I just got an email from Walmart advertising their new collectors site. Its a site for cards, coins, etc. Pretty big. Seems most of the coins are bullion and are being sold by Ampex and SD bullion. This was right after I got an email from ebay giving me rule changes for the new Managed payment system. Didn't have time to read it all. Quite extensive. So now both Walmart and Amazon are in the coin sales business. I have been on Amazons site and its very extensive. Seems like its linked to Collectors.com. A lot of the same dealers as "Collectors" and ebay. As I clicked on coins it referred me to dealers I have used on ebay. Looks like we are going to have a few more options than just ebay. I expect Walmart being new will really expand their site. Let have some feedback!
Amazon coin sellers have been linked to Collectors.com for a long while. I find that site to be largely worthless. I’ve never found anything that interests me that hasn’t already been sold.
It would be nice if one of the big sites could genuinely compete with Ebay and perhaps force them to lower their selling fees.
I think a market would be there if someone actually manned and removed instances of fake coins. I simply do not buy on ebay because too many fakes. Ebay simply does NOTHING about it, they really do not even care. I mean, a well made fake could be an issue. I am sure there are people who would like to report competitor coins as fakes simply to eliminate competition. This is not that though. I used to be a "verified expert" or whatever they called it on Ebay with power to report fakes. I followed up later and 90% were still listed. I quit doing it since I was wasting my time. I truly would pay more if the site would simply work to eliminate obvious fakes. Me paying more, (and thousands like me, since most collectors I know feel the same), would increase prices overall and make even current selling fees more bearable since your profit would increase.
Amazon and, now, walmart are just creating a web portal for existing coin/bullion sellers to market thru. Why wouldn't one just go to Apmex/sdbullion/etc's own website to make the purchase? It's not like googling a companies name to find their website is some insider secret. Do people just really really like giving the Waltons and Jeff Bezos their monies?
A lot of you say you would not go to them (Walmart, Amazon) or ebay. Some of us don't have much of a choice. Right now I live in a dead zone as far as coin collecting is concerned. I didn't have a dealer or a show within fifty miles of me before the virus hit. I have been using David Lawrence or Great Collections but they are limited to mostly graded and I collect both. Collectors.com if you click on ten different coins about 9 of them were sold already. Its frustrating but I see that coin buying will be changing in the near future. This is just my opinion. Lets hear more of yours.
What I would do sir would be, (once shows are open again), go and meet dealers around. Let them know what you are interested in. Ebay and the like are not the only websites selling coins. Lots of dealers have websites. However, many more will watch out for coins you are interested in and can give you a call. I know this because I used to live in boofoo Iowa without a coin dealer around for 60 miles. What I know about is ancient coins. I know there might be 60 different firms that conduct auctions around the world. That is how I get most of my coins. I cannot believe there are not loads of firms conducting US coin auctions as well. I am just saying Ebay is RIFE with fakes. Its ok if you have the time to go through them and know what you are doing, but its a lot of work. If you don't have the time its a pain, and if you are not an expert in spotting fakes you WILL get taken.
I have found 2-3 other dealers not on ebay that I have bought from in the last few months and I was very impressed with the quality. Lately I have been buying graded Mercury Full Band dimes and since they are getting quite expensive I have to be very careful about ebay.
100% agree. Far to many crooked sellers selling fake coins and getting away with it. I quit reporting the fakes I spot because Ebay does nothing about them.
I wouldn't. eBay already gets enough from sellers considering the sellers have to do all the work, provide/pay for the inventory, and take all the risk. While it costs more, you do get some additional return privileges if you go through the Walmart or Amazon site There's a couple main ones Heritage, Stacks, Great Collections, David Lawrence, and Legend (high end one) and some other smaller and local type ones that have all the same problems you complain about with eBay. For collectors that collect sub $150 coins eBay is still their best option at the moment. Same with for US world collectors. If eBay doesn't fix their new payment system to allow coins that will obviously quickly change.
Just from my experience I have a lot more coin "dealers" than I thought I did in my area. I checked an older phone book, I checked the internet, I checked out for any relatively near coin shows and talked to the dealers that were there and through all of it I made connection to dealer's without store fronts (more like brokers) and the dealers that have stores that are always closed as well as poorly named coin dealers I've driven past a hundred times and would have never known unless I went inside to see what they actually do. Check with your city a lot of times there is some coin club or something doing a show once a month or quarterly at like a community center or something and you can make more local connections there.
