Coin selling prices on eBay

In the 1970's I spent many a Friday night at a Howard Johnson's where a local coin dealer put on an auction. One night I won a roll of uncirculated 1943 Lincoln Cents. Being of the curious nature, once in a while I check "sold" items at eBay to see if my coin purchases of years past were wise and/or lucky. Now the confusing part: Uncirculated rolls on eBay have sold from $5 to $99. My question is this: would the reason for the high discrepancy in selling price be luck, dealer reputation, or something I have not thought of?

 

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It may be the 'unsearched roll factor', few but the gullible will pay for a roll of anything wrapped, they will only pay a decent price if they can see exactly what it contains.
Have you checked your roll of 43s

 

No I have not, but this weekend I will and get back to you. Thank you for the tip.

 

Bidiots!

Chris

 

eBay can have such a variety of results for the same coin or coins. As Chris said, biditiots can wildly bid up an item that people go crazy over, and it is often out of all sense and proportion. In my recent coin sales, some of the toned coins went absolutely insane, and others just went well--depended on the whims of the buyers. I have also noticed that auctions ending Sunday evening do better than ones that end Saturday evening, as there is more sniping then.

 

Good one!

 

I would just say luck as well. I've gotten some fairly valuable coins for cheap just cause I was lucky.

 

here's a nice little case in point:

There was a buy it now opportunity for 5 of one thing for X dollars.
And a bidding from a low starting point for a 10 of the same thing. It was at X + about 50% of the 5 group. So I put in a bid of about X + 75% of that. The high bidder 'outbid' me on that one. Still has like 3 or 5 days to go. So it comes up asking if I want to 'up' my bid and gives me 3 choices. I said what the heck and hit the button that put it at the highest of the three choices, making my bid now at about X + 118% of the 5 group. It still left me not the 'high' bidder with the person having the high bid now at about X + 120-125% (I am simply estimating for illustrative purposes). At this point, I realized that for what I wanted now, it might be more opportunistic to simply stop bidding on this one and go back and do a buy it now. Which I did. I will see later what the group of 10 goes for, since there were at least 3 bidders interested in it.

 

Your suggestion has me thinking. I have seen rolls spread out for photographs. If the coins are uncirculated would not the action of spreading them out damage them? And if so, what would be the best way to display them without any damage?

 

Only if you slam them down on each other to maybe get a hit mark or too. Simply laying them out won't damage the metal.

 

I finally got around to checking the roll of 43s. The image is typical of the rolls coin condition.

 

I find unless you don't mind staying up to 3am for Ebay is to make a decent bid and then make you maximum bid so high no one will approach it. It works most of the time. Most of the time on Ebay I find that you get what you pay for minus S&H. I can get better deals often at my local coin show or shop. I just can't get certain scarce coins locally.

 

If these are your pictures, I am guessing you could get a strong price for the roll.

You can also use an automated program that puts in a snipe bid for you.

 

You just put me to sleep!

Chris zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

 

Howard Johnson's. Now that brings back some good memories...

 

What automatic program? When an auction ends at 9:00 PT it is pretty hard for an East Coast old timer like me to stay up for bidding. Entering a automatic bid on eBay invites big ego types to bid and bid and bid.

 

Thank you, Paul. Yes, these pictures are mine. Taken this afternoon.

 

Just search google for "ebay bid sniper download". Generally, I would avoid online services that do this, because you'd be required to give them your eBay password. That's a bit of a security risk. Using an application you download to your phone or computer is generally less risky.

 

Thanks Paul!!