I've been scouring ebay for deals on coins to add to my (small) collection, but it seems impossible to find any! Any 'deals' appear to be on crappy grade coins. And also shipping is a problem for really cheap coins, when shipping sometimes costs more than the coin. And many of the coins and tokens I want get bid up at the last second to ridiculous prices -.- I bought a beat up 1857 seated liberty half dime for $6, because I don't have any half dimes in my collection. Where do you guys and gals get your coins for cheap? /firstworldproblems
Learn to grade coins, roll search, and look for good deals. Don't buy a coin because it is cheap, buy it because you like it (cheap is good too )
I do have price and grading guides that I've been using, so I know relative values of each coin. Also I'm more into the pre-1930s coins, which aren't really possible to find in rolls. Edit: @green18 - my bad, I get them mixed up
Ebay is a great marketplace - because there are so many buyers and sellers, the price you pay is close to what you might sell it for (minus shipping). This is good because it means that you won't overpay like we did 20 years ago, because the margins are small, and overhead is less. (that's good if you're a buyer, bad if you were the local coin/flea market seller). The bad news is you don't often get good deals either. So buy a coin because you want it, not for the deal. Having said that, there are a couple of tips for ebay: - find auctions that end at odd hours, where few people will be watching/bidding - find coins mis-listed (a quarter listed under the half-dollar category), as they'll see fewer bidders, and go cheaper. - create a custom search, looking for auctions that end within one hour, auction only, with zero bidders - you may find someone listed something with no reserve, and no one bid on it. This generally only happens for auctions above - that end at very odd days/hours and were mis-listed. I hope that helps - happy coin collecting!
Place a lot of items on you eBay watch list. Don't pre-bid on items, that just causes other people to bid the item higher
What i do is custom search, settings as follows: Newly listed Buy it now It takes patience but you can find deals, i just bought about 25 pre 65 quarters on ebay the other day for a good amount under melt. http://www.ebay.com/itm/230733142656?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649 He was selling them cheap but with 5 dollars shipping, so i just bought them all and saved a decent amount!
