troy vs avoirdupois: Am I right or wrong?

I've been looking for junk mercury dimes on eBay, came across this seller who is running a few of these auctions:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl...33938&_sacat=See-All-Categories&_fvi=1&_rdc=1

They are advertising one ounce of mercs for open bidding. But they didn't say whether they were using avoirdupois or troy ounces. I assumed troy ounces, but decided to write and ask.

They are using avoirdupois. That means you would be getting a little more than one dime less for your money. I wrote them back thanking them for the clarification and told them that I bet most buyers believe it is troy ounces if they know the difference at all.

Would you expect ounces to be in troy for bullion weight, or am I expecting too much?

 

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The item you linked to is not for "one ounce" but rather as the item description reads, "Full quarter ounce of 90 % SILVER ALL MERCURY DIMES"

 

Yeah, and a "FULL QUARTER OUNCE" of dimes is going to be, drum roll please, three. Clarifying that it's avoirdupois gets him off the hook if he's selling badly worn ones.

Lots of people on eBay are selling "ONE FULL OUNCE OF SILVER (coins)", meaning one av. ounce of 90% silver, or 0.91 troy oz. of 90% silver, or 0.82 troy oz. actual silver weight. But people seem happy to bid up these lots well past the price of a troy ounce of pure silver. If not for my conscience, I'd get in on the racket myself.

Even better are the ones selling "ONE FULL TROY POUND", which is twelve troy ounces.

Many of these sellers go ahead and state the actual minimum weight of the lot in grams, which most bidders, fulfilling another American stereotype, ignore. It certainly covers the seller from a buyer/seller-protection perspective, but it doesn't protect them from negative feedback.


Edit: Good Lord, his auctions with "1/4 ounce" in the title have been closing around $4-5 (plus a profit-ensuring $5 for shipping); the ones that just say "lot of dimes", with a picture of a big pile of them and the "1/4 ounce" in the description, have been consistently closing at $20+! Don't people read? Are they too embarrassed to leave feedback saying "don't be fooled, this is an auction for three dimes, not the pile in the picture"?

 

Wow. I misread that. Now, I'm wondering how they are rounding this. Not that I'm going to buy from them anyway. If they're rounding to the nearest dime, there is no difference, I guess. Seems their real money is in shipping.

 

Note also that there are 18 random Mercury dimes pictured in the listing. Deceptive to say the least when you run the numbers so find out how many you would be getting.


2.5 grams are spec. for 90% dimes, less so if circulated/junk, probably more likely: 2.40 to 2.45 grams per dime.

 

Yes, when I shop for lots I want a specific number of coins. But, you're right, that picture is what attracted me to the auction and I suspect that's why I walked away with the impression of an ounce rather than a 1/4 ounce. But, I'm also wrong on them making their money on shipping since they ship Priority Mail and are charging Priority rates. No money there.

This is one of those auctions I just want to watch.

 

Well, 2.4 grams X 3 dimes would equal 7.2 grams, which would be a little more than a "full quarter ounce" of an avoirdupois ounce (28.35 grams). Three whole dimes. Wow.

 

Yes, and even more to my point of the Seller's intentional deceptive marketing by posting an image showing 18 coins!

 

now I'm not trying to defend anyone, but seriously if you bid before you know what your bidding on...then it's your loss... a fool and their money is soon parted.

 

So there are two deceptions-- Posting an image showing 6 times as many coins as the buyer will actually receive as a "full quarter ounce", and using the lighter avoirdupois ounce instead of the industry standard troy ounce. And on top of that, $4.95 to ship 3 dimes! Ouch!

 

Totally frightful and yet eBay does nothing to protect the consumer, which isn't to say that consumers shouldn't be doing their own homework as Alex mentioned.

 

Well, they do ship Priority Mail, so the seller isn't making money there. But, what seems to be another deception is that the seller says, "grade and bid accordingly", but the coins you receive will be picked at random, so it's not possible to grade them before you bid.

 

its a back alley type stuff you see on ebay, another perfect example is the rolls they make up and rip off buyers with them as they are all searched. Who leaves a roll of 1909 vbd reserve on both sides and wrapper says bank of S unopened!!! figures when you check feedback they sold 2 or more of those rolls with the same negative feedback "nothing but junk"

 

I would think that most sales would be in troy. Most people don't have the silver content of coins memorized so when they go to calculate the value they most likely look at reference manual (Red Book) which lists the content in troy. That's what I would do, but then again I try to be honest. If I was selling a bag of halves I would say something like $1000 face of 40% haves. I would not list silver content because of possible wear.

 

The seller has 12 of these auctions up. By the current bids it does seem that the buyers understand what they are getting. The highest so far is 5.50 -- but still they are going to have to pay for priority shipping.

http://shop.ebay.com/antiqueseller2003/m.html

 

What you would do and what these kinds of sellers are doing are two different things. There is no excuse for the sellers deception nor if the seller claimed any ignorance in the matter, there are plenty of reference tools available online to identify the coins by their compositions as well as coin and PM content calculation web sites to accurately determine what the seller has for sale. The same can be said of buyers, no one can simply claim ignorance in this matter, not when the same tools they are using to make the transaction, the internet, also connects them to a wealth of information with which to inform themselves. There is no reason to assume anything taking the risk and dealing with another miserable situation between lazy incompetent people trying to nickel and dime one another, from either side of the transaction.

One way to resolve such listings would be for eBay to include a tool like coinflation.com, allowing sellers to input the number and type of coins they wish to sell in the listing. If a seller could offer actual coin weight from a scale, that would create a more complete listing. There really isn't any need for a photo at all if buying for investment or if listed as junk-silver, especially a photo that is not disclaimed to be for illustrative purpose only. Any such photo as we saw in the OPs example needs to alert buyers not to perceive this as the item(s) they will receive. It is essentially how people buy bulk junk silver from bullion dealers without incident.

 

How much does wear affect weight? I would think a G-4 half would still weight pretty close to standard weight. What's it off by? 5%? 10%?

 

I just weighed a nearly smooth 1929 Walking Liberty half and the scale showed 11.9 grams (a little less than 5% off of the standard 12.5 grams). A 1946 Walker in F-VF weighed 12.41 grams. I also weighed Good Mercury dime from 1929, and the scale showed 2.42 grams (very close to Krispy's number). A G-AG 1898 Barber dime weighed 2.24 grams. A full-rim G+ 1915 Barber dime weighed 2.38 grams.

 

$5.50 plus $4.95 comes out to $10.45, or nearly $3.50 per coin, so it hardly seems worth it unless the bidder is hoping to get a key date in the bunch.

 

Well, these auctions are now ended and I find it hard to believe that the "winners" understood what they were getting. Here are the "winning" bids, BEFORE the $4.95 S&H fee:

$13.26
$ 7.50
$13.55
$ 7.50
$11.50
$ 2.25
$ .99
$ 2.51
$ 2.25
$ 4.25
$ 3.25
$ 7.00

A couple of these people really got snookered.