Coins on Ebay in 1999 - what Ebay feature available then do you miss the most??
Lakesammman
Posts: 17,438 ✭✭✭✭✭
It used to be easy to contact an underbidder and offer them the same coin/grade "on the side". I really miss that feature! 
"My friends who see my collection sometimes ask what something costs. I tell them and they are in awe at my stupidity." (Baccaruda, 12/03).I find it hard to believe that he (Trump) rushed to some hotel to meet girls of loose morals, although ours are undoubtedly the best in the world. (Putin 1/17) Gone but not forgotten. IGWT, Speedy, Bear, BigE, HokieFore, John Burns, Russ, TahoeDale, Dahlonega, Astrorat, Stewart Blay, Oldhoopster, Broadstruck, Ricko, Big Moose, Cardinal.
10
Comments
We used to be able to search with "wildcards" so that I could type '179* half cent' instead of '(1793, 1794, 1795, 1796, 1797) half cent'. So much more efficient!
Dang I never knew that ProfLiz. I guess I don't miss it, but would have liked to have known it.
Jim
When a man who is honestly mistaken hears the truth, he will either quit being mistaken or cease to be honest....Abraham Lincoln
Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.....Mark Twain
Yep... Used to be some loopholes on ebay... I remember getting offers for some coins that I had bid on, but was not interested enough to snipe .... would get an email making an offer on a similar coin (grade etc.). Purchased a couple that way...Cheers, RickO
I loved accessing it on dial-up
Being able to take any payment form, postal money orders were great.
Also being able to leave negative feedback for buyers.
Death threats. I can't remember if I was a bidder or seller. Good ole early days of the internet.
I used to like being able to see who the other bidders were on an auction I was bidding on as a way to identify shills.
By doing a quick profile check you could see an ebayer had been ebay member for 4, 5, 6 years further still the records showed they had never won a single auction in all those years and yet that here they were aggressively bidding against you in an auction. ok pass.
Charles III Album
Charles III Portrait Set
Charles IV Album
Charles IV Portrait Set
Spanish Colonial Pillar Set
Did they have that private bidder nonsense back in the old days? Hate that. Might as well just advertise this product has shill bidders...
100% positive transactions with SurfinxHI, bigole, 1madman, collectorcoins, proofmorgan, Luke Marshall, silver pop, golden egg, point five zero,coin22lover, alohagary, blaircountycoin,joebb21
Being able neg screwball / bad buyers. Furious when they nerfed that.
The good, bad, and the ugly:
You could also see what members were buying and selling. Intel from that helped me find some good deals / sellers. However it may have left open what you paid for something allowing some sleazy griefer mess with you. You could see who bidded against you.
The Ugly don’t miss-
Sometimes you would get arrogant, hateful, hostile messages from competitors or some obnoxious, know it all, loser tire kicker. One guy (bad fruitcake buyer / mutual negs) would send me curse word email now and then.
It was like the Wild West then, I heard you could sell anything at big profits. I avoided it like the plague, I preferred Teletrade which was great.
"LOOK!" "SACRIFICE!" and many exaggerations.
I liked being able to search all bids of other bidders.
I met a few like minded collectors by reaching out to people who I saw always bidding on the same stuff as me. Some of them were buyers only on eBay but became good trading partners offline.
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
No one wrote LOOK... it was L@@K!!!!!!!!!!!!!
In the old days you would make friends and chat quite a bit, it still happens but not nearly as much.
The forums were fun too.
eBay is soo much better now.
100% feedback meant much more then than now. While still important, just not as much.
Jim
When a man who is honestly mistaken hears the truth, he will either quit being mistaken or cease to be honest....Abraham Lincoln
Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.....Mark Twain
I always thought it was spelled LQQK.
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
1 - Ability to leave negative or neutral feedback for deadbeat buyers
2 - Ability to accept money order, check or cash as payment
3 - Ability to see what others bought and / or sold and to or from whom via their feedback page
4 - Access to buyer and seller email addresses making it easier to "make friends" with those with common interests
5 - Wild card searches
6 - eBay LIVE! National Conventions providing face-to-face access to category experts, Corporate Execs, birds of a feather
and vendors never mind the great food, entertainment and giveaway freebies
7 - Probably a few other things I can't think of at the moment
it's crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide
1) Super low/reasonable transactional costs
2) nearly everything was auction format, so no overpriced nonsense to sort through
3) Bad photos led to some nice positive surprises
I miss being able to search auctions with "at least/minimum one bid" or "auctions with bids" I forget how they worded it.
Now you have a massive amount of "auctions" starting at an asking price rather than a true no reserve auction with low starting bid.
Successful BST Transactions with: PerryHall, MrSlider, Cent1225, SurfinxHI, Blu62vette, robkool, gowithmygut, coinlieutenant, Downtown1974, MilesWaits, Shrub68, justindan
More true auctions back then vs BINs. On not so common stuff that I was out-bid on, being able to contact the high bidder and discuss what warranted an abnormally high bid price. Most people then were nice and willing to chat.
What's to miss?
Going to the bank. Waiting for a check to clear. Fraudulent Money orders and bad checks.
Going to the Post Office to stand in line every day.
Less seller and buyer protection.
Feedback extortion.
The error guy would get that wrong
As a Roosie dime guy, I hated it when they combined the 1946-64 and 1965-present categories several years ago. Generally, I miss the prevalence of no reserve auctions, although GC has now filled that void.
I liked shopping the third tier slabs that are now banned. They also had the current number of coins listed at any given time. If I recall, the average number of Lincoln Cents was around 8-9 thousand per day and then it began to jump and I can't find that number anywhere if it is still there hidden. The search engine was better. Now If I am looking at proofs I get all kinds of crap thrown in that is not a proof.
WS
They did. It was common (mandatory?) in the Adult categories.
Am I the only one who actually got a paper eBay catalog in the mail? One of the oddest things that has ever happened to me.
Forgot about making it easier to meet people - I think that's how I first got to know BigMoose.
And tracking other bidders bids - I used to track a well known dealers bids in a series I collected at the time - - had forgotten about that!
I don't miss seeing the word "LQQK" allthe time
I remember when a lot of auctions didn’t even have photos. I would buy from just text descriptions and ended up getting really nice stuff!
This year I got a $25 coupon for being on since ‘99 and they showed examples of my first activity that I totally forgot about. Interesting, but now I’m not on it enough to have noticed the coupon before it expired. I still frequent eBay but not much for coins anymore, just specific household items of no serious consequence.
I've been a member since 1998. They didn't send me a damn thing. I'd love to see some of my early activity.
The quality of coins ranged much higher in my series - late milled pre-decimal British. MUCH HIGHER>
Well, just Love coins, period.
I did well there from currency then. NBN, US large size notes.
Do you think Before the big boys came in things better?
I miss seeing the identity of the winning and underbidders.
It was nice to be able to alert the winner when they just dropped some serious bank on a Chinese knockoff.
The whole worlds off its rocker, buy Gold™.
BOOMIN!™
You were able to leave feedback for sellers even if you hadn't won an auction from them. I remember one of my favorite sellers (seller ID bunpop) that I had bought a lot of coins and coin related items from, who made a mistake listing a 1916-D Mercury for, I think, $6.99, instead of $699 and a guy jumped on the buy it now and demanded the seller send it since he had sent paypal funds. Naturally seller didn't send the coin and the guy gave a blistering negative feedback. This was the first negative for the seller and I am a whole bunch of other people jumped to his defense in feedback and drove that negative 3 or 4 pages down.
I bought from one seller in 1998 and bid on every auction he listed up until 2019 when he died. Got a lot of really nice stuff from him at really good prices. I really liked being able to have a history with sellers and knew who I could depend on with honest writeups and pictures.
Not so many really long term sellers still listing today.