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ebay slabbed coin policy - huh?!?
Desert Moon
Posts: 6,346 ✭✭✭✭✭
The coingeek lays out ebays slabbed coin (and currency) listing policies. One word. Confusing, imprecise, arbitrary, inconsistent, incomplete, naive, and weird, come to mind. Okay, 7 words and counting…………………….
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See what you think from the video. It seems like ebay is not completely numismatically informed and you have to wonder whom wrote these policies. Sure they are trying, but. Perhaps the last thing he brings up is a real kicker that he notes - "that’s the wild west".
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These days I mostly buy things like boxer shorts on ebay, I wonder what their policy on those are 
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So what say you ebay experts, what is up here? Hm……….
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8oukt8wcD8
My online coin store - https://desertmoonnm.com/
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Comments
Boxer shorts are for sale on eBay? Uncirculated boxer shorts I assume.
Sounds like one can’t list a damaged details coins, or does the lack of a numeric grade put details graded coins in a raw category? Are Chopmarked numerically graded coins damaged?
If you want to go down the rabbit hole, you can spend all kinds of time trying to figure out why eBay's policies are the way they are. If you just want to sell coins, fill out the fields on the listing form. Some are optional and some are required. If you skip a required field, you'll be prompted to fill it in before the item can be listed.
Words matter. Talk about a sloppily written policy. Geez!
Dave
You can list it with no grade
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
Yeah, it's really very simple. People just want to make it complicated... and hate eBay, of course.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
Or with a grade.
1877-S Trade Silver Dollar MS62 Chopmarked PCGS
https://www.ebay.com/itm/298417564704
The Geek mentioned something a couple of times about returning (?) damaged coins. Wasn’t sure if that just applied to slabs or what. I need to read the thing myself.
It took me less than 5 minutes to make 300 listings compliant with the new policies. And I didn't even need to read the eBay guidelines. It's just 3 simple drop down menus.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
I didn't listen to him, so I don't know. I assume he either meant damaged in shipping or undisclosed damage. Pele can return anything for any reason, so I generally ignore such things. I get about 1 return per thousand sales.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
Seems like it. Whatnot's listing policies for coins don't seem to be all that different from eBay, FWIW...
They aren't. I actually find the listing screen in whatnot to be harder to use.
Whatnot really has fewer rules because so much of the sales are just live random pulls. For example, stores will scan their displays with the camera and ask the audience what they want put up.
The first few whatnot auctions I ran, I had a curated catalog. Everyone just wanted to jump around and ask for things not in the catalog. Lol. So my later ones I just picked themes "silver dollars" or "20th century type" and did it more random.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
I watched the video. He seemed to be trying to find problems or inconsistencies in eBay's policy. Anybody watching that's not familiar with selling on eBay would be likely to come away more confused than if they just went to eBay and used their listing form.
As Ben says in the video, someone commented about how eBay has 5 approved grading companies, including ICG (that company has been talked about a few times in videos over the last couple weeks, so it's in the commenting zeitgeist).
Ben realized he didn't really know eBay's policy, so he basically reads it verbatim from eBay's web page, as it is written (but not necessarily as it is enforced). Seems like a dry run, so he may have been slightly confused about some of the wording on the initial reading.
This written policy appears to have been the same since at least 2021 (based on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine), and I think it's been more or less the same for quite a while beyond that (but my personal dealings with listing on eBay only go back to 2017).
Ironically, Ben made this video just as eBay has shown signs that this decade-plus policy may be changing. Ben inserts a blurb early on in the video, noting that during the listing process on eBay, the certification dropdown menus show TPGs outside of the current 5 eBay-approved TPGs (as has been discussed in other threads on these forums).
It used to be that when listing on eBay, if it detected you using a numeric grade without an approved TPG, it would not allow the listing to go live until you fixed the error (either adding an approved TPG, or removing the numeric grade). In my own recent testing, I was able to schedule a listing that said "MS69" in the title ("condition: ungraded"), or a listing with dropdown options "professional grader: other" and "numerical grade: MS69" without any errors popping up.
Changes are happening in practice, but what will the official policy state when all is said and done?
So even though this policy has been unchanged for numerous years (but perhaps changing in the near future), many people watching this video are hearing the specific details for the first time. eBay tends to be one of the topics that causes some collectors to grab their pitch forks, whether it's deserved or not.
And FYI, here is the current eBay collectible currency policy page:
https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/prohibited-restricted-items/collectible-currency-policy?id=4337
So what I see from the comments here, feepay has a policy on slabbed coins, but when a feepay seller goes to put in a listing, it does not necessarily conform to the policy feepay has in writing and that is just the way it is. If so, no wonder thecoingeek was confused. So am I.
I don't see anything complicate, as jmlanzaf pointed out, few steps only. Graded or not graded, with grade or without grade. Pretty simple.
A few steps that do not appear to necessarily coincide with feepays written policy. Hence the confusion.
I've listed coins on eBay lately, both slabbed and raw. I didn't find it confusing.
Compare the listing template shown by thecoingeek to the language in their slabbed coin policy. It seems rather confusing.
I agree with you eBay policy always confused.
I didn't look up the policy, I just listed the coins. It was simple enough.
The only real issue is that the printed policy forbids numerical grades for a couple of the TPGs in the drop down. I'm sure it will get sorted, but it literally has not caused any problems for me and hundreds of others. There are live PCI listings.
I've not been impressed with the last two Coin Geek videos. His 5 worst buys and this one both amount to making something out of nothing.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
I’ve seen ‘refurbished’ ones for sale.🤪🤪🤪
Wrong forum….sorry
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It really is just the same grading system that they have used for baseball cards (and other sports cards) for many years. It simplifies the grading down to two questions: slabbed or not and condition. It cuts out all the long BS explanations and makes it easier to determine if the buyer got when they paid for.
The video sounds to me like someone looking for something to complain about. Do you suppose someone running a coin shop would prefer to have people sell their coins to him instead of to other collectors online through eBay?
thecoingeek also sells on ebay as well as the coin shop. I suspect he tries to find topics for his daily vids and gets stretched sometimes to find something to say. From the actual ebay sellers here (youze and others), it looks like one can use the listing template and pretty much not worry about the (partly?) independent and (possibly?) inconsistent policies(?)..............