Just came across this BIN listing, which lasted only a few minutes: 1884 "S" Double Eagle $20 Liberty Head Gold Coin -- $1700 BIN Not too far above gold spot for a double eagle seems like a fair deal, and clearly someone else agreed. Perhaps they didn't look at the seller's completed items: 1884 "S" Double Eagle $20 Liberty Head Gold Coin -- $1700 BIN (ended Dec. 13) 1884 "S" Double Eagle $20 Liberty Head Gold Coin -- $1700 BIN (ended Dec. 12) 1884 "S" Double Eagle $20 Liberty Head Gold Coin -- $1700 BIN (ended Dec. 7) 1884 "S" Double Eagle $20 Liberty Head Gold Coin -- $1700 BIN (ended Nov. 12) While several of these listings have slightly different photos, all clearly show the same coin. No feedback yet on the sale from Nov. 12; wonder if that buyer is still being strung along. I direct-reported this one -- it smells to high heaven. Wonder if the "seller" has already made off with the $6K+ PayPal balance from the previous auctions? I also wonder if eBay is getting ready to change the Buyer and Seller Protection terms for gold coins. I just came out of a Buyer Protection round on a half-eagle that never got delivered, and the process was quite different from previous interactions -- I waited an extra week or two for a final decision, then a refund showed up unannounced in my PayPal account, and then I got a message from eBay that the case had been closed without a refund. It's easy for me to imagine that they're seeing a spike in fraudulent gold listings, and that they're trying to figure out how to reduce their (eBay's and PayPal's) exposure.
His last three auctions were all for his "last" '84-S double eagle. His eBay ID "worldimports1" says it all. I don't think these coins (if in fact he has that many) originated in the U.S., lol.
I always wonder for things like this whether it's a hijacked account, or whether a good seller decides to go bad, or whether a bad seller is willing to put in a lot of work building a reputation with lower-value items. Or, I suppose, a good seller who got a "real deal" on a bunch of apparently-valuable coins, and doesn't know enough to realize he/she was taken. For this one, the style of the descriptions seems consistent with the other stuff they've listed. It's a bit of a puzzler -- but I think the other alternative, "these are three, no, four, no, FIVE legitimate coins of the same date/mint", is laughably improbable. And the three separate listings for "my last one" seem to sort of rule out the "honest seller" alternative.
...and I once again forgot to save a link to the seller's feedback page, so I can't even see whether the bad feedback has started to land yet. Ah, well. Edit: still there in my browser history, though: Feedback for worldimports1 Looks like their non-numismatic auctions are still running. It'll be interesting to keep an eye on this. It does bug me a lot that, whenever there's a question about the authenticity of a piece, eBay responds by deleting the auction entirely. It makes it a lot harder to keep apprised of what people are trying to pass on eBay.
Based on a quick search, he hasn't had any coin-based auctions close in the last 15 days....that's as far back as it would let me go in the search....
Reply by worldimports1 (Sep-20-12 06:10): Liar! I sent u shipping/del confirmation# Item still lost. I gave full refund Guy sounds 12, wouldn't be surprised if people got ripped off and haven't realized it yet :/
That's after eBay rewrote his history. Note the dates that I appended to each of the links above. As I recall, the seller had no other coin-related auctions.
With any luck, these "Selling my last 1884 "S" Double Eagle $20 Liberty Head Gold Coin" auctions were just marketing hype and the buyers will actually receive the coins they paid for. I watched an auction a while back where a guy was selling a large lot of silver and gold bullion claiming the items belonged to his grandfather and that he was trying to raise money to offset the expenses from the estate. I thought the story sounded a little fishy, so I looked into his history and I could match every single item in the auction to something he bought on FeeBay within the past couple weeks. All of the photos he used to list them were the photos from the auctions where he bought them. I have to wonder if he listed the auction before he even had the items in hand. Sometimes, the things people do on FeeBay just leave you scratching your head... Maybe we need to coin a new euphamism for buying coins on FeeBay: "Buy the coin, not the story."
