People make too big of a deal about how bad ebay is, when really it is not... When it comes to coins, you CAN get great deals... Getting coins near wholesale, and way less than retail, versus going to my local dealer, and paying over redbook! eBay is a great place to buy coins, and can be a place to make good profits, to buy your coins... When you have a more expensive budget, you can go to heritage completed listings, and pick up some nice stuff $50-HUNDREDS of dollars under wholesale, and you can sell it on ebay for a nice profit, because people are willing to pay near retail... eBay can work out for sellers and buyers... But reading all that, from the link you gave, here is what I have to say The ebay bashers, are mostly people who have been burned on stuff before... Self slabbed garbage, fakes, unsearched crap, etc... ALWAYS BUY PCGS AND NGC... I don't understand people buying DGS, PGS, PCG, shoot, I can just give three letters of the alphabet, and it is a grading service, XYZ Grading... I will never buy ICG/ANACS, only reason I would, is that I can get the coin, for a great price, under wholesale, and use the money I save, to see if it crosses over at PCGS... Another tip if it is too good to be true, it is... You can't get a St Gaudens for $12 and expect it to be real... To me, buying on ebay is common sense, and I am not going to try to convice people to start buying on ebay... More coins, and more great deals, for me!
Well, collectors can get taken anywhere coins are sold...Ebay, local dealers, and major online auction houses alike. I don't think thats the majority of the complaints, though. I think what most have a problem with is the blatant allowance and condoning of auctions that not only are fraudulent, but an outright violation of US and most international commerce law. It's true, places like Ebay would have to hire a million online police to patrol every listing and they'd have to be experts in many fields to detect everything, so realistically that will never occur. We can throw blame around all day and not get anywhere. As long as coins are trading hands, there will always be scammers out there finding ways to get your money. Guy~
My personal opinion is that coins typically go for more on ebay than heritage. Lately it seems like more problem coins than anything. I think there are far fewer good deals - at least in what I like. I would not bash ebay, but caution is a must. Plus if in doubt do not bid - period. If the pictures are questionable - do not bid.
Just depends Mark... If you like more expensive coins, heritage is the place for you... Let's say you collect MS62++ Busts, or MS62++ Seated Libertys.... eBay is not the place to go... Because on heritage, you can get those good deals, and if you like thousand dollar coins, you can get them thousands of dollars under wholesale... All depends on the collector... Like when it comes to MS63 Morgans, common dated, really no point on going to heritage, ya know? And exactly right towards the end, if your gut says, no... NO IS THE ANSWER
Also check out the link near the end that talks about buying unsearched coins off ebay ... very good information. http://coinauctionshelp.com/page17.html
Thank you for making that point. At any given time there are over 150,000 auctions going on of US Coins alone. How many eBay police would they need to thoroughly monitor that?!? How much would that cost? And we complain about eBay fees now?
Go to the top of the page, where it says coins, click on your preference world or US Then it will take you to the coins page To the right, if you scroll down, you'll see RECENT AUCTIONS and just click on the auction of your choosing
If you're a member, sign in, then type what coin series and date you're looking for and when that page loads there's a tab at the top of the listings called archived auctions. Click that and the results will load.
Great thread Everyone covered it very well! Ebay is a buyer beware market just like any place else you go. It is every individuals responsibility to make sure they know exactly what they're getting and are comfortable with the return policy. The HUGE plus I see for Heritage is that most of their photos seem to be taken under good lighting and equal conditions for all. Every coin buyer using ebay should realize how much sellers on there use every method under the sun to make coins look better, or unique, more attractive or to cover things up. I've seen blue lights used, dim yellow light, shadows, black and white pics, low light. With NGC slabs, you can somewhat compare the white in the slab with the surrounding area and coin. Loose coins though, can be drastically different in hand depending on lighting used. Heritage tries to represent what every coin truly looks like. There is no deception involved. Ebay on the other hand is a mine field with deals dispersed throughout. A huge conglomeration of sellers from the super cheap and greedy, to the deceptive, to some that are truly fine folks. Everyone should know that there are always fakes on ebay. There are always artificially toned coins. Some really bad. There are altered mint marks and everything else there. Any loose coin without several, excellent pictures should be avoided there IMO. Some people are too cheap to fork out the extra 0.15 cents for that second picture of the reverse. Pass them by. The topic is 100% correct. You've gotta learn how to use ebay. Mainly when and what to avoid.
