To buy on Ebay or not?

Pay no attention to this "only buy from sellers with x feedback" nonsense; it is nothing more than foolishness. Feedback ratings are essentially meaningless... think of it this way: if in person, would you trust a stranger who could show no knowledge or skill? So why do the same with trusting feedback. The fact is some of the biggest dreck sellers on eBay have stellar feedback.

If you really want protection from bad buys, I've two suggestions: either find a knowledgeable and trustworthy dealer, or hold off buying until you truly know what you're doing.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

The feedback thing is only good for sellers of counterfeit coins. You usually don't see someone with 200 feedback selling fakes. They usually get maybe a dozen or so before they are busted.

 

When buying slabbed stick to the top tier companies.
tier 1- pcgs, ngc
tier 2- icg, anacs

 

I would not buy a coin over $300 off Ebay without it be slabbed TPG PCGS, NGC, or ANACS, and ICG. if the coin is raw they would have to have a return policy if not happy with it. also do NOT buy coins from China they are mostly counterfits. your best bet is buying from a local coin dealer that has a good reputation or going to a coin show where your learn who the good dealers are.

 

What in tar nation is going on? Where did he come from?

 

eBay does a pretty good job of weeding out "hit and run" sellers... but the problem remains that a high percentage of buyers don't realize they have a fake on their hands. People receive a coin, they give it a quick glance, then leave it in the 2x2. Even some experienced collectors are fooled by the current crop of high quality replicas coming out of China. Trusted sellers may (unknowingly) sell coins with questionable authenticity. So I agree with BooksB4Coins, stellar feedback means very little in the real world. Setting a 200 FB minimum is meaningless.

 

do a lot of research before buying anything on ebay or anywhere else.

 

I agree with all that's been said, about feedback, etc. However, a seller's feedback profile WILL archive those negative dings that they get over time. Take a look at the seller's whole feedback profile quickly, looking for those red circles. Still, how many is too many? It's up to you.

Counterfeits: If it can be faked (especially if it's faking a "higher-value" coin), it WILL be faked. Including graded coins in slabs. Your only weapon against it is information and education.

If you get into mint sets or proof sets, those are indeed harder to fake, I'm sure. I've seen representative examples of faked individual coins and graded slabs, but I have yet to see one of a faked mint/proof set.

 

Just as positives can be left by complete idiots who have no idea what they're talking about, so can negatives. The best thing one can do is to educate themselves before buying, and to use common sense when they finally do.

 

Whether you are buying raw or graded coins take a look at the seller first. Do a little research by googling the user id. If he had any bad transactions you can bet someone was talking about him somewhere.

 

Here is a solution. Stick to buying NGC and PCGS graded coins and then buy one of these.



Voila, you will have yourself some raw coins.

 

I have but it was laughable. Unmarked "tribute " proof sets either in fake or cracked and resealed 1968 to 72 era holders. Ever see a 1936 S proof set in what appears to be a genuine US mint proof set holder? Another common fake is an altered 1990 proof set, especially the Prestige proof sets. The open them up and remove the proof cent and replace it with a high quality Philadelphia coin and then reassemble the holder. (The Prestige holder hides the edge of the proof set holder so you can't see the tampering.) Then they sell them as 1990 "No S" proof sets. They can often get a couple thousand per set. Then there were the 1999 "error" proof sets that were missing one of the state quarters and had two of a different one. Since the 1999 sets were no longer sealed and could be opened and closed with no trace, they would take five 1999 proof sets (about $35 each at the time), open them and play musical quarters and have five "error" sets they could sell on ebay for several hundred dollars per set. This was followed the next year with the "Very Rare 1999 VIP ten coin proof set!". For these they would take a 2000 proof set, switch the coins for 1999's including the 1999 P proof SBA, and slip the set into a 1999 proof set box. They were able to get thousands of dollars per set for these. The key flaw on these was between 1999 and 2000 they changed the color of the insert holding the coins. The "VIP sets" had the wrong color.

 

Thats a good one, I think I will go try that out now....i need some quick money for a new coin buy

 

i hate buying anything on ebay and i almost never even look at anything on ebay anymore. almost everything on ebay, not just coins, everything, is junk, trash, garbage, belongs in the garbage bin, i think thats what you do with garbage, right? here is something that i tried with some of the coins that i bought on ebay in the past, i left them in their holders and i sold them at lower grades than i bought them at to various coin dealers, each and every coin, with no exceptions, was considered to be much lower grades than the ebay sellers had listed them. the same is true for most anything on ebay. once when i called ebay to complain about a coin that i had bought that did not match the sellers description, the customer service person that i spoke to said (there are a lot of coin experts buying and selling coins on ebay). i thought, really? thats not what i am seeing, i see buyers who will pay 2 and 3 times as much as the average price for any given coin. the average ebay buyer will almost always pay more than the market value for ANY coins. even most of the times that i just looked at items on ebay, it almost always ended up with me swearing many obscene words and being tired of their (games) the way they display the search results. ebay is just (for the most part) where fraud thrives.

 

I'm sorry that you don't know how to shop effectively on eBay.

I've said for some time that there are bargains out there, but you need to know how to find them. At the low end, I just yesterday landed $4.40 FV of silver -- an 1879 Morgan, two Walkers, nine quarters, and three War nickels -- for $55.80 shipped. At the other end (for me at least), I just got word back from ANACS on pair of Peace dollars that I got as part of a lot of 18 at about $200 over melt, and it looks like those two alone will cover most of the cost of the entire lot (plus grading fees).

 

I knew this stack of proof sets was going to be good for something some day

 

whats to know about shopping on ebay? nobody can control the other peoples bids on the coins, if i bid say, for example $20.00 on a lot and then somebody else bids $50.00 and the lot is only worth $40.00, then what can i do? i don't want to pay more than i can sell the coins for. after i read your post i checked, (for the first time in a while) some ebay listings, i searched (lots), large cents, barber quarters, morgan dollars, ect. both auctions and buy it now listings. i did not see a single listing that had any chance of making a profit on. the bids were already too high, the starting bids were too high, i even bid on a lot of barber junk silver quarters, (just for the silver value) from a seller with a less than 10 feedback score, at the end of the auction, and i was quickly outbid, (i knew that i would be outbid before i even placed the bid). i am starting to think that these (great deals on ebay) that people on cointalk keep bragging about are nothing more than their imagination. i am just not seeing those types of deals in reality.

 

Finding good deals on ebay is not for everyone. It's not like you can just do any search and instantly get a bargain. You need to put the effort in initially.

 

We have been over this a million times with you. You seem to just want to buy stuff willy nilly and make money, you can not do that. But if you know what you are doing you can buy coins on ebay and make money.

Recent auction wins:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1848-Braide...oAhcttMtGhg5LdpjIxRNI%3D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1848-BRAIDE...oAhcttMtGhg5LdpjIxRNI%3D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1852-BRAIDE...oAhcttMtGhg5LdpjIxRNI%3D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1846-Braide...oAhcttMtGhg5LdpjIxRNI%3D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc

Recent buy it now:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/271255848483?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649

http://www.ebay.com/itm/231020589530?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649