Has anyone bought coins from 29957blue? This seller is one of eBay’s highest grossing private coin dealers, but his listings raise a few red flags right off the bat. Glancing over them, it’s clear that almost all of his raw Morgans, regardless of date/MM, lack any signs of tone or luster. There is too much uniformity amongst them. A collection (inventory) as large as this seller’s should be more diverse in these aspects. Or, one would expect it to be; I don’t know. I can’t tell whether it’s a byproduct of using scanned images, or a result of dipping/artificially altering the surface in some way. Does anyone have personal experience with this dealer, or is willing to shed some light (no pun intended)?
Bought from them? No. Mocked them? You bet, especially back when they covered every 2x2 with stickers. They used to get on my nerves because they would spam thousands of listings in batches, all overpriced or otherwise uninteresting, making it hard to find the bargains I was actually looking for.
As concerns his store, Zacks Jewelry and Coins: I think he is now out of control. I assume that in his childhood he was early misguided as concerns coins, note this quote from a newspaper near DeKalb: Zacks Needs Coin Collections and Jewelry November 5, 2014 - Local Business Feeds - no comments For Tom Valos, owner of Zacks Coins and Jewelry, it has been a lifelong pursuit. Valos began collecting coins at the age of ten. By his early 20’s he was dealing coins all across America via mail order out of a bank vault in DeKalb. the bank is now gone, but Tom is still here. In 1980, he opened Zacks Jewelry of DeKalb. Within two years, he had built a multi-million dollar business shipping gold jewelry to all 50 states. He said the reason for his success has been simple: customer service. He pays more when buying from his customers and he always sells for less. Valos is now eBay’s largest coin dealer and has over 32,000 positive feedbacks and a 99.9% customer satisfaction rating. WOW, he sounds great, but scanning his Morgans, and a different story emerges. With advertising and support like the above quote, he will probably keep making money -- but not from me.
I think for some of the Morgans it's just poor pictures because some of the raw ones look like the problem free stabbed ones, but some of the other raw ones look really weird like they've been messed with.
I don't know, he seems to be buying up a lot of collections, so there will be a lot of dreck in there. There looks to be some nicer stuff though. His photos are not flattering to the coins, so they may make them look worse. Even his stabbed material looks dipped and washed out. Anyway, I am going to try a little experiment. I just bought this coin. http://www.ebay.com/itm/1943-D-Walk...ible-SWH222-/391229261695?hash=item5b1714c77f The pictures are not pretty, but if I am interpreting them correctly, it is a very nice coin. As for the price, it is at full numismedia retail, which isn't that bad for a coin with a bean. We will see.... I will post photos as soon as the coin arrives. Mike
That's an interesting observation, Mike. If he unknowingly lists treasures among the piles of unflattering images, finding them is the kind of challenge I like... but given the sheer volume of his inventory, I doubt I'll go there. I look forward to seeing your images!
There are may on eBay that will do this. They want to make a sale. What I get a kick out of are online auctions through 'invaluable' and 'liveauctioneer', where the seller says the coin is 'better quality', but right off you can see either worn rim and other poor details but the coin has that nice shine to it. Oh man.
I bought a NGC slabbed '91 O from him through an "offer...counter offer" sale and although I paid a bit too much for it, there was no problem.
