessary risk for me to take when buying coins for my legacy and investment.
I do like DLRC very much. The quality is very good, and you can negotiate directly on inventory items. They supplied most of my Liberty Seated showcase.
congrats if you run a sucessful business in coins. Its not for everyone.
"Just because you were born on 3rd base doesn't mean you hit a triple"
Call me old fashion but coin shows for me is the best venue to acquire coins from dealers.
Many Buy-It-Now sellers endeavor to effectively shift those fees onto their buyers through higher prices. I also strongly suspect that some of the more savvy Ebay sellers even quote very high Buy-It-Now prices in the expectation that buyers may contact them off-line and negotiate a lower price, privately. It works for the seller either way. If the buyer accepts the much higher price on Ebay, then the seller figures he can absorb the fees, whereas if not, he can circumvent Ebay's fees entirely by concluding the sale privately. So, in that case, Ebay becomes merely cheap advertising for the seller. That's what Ebay gets, IMO, for being greedy. This strategy works especially well if the seller happens to be a known quantity in his collecting community, so that many prospective buyers will feel comfortable doing business without the alleged added security, whether real or illusory, provided by Ebay. All that is required is that the seller has a name and location that can be Googled to obtain a non-Ebay e-mail address and/or a phone number. For example, recently, I noticed that a seller with whom I had done business before had the same coin that I wanted up for sale both on Ebay and on his own website, and for the same price. So I contacted him through his website and asked if he would cut his price by the amount of his Ebay fees (6.5%) if I sent him a check. He agreed. Why wouldn't he? I saved $200, which was actually 7.5% of the originally quoted price, and ended up with a price for a good coin that was better in line with recent auction results.
WITH A HERITAGE AUCTION?
SEEMS A BIT ONEROUS/EXCESSIVE AND I AM GETTING READY TO SEND THEM A CONSIGNMENT.
ANY COMMENTS ON THIS WOULD BE MUCH APPRECIATED.
a.k.a "The BUFFINATOR"