Legality of selling "unsearched rolls"

Agreed. However, it would be nice if the same level of defense was given to other innocent sellers when baselessly attacked on this board. Reputation aside, the concept of being innocent until proven guilty should be applied to all, but far too often one-sided and infinitely convenient stories are accepted as proof of guilt regardless of often glaring levels of reasonable doubt.

 

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No problem. I just didn't want anyone to make any association. This individual who is apparently doing these "unsearched rolls" just happed to have bought something off of one of our ebay accounts.

 

Yea, eBay stopped Sellers from giving a grade to a coin that has not be graded by a TPG, but they have not stopped them from putting a grade on the picture of the coin. If it's in a 2"x2", some Sellers write a grade on the edge of the 2"x2".

 

Don't know why Ebay would or should police this. I would love if they would ban the use of the word "rare", but that wouldn't fly either.

 

Technically I believe they did, when they stopped letting grades be shown on non approved slabs. That said there is really no way for them to legitimately police it and as long as it just uses letters and not a numerical grade as well may be okay.

 

There are plenty of auctions out there with a grade given. One of my favorite sellers always stated his opinion of the grade.

 

When I roll coins that roll is un-searched until someone opens it and searches the content.

 

Oh yeah has anyone ever heard of buyer beware!

 

My take on "unsearched rolls" is that it is up to the buyers to determine whether or not they want to purchase such rolls because, you see, people "search" rolls for different things.

New varieties are constantly being found and a searched roll from 10 years ago could very well cough up what a buyer might be searching for. Especially if its a newly recognized variety.

While the effort to "save the newbies from themselves" is commendable, it's also a dead end street because you just cannot replace "education" with 'experience"! To believe that some newbie will completely drop out of coin collecting because they bought a roll of 1969-S Lincolns that was supposedly unsearched in the hopes of finding that elusive DDO worth hundreds of thousands of dollar only to find out that the roll was NOT unsearched, or that the coins looked gawd awful ugly (which most do), is a silly idea. Primarily because someone that "WANTS" to collect coins is going to use the experience and continue to collect coins until they tire of the constant chase. And it is a never ending constant chase.

To imply that selling coins as "unsearched" just because you "think" they have been searched is a criminal act, is making a LOT of presumptions. The primary presumption being that the roll has been "searched" for every known variety which 9 out of 10 times is simply not the case. People search for different things.

 

In these cases I would say it is often even more than that, such rolls are often purchased hoping to get deals and have some great find for cheap where greed gets people to ignore common sense.

 

In the old days when you could report a listing, including a numeric grade on a 2x2 would have gotten the listing pulled.

However, I don't think the reporting mechanism works any longer.

 

True but, isn't this what experienced buyers/collectors call....cherrypicking?

I've looked at some ebay photo's and took a chance (my lottery ticket) that I was actually looking at a nice variety. When the coin arrives I make a mental note about seeing things. Again!

In those cases, I NEVER return my mistake. BUT, if a different coin is sent, then back it goes. I do keep copies of the ebay photo's for reference.

As for newbies?

All they ever read are thousands of great find stories but the reality of the matter is that the "great finds" are perhaps 1/1000th of all purchases. Newbies do not understand this and, consequently, pay a heavy tuition to the School of Hard Knocks.

Again, "Unsearched" is an open ended word and extremely difficult to prove.

 

Years ago, I drained a bit of money into these frauds. Thank God I stopped when I did. You can't prove they're searched any more than they could that they're unsearched. It's already been said, but all they have to say is "I never searched it". For the same reason eBay won't let me ignore/block sellers. Every purchase makes them money.