eBay and winner mentality?

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

I think a lot has to do with supply. While lots of you on here refer the the grey sheet for pricing, or the PCGS guide lots don't have access to those or aren't going to pay for them. It's a fine to see what a grey sheet price is, but can you really find a place that charges that? Around here there are 2 shops(really 1.5). I've picked them clean on what I can but they don't have large inventories.

That leaves either travelling 120mi round trip to a bigger city(fuel and 4hrs = $$) or relying on the internet. I've looked at Heritage and frankly I don't think their prices are that great. I find good prices when I look up some historical auctions, but when in a buying mood I'm not seeing good prices. I've found some OK deals at dealers online that actually have shops and have made some purchases. But my best finds are ebay for the money.

When I look at ebay I look at the price, compare it to PCGS and grey sheets and realize I am a consumer, not dealer so I keep my expectation as such. I then consider how far I have to travel to get that coin locally. Like a St Gauden's I bought in Ebay. It costs me $100 just in sales tax to buy around here, plus the prices are about a $100 premium over what is online. If I drive to get it that just adds more expense. So am I willing to pay more than some of you might find reasonable? Yes, because it's still a better option than I have elsewhere.

If I lived in an area with an abundance of shops thus competition to keep prices down I might feel otherwise. Or if I had dealer trade connections to get at dealer pricing that would be different, but for now I don't so I bid away. And I have to remember, this is a hobby. I have no expectation to make money on it. If I can sell a coin someday and recover 80% of what I paid I'm ahead from a recreational standpoint. I don't get any of my green fees returned to me.

 

This is strictly fictitious but it is a possibility :>) I think another factor is frustration. You have lost the last bunch of items by one bid or so, always in the last second.(sniped) You become careless and want to brake your bad streak. You push your high bid envelope well beyond what you normally would. Then it happens, you win and over pay for the item without hope of recovering your cost. Then you really feel the frustration of what you did and what a dummy you were. (Then I tape the coin to the frame on my monitor so I can see it every time I look at another auction.) :>(

 

I respectfully disagree. The FRNs/greenbacks they use to pay with are all the same regardless of knowledge. True value is not static. It varies from transaction to transaction. If I sell a coin on eBay the true value to me is what I sold if for to that buyer. He/she will then find out the next true value when and if a future transaction takes place. When you insure something, you do so either for your cost or replacement value (cost of next transaction).

 

I see that the thread turned out dealing with special coins mostly while I initially though mostly of bullion. It's easy enough to look up online retailers of bullion and it's not uncommon to see bids way above store prices.
It also seem like the price of silver rounds are pushed up above what I would expect comparing it with list prices at dealers. It's natural with a price increase when something goes out of production but often the increase show clear signs of opportunism and dreamers.

 

I believe your initial post stated "this is regarding PM in general", and the posts appear to have an appropriate response.
Strictly bullion purchasing is another facet of PM acquisition. Someone acquiring bullion, generally is expecting to purchase that commodity as any other which might depreciate, or they are expecting significant appreciation to offset the premium paid above intrinsic value. The amount of the premium to be paid is dependent upon local gross costs, future expectations, etc..I've realized significant profits, by taking a greater "long" position than the Norm.
I don't believe that one can objectively place a market value on strictly bullion commodities, as value is determined by seemingly numerous subjective indeterminate variables.
JMHO

 

I've been following the "case" of the '73 NGC PF69 UC Kennedy half on ebay for a while since that's one of the holes I need to fill in my set. PCGS slabbed versions of these seem to go for reasonable prices very close to what NGC's pricing guide suggests. NGC's price guide suggests the slabbed coin should be about $30. Recent sales I've seen have all be over $110 each, with the two examples I found below at $111.50 and $153.50 respectively.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1973-S-NGC-...47?pt=Coins_US_Individual&hash=item1c3a7db433

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1973-Proof-...35?pt=Coins_US_Individual&hash=item43c357af33

I started a thread about this a while back and we came to the same conclusion - bidiots.

 

Au contraire, I get it every day.

 

As a person who is analytical by nature, the discussions on this thread regarding market pricing are very interesting to me. During my career in quality assurance I have had a good bit of exposure to probability and statistics, so it is not surprising that my mind goes in that direction when thinking about coin pricing.

It is impossible to be certain of the exact price for which a coin can be sold, but when we look at hard data we can determine a reasonable probability of it selling within a certain price range.

Out of curiosity I pulled prices realized on Ebay for a couple of coins. The first is an 1881S MS65 PCGS Morgan dollar. I have broken down the data by the quantity of coins in each price range:

>$600 - 1 coin (a "monster toner")
$200-$600 - 15 coins (lots of PL and Plus designations...)
$180-$200 - 18 coins
$170-$180 - 22 coins
$160-$170 - 34 coins
$150-$160 - 44 coins
$140-$150 - 9 coins

Based on this there is a 55% probability of the coin selling in a narrow range between
$150-$170, and assuming the coin is average for the grade, that probability is probably much higher, as we can eliminate the toners and PL's that fetch "moon money".

Now that we've looked at what is probably the best example of a "commodity coin", now let's look at a coin with a lot fewer data points, a common date 2 cent piece graded MS64BN by PCGS/NGC.

There were only 7 of these sold on Ebay during the same period versus 143 of the 81S Morgans. With only 7 data points, the prices ranged all over the map from $195 to $299. So not only does this coin have more pricing variation, but there is also more uncertainty, because our ability to predict future pricing is much greater with 143 data points than for 7.

Therefore, the rarer the coin, the less certain we can be of it's future price.

Without pulling the data I would be willing to bet that Heritage prices have less variation due to there being more informed buyers. However, for most of us selling coins, Ebay would be the most likely option.

I know that I've only scratched the surface of this. It would be an interesting research project for somebody with lots of time on their hands.

 

[font loudbuzzernoise]Plenty of mentals but no winners on ebay[/font loudbuzzernoise]

 

There used to be. Long before the internet and eBay prices for coins were usually pretty close to the published price guides in the local coin shops and mail order dealers. Exceptional coins though have always brought premiums over so-called retail prices.

Now there is what is called fair market value, the supposed value of what you can expect to get for a coin if sold retail. Retail being defined as the sale of a coin going into a collectors' collection.

eBay and retail should never be used in the same sentence since eBay is an auction and fixed price hosting site, eBay itself does not sell anything.

 

I personally have found great deals on eBay. However you have to look through hundreds and hundreds of listings to find the few. But with patience and time you can find cool stuff. It won't necessarily be a specific thing you are looking for but random great deals will appear. The best is finding really bad pictures of nice toned coins. If you can see the reality in the poor picture you can do well. As a hobby and pasttime I will spend my last hour or so awake with my iPad and casually scroll through the listings. If you can do a good job with your filter settings you can be surprisingly effective. Yes there are many bad deals on eBay but with a usual count of 120,000 lots of pcgs and ngc coins it is statistically impossible to not have gems waiting to be found