Lots of Morgans for sale on eBay. Most slabbed coins and "buy it now" coins are at Red Book prices. Is it safe to say most Morgans that are MS are already in slabs and the raw coins on eBay are either circulated or have problems? Has anybody successfully found deals on eBay? If so what did you look for in making your decision.
It depends on what your trying to accomplish. I you can find low end ms coins uncertified. chances are slim you will find gems ungraded
My goal is to find raw low to mid MS coins that are up for auction with the intention of getting them at the best possible price. I'm not going to resell them but add them to my existing collection.
If it were me, I would go to my lcs, or coin show to purchase. That way you can see the coins first hand. It is almost impossible to grade a coin from a photo. On Ebay I see sellers useing angles and lighting to improve or hide a coins flaws. If you have no lcs, or coin shows, i would try to work with a dealer from cointalk.
Sound advice. It's frustrating because I live in such a small town with no LCS and quite a distance from a large metropolitan area so attending coin shows is difficult. I'm going to start utilizing the for sale section of Ct. eBay has been my only resource to date. You are absolutely correct about sellers hiding flaws with "creative" or just simply poor photos. I automatically dismiss any seller doing this in any form and to any extent.
Buying raw Morgans on SleazeBay, or any denomination for that matter, is always a crapshoot, even when you know how to grade them. It can be so easy for a seller to switch coins and hard for you to prove it. Chris
If you are doing this for investment or hopes of earning a living by someday opening your own shop, I would really avoid anything not slabbed, and confine any such purchases to Ampex. Thus far I have more or less agreed with Ampex when they label something Morgan VG, but even their Mint State stuff is usually slabbed. If however you are doing it for fun, yes occasionally a raw coin bought on Ebay is indeed every bit as good as the seller said it was. Maybe 20 - 30% of the time. All too often however the pictures don't show the scratches from where someone used an 800 grit emery cloth on the coin (for instance) to remove tarnish or the damage to the reed on the edge, or some other defect that makes you realize you should have spent $50 more and gotten the MS slabbed one instead. Rules of thumb. Avoid BAD photos. Avoid claims of AU in a raw coin. (How many changes of ownership qualify a Morgan to still be AU?) Check buyer feedback. There is one prolific seller of Higher Grade coins, whose profile has only a few negative comments, but they are telling. Accusations of buffing the coins are in his profile. LoL, be wary of such sellers. Such coins will probably never be slabbed and spend their existence moving from unwary customer to the next unwary buyer.
Easier and much safer solution, don't buy on ebay at all. There are plenty of respected dealers who will be more than happy to work with you. And from I've seen in recent years, most of the time the dealer's price is better than you can get on ebay anyway.
You can usually get a great deal buying mixed date/mm MS lots from a good local dealer if you are willing to buy several at a time.
There are plenty of MS Morgans available raw. While it is only natural to want the best possible price, please do not allow yourself to focus too much on or place to much weight on this aspect, especially if buying without the opportunity to view in-hand, as it can be a good way to end up with subpar material. Also, and this is particularly true when buying raw and paying anything above the common dollar premium, be honest with yourself when it comes to your grading and problem identification abilities: with coins, there is little worse than believing you've bought one thing, and only sometime down the road learning that it is really something else. I'll echo bkozak's suggestion to widen your search beyond ebay. It is both possible and likely that with some looking, you'll be able to do just as well if not better at a B&M or show, but you may also want to look around for other local non-storefront dealers. People who sell or deal in coins, be it as part of their hobby or as a living, often have better and/or easier access to better material than the average collector, so building relationships can be important; even though generic uncs are generally low premium material, you may be able to find someone willing to screen and set aside better examples for you.
