When I see prices that are so incredibly unreasonably high, I can't figure out what they are up to. They can't expect anyone to buy at those prices. Example: https://tinyurl.com/y5oegvvn I see similar on Amazon, like a $5 book listed for thousands of dollars. What are they up to? No way anyone would pay those prices so they must be up to something fishy.
Oh yeah, what if you were really stupid and had so much money you didn't know what to do with it? And, not only were you stupid, but you believed everything sellers said about coins?! Just sayin', I think the seller is off their rocker just like you do, but why would sellers put up such crazy ads and continue to keep putting them up? It also could be the seller is really stupid and they just don't know any better! Maybe they never sell anything on ebay ever and they can't figure out why, yeah, they're that stupid! I don't know either but stranger things in life have happened on ebay for sure!
Two things... One is money laundering... "That's not $5,000 in drug money, I made it selling books on Amazon, here are the receipts" The second is algorithms. There are people who have computers adjust their prices to be $0.01 more or less than a competitor. Or $1 or whatever... if both parties are using something like that, without some kind of sanity clause, you see those kinds of crazy prices. More isn't crazy, because you can play with the shipping cost. I'm going to sell my book for $2 more than XYZ, because I offer free shipping and they charge $2.95 - so my listing will come first. The other party says I'm going to sell for $0.05 less than ABC's price... Price goes to the moon... Hanlon's razor: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
Interesting. On the laundering issue, how can he show receipts if people don't buy his crazily priced stuff? He can show listings, but not receipts. On the algorithm thing, what I often see is a book selling for low prices by everybody except ONE. That one for thousands of dollars doesn't have any others nearby in price.
I've always liked aphorisms, and whenever I see one like that one I always ask myself - is there a counter aphorism ? In this case one popped into my head almost immediately. Now it's not an exact "counter", but it comes pretty close I think. It's also especially pertinent to coins. Never attribute to stupidity that which can be adequately explained by knowledge - knowledge that you don't have.
This may or may not explain such listings, but I've read that online dealers will sometimes increase prices of an item to a ridiculous "no one would ever pay this" degree to keep from relisting an item. Then when they actually get another one they change the price. I don't know if this actually holds water, but I've seen such listings explained in this way. This may not explain the case above, but I can't believe that even the slimiest of sellers would think that someone would actually pay that much for a common quarter. But maybe people do? I'm not sure. I hope not.
That's the best explanation I've heard. One problem with that is it muddies their name. I look at their name and think that dude is crazy, I won't buy from them! But then I would have to remember, which I probably wouldn't!
This seller is a 1 feedback scam seller. They're hoping for just 1 person who knows nothing about coins, purchases this common quarter. The chances are slim, but these types of scammers are persistent. For example, this seller has a lot of coins with absurd, laughable prices. They have 0 sales since 2018. They're nothing but persistent. All it takes is 1 person. https://www.etsy.com/shop/celestialcoins?ref=l2-about-shopname
