E-Bay?
xdiscopimp
Posts: 34
Why is ebay such a scam or is it who can you trust.... And i know the saying to good to be true!! But?
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on ebay, and have slowly developed a short list of sellers that I feel are ethical and sell quality merchandise. Like another board member
said, ebay is the wild west, with a little bit of everything out there, and plenty of scam artists looking to make easy money on the
uneducated coin buyer. I have always enjoyed the wide selection of items that ebay has, plus you can also buy the awesome
Franklins that Lucy always sells!
1) eBay is not a first resort option for acquiring a coin. It is always a last resort option. Why? This is where all the major dealers dump their coins that they can't sell. It is also where individual collectors disburse coins that aren't good enough for their collections. Then of course, you have your part-time sellers that sell a coin here and there, quit for awhile and sell another coin or two. When you consign a coin to Heritage, for example, your coin will go up at a fixed price, if they feel it's appropriate, if it doesn't sell at a fixed price it will hit auction on heritagecoin.com, if it doesn't sell in the auction it will go on eBay. That's not the way a consignment works for everyone, that is merely a possible situation that happens frequently. Prices simply do not realize realistic levels on eBay. One day you can have one go way over retail and the next it can go way under retail. eBay is too volatile and too unpredictable of a market to judge coins by.
2) If it is too good to be true, it probably is! If you're seeing that 1799 Draped Bust Dollar with a Buy It Now of $149.99, you're most likely getting a fake! Don't go after bargains on eBay. You simply get what you pay for. People have no qualms about ripping you off on this venue, eBay protects the seller more than the buyer and remember, they are "just a venue." They will not get involved with disputes, fraud, etc. If you lose, you lose, that's it. You can cry and whine about it but it won't do you any good unless you have a legitimate seller that cares.
3) Never give more information than is required. See now I'm an idiot, I actually have my full name in my sig. line but this isn't eBay. It sounds all fine and dandy like nothing can ever happened, yeah, that's what I thought until my eBay account was hijacked and eBay held me responsible for almost $1,000 in fees, which has since been cleared up after a long six month battle of proving to them that the debt wasn't mine. When using PayPal, use another bank account that is not responsible for your livelihood. Do not link your household bank account to PayPal, believe me, you will regret it if something ever happens. PayPal suspends accounts on a whim. To use a situation that happens constantly, if you're chillin' on eBay startin' up and selling say..$200 a week to start. Then all of a sudden you become Mr. eBay guru, get lazy, quit your job and start selling $1,000 a week, PayPal is going to suspend your account because of a sudden increase in sales. Their excuse for this? They need more information from you! Hell, you're already verified with as much information as you can possibly give! Or so you thought! They now want everything from you but a damn DNA sample just to get your money unreleased and sometimes that isn't even good enough!
4) Believe it or not, personal checks are the safest method for online purchases. It allows the buyer to stop payment on a check should anything go wrong, if your bank allows it (mine is free). You also have to sign it. Furthermore, if sellers would be the least bit patient in this day and age their profit margin would go up without the 3% credit card fees! Do you know how much 3% is on say..a $10,000 coin? That's $300! I know that sounds piddly but let's say you put this coin up on eBay. You have to pay the consignor of the coin his/her money, unless you bought it outright. You then have to pay eBay their 5% (roughly, it's actually more than this on $10k I think), then you have to pay the credit card fee. So by the time you're done that's a minimum of 8%, which is $800, making that $10,000 coin now a $9,200 coin. Let's say you bought the piece for $8,000 expecting $2,000 profit, now your profits are cut to $1,200 instead of $2,000. Or, you could have $1,500 instead of the $1,200 if you would accept the darn personal check and just hold your briches! My math is very fuzzy here, courtesy of George Bush's election campaign, but you get the gist.
5) Say you buy a $3,000 coin from Jack's Coins on eBay, sorry if their are any decent seller's named Jack here! I'm sure there are...
6) Feedback is not always an accurate representation of a seller's reputation. Do you know how many people I've seen that have a feedback of say..350 and then you look at the actual item #'s and they are little cellular phone antenna boosters they bought for 49 cents just to get feedback? It happens and it happens a lot! This does not mean they have 350 positives for selling great coins!
7) Don't buy from sellers that don't offer a return guarantee. We're all a bunch of dweebs to begin with for even buying sight-unseen but sometimes this is the only way to do it when we're coin hungry and need our fix. Images can sometimes be deceiving and what you think you're getting may not be the case at all! Not every coin in a PCGS holder that says MS64 is really an MS64! They are human, they jack up too, just not as bad as Jack did above. Next thing you know you'll need a jack to jack your car up because you're so jackin' mad that jack jacked you up, but again that belongs to number 5. When a seller doesn't offer a return policy, he's basically telling you "I might say I guarantee this item but I really don't. This is a true auction, yadda yadda."
Okay I'm tired now..maybe I'll post more later. All in all, eBay is a great place to trade if you're just careful and don't have your standards set too high.
E-bay is like the wild wild west. There are normal "General Stores" and Saloons, and then there are rustlers, snake oil salesman, and theives.
Just keep your eye wary and your 6 gun handy
My Auctions
For circ. stuff I totally agree with you. The only thing to be weary of is cleaned stuff and that's why return policies exist. By the way, congrats on the set.
I mostly only bid on slabbed coins now, but I have done well on a few raw coins. One in particular was an 1838 half dime that I bought as choice AU last fall for about $70. When I got the coin I thought it was an MS-62 but wouldn't have been surprised if it came back AU-58 (though I didn't see any wear). That was a good enough buy as it is, but the coin now resides in an NGC MS-63 holder.
I read your post on E-bay sales and am glad to see you post it, but I dont agree with you on all of it. I sell on E-bay on occasion, usually when I am upgrading or needing funds to purchase something larger that I want.
I sell my key-dates on E-bay, becuase they bring the most money, far more than selling to a dealer. When I go to buy a new key-date for my collection which is usually from a dealer or show, I always choose quality over price and usually have to pay the stronger money to aquire it. So when I need to sell, I sell it there to recoup or make a few to apply to the new purchase. Its not on e-bay becuase its subpar quality, its the nicer eye-appealing quality that I most likely paid a premium for earlier, but now I have a higher grade or wanted something different that I needed to generate funds to purchase as I mentioned.
Example: the 1856 FE PCGS VF-25 I sold, wanted a higher grade one. AU's are bringing close to 11,000. My highest offer for trade in was 7000.00 from a dealer towards another. Yet on E-bay it brings 7650.00 minus fee's, that approx 500.00 more towrds the purchase of the new coin. And I can make it a straight cash deal on the new coin. Why would I want to not sell it using that avenue?
Further more on return policy, I am not a dealer, and when I list things for sale on E-bay, then I am selling for the above reason, and consider them sold. I dont have time to waste using this avenue of sale's as an approval service. The coins I have are nice IMO, and I try to pictorialize and describe them the best an accurately as possible. When I bid thousands of dollars on various coins from the B& M auctions or Heritage sig sale, I dont have the opprotunity to return them, and usually I am not able to view the coins in person.
jim d
I agree with you. My statements were very generalized and do not account for sellers like you. There are high ticket items that do realize nice prices on eBay, I'll admit that. And yes, you are right, it is sometimes far better than selling to a dealer. My comments were more directed toward the buyer on eBay, rather than the seller on eBay. If you post high-quality images on eBay, like you did with your 1856 FE Cent VF25 and you have an excellent reputation, which you do, there is no problem. People should check out dealers they don't know, however. That's just the way it needs to be in this online world.
I have purchased coins on eBay before but it isn't very often I agree with the grade on the slab that is sent to me. Many sellers use eBay as a last resort dumping ground, if you will, and that's what you have to be weary of. There are some sellers that sell top quality items on there but there are also quite a few that get rid of it on eBay because they can't sell it on their own.
All in all, eBay really is a great place to buy and to sell but one should always do their research before acquiring any coin through an unknown dealer. Check out the quality of their feedback, references (if applicable), etc. etc.
I'm hoping to find an 1856 FE Cent at the next Long Beach show, now that I've recouped the money from my last big purchases. Your specimen was a nice one.
i sell music equipment on ebay and i realize you can get top dollar for your merch for instance i sold a marshall guitar head for 650$$ but if i was to take it into a music store or pawn shop i would have gotten may be 200$$$ So i guess that's why there's so many scams because its a fast turn around for top dollar.
Like Jim said, EBAY IS THE PLACE for collectors to unload collector grade coins at a level that no dealer can match. They sell right at the market price cutting out the middleman. Granted this is best for the more liquid, popular type collector coins in circulated or slabbed MS grades within certain price ranges.
I have a six Barber halves (not a plug because they will sell well without any one on this board seeing them) that are going to rock and sell at retail prices or a premium above retail. Why Ebay...thats why!
Arco's auction
If you can find an original 1915 VF20 with super eye appeal in under two years from any dealer let me know because I haven't.
Tyler