I was looking through completed listings for an eBay seller just now. He has some Peace dollar lots that worked out to about $15/coin before shipping, and that was enough to make me check his history. He's sold a fair amount of ordinary stuff at ordinary prices -- Whitman albums of circulated silver with no keys, circulated Morgans, etc. But I also noticed this: Standing Liberty Quarters – Partial Set 1917-1930, 31 Coins, Circulated $300 BIN for 31 SLQs? Yawn. And apparently other BIN-campers felt the same, because it went up Thursday March 29 at 5:10 PM PDT, and didn't sell until after 9AM PDT the next day. But take a look at this photo: Most of these coins are in better than average shape (overlooking the obviously-polished 1920-D) -- especially the 1919-D, 1919-S, 1921, and 1923-S. It looks to me like that's close to $1000 value in just those four coins, and there are plenty of others that are worth more than the $10/each that this worked out to. If I'd seen this listing when it appeared, I would've pounced instantly. Oh, well, back to watching the new BINs for a bit. All it's been so far this morning is garbage at good-stuff prices and good stuff at retail+++ prices, but you'll never see the bargains if you don't look at the right moment...
I wish I could spot things like that. That why I stick to the cheap stuff (aside from being poor). I'm not experienced enough yet to spot good deals or bad ones for that matter.
I wasn't either when I started, and have some embarrassing purchase records to show for it. If you enjoy the hunt, you'll get better at it with time. But if you don't enjoy the hunt itself, it's a terrible use of your time, because the hit rate is so low. Of course, "enjoying the hunt" really just means I'm another victim of intermittent reinforcement. At least I'm not losing money every time I hit refresh, though; from that perspective, it's a better vice than playing the lottery.
I do enjoy the hunt, it's part of why I CRH and metal detect. Neither are a very lucrative use of time but I have fun.
Yes. I check out the Ebay New Listed items for fun too. There are so many times that a seller doesn't know what they are selling, or they have listed an item in the wrong section. Recently, my husband dropped my Victorian butter dish and I went on Ebay to replace the glass. The Seller felt badly about not shipping the replacement item quickly, and so she included 2 "silver plated" candle holders as an apology gift. UM! The candle holders were solid silver, had original patent numbers on them (which identified the year & maker), and were in excellent condition. They were Art Deco, valued at $350 a piece, and made up BIG TIME for the dropped butter dish! Ebay is a LOVE - HATE thing for me.
I don't want to hijack your thread or anything, but I'm curious what you think of this? I saw this while browsing and it was at $25 with one bid. Ended up selling for $80. I don't collect many U.S. coins so I'm not a good judge but I thought a lot of these looked super fake. I wasn't sure about the California half though, and I would like that for my collection. I also checked the seller's history and it seems like they've sold a lot of coins at buy it now prices that seem to be far below their value if they were real. No negative feedbacks though. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lot-of-8-C...R3ikVAx9w95MYnCo4uwvg%3D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc
I've spent a lot of time looking at Barber halves, so I see a number of red flags on the Barber half; furthermore, the one shown in the second set of photos looks worse (and clearly different) than the one in the main photo. The Grant commemorative also has the classic look of a Chinese fake. Given those two, I would dismiss the rest of the coins as well; if I looked closely enough at the "valuable" ones, I assume I'd find that they're fakes as well. As far as "no negative feedbacks", I think the explanation has four parts: 1) Some people want fakes, and are happy with what they get at the price they pay. 2) Some people are none the wiser, and are very happy with what they think they get at the price they pay. (Been there.) 3) If someone complains, the seller can offer a return; if they do that, eBay will generally delete any negative feedback associated with the transaction. 4) eBay generally fails to enforce their "no fakes" policy. I've gotten involved with sellers in the past who had great feedback, until I dinged them for selling a fake -- and half a dozen other buyers suddenly looked more closely at the coins they'd received, and also left negative feedback. I've also gotten involved with at least one seller who apologized profusely, took the item back at his expense -- and then re-listed and sold it, again lying about it, after enough time that he probably assumed I'd forgotten about it.
I just bought a Latin issue trachy that was pretty decent quality, and it really flew under the radar. In fact, that same seller has a Florian at $25, which has no bids either. It’s not perfect though. It’s definitely genuine.
Ugh. Missed out on a 1928 P Peace dollar that sold for like $20 because the guy wouldn't ship to the US from the UK. Coin appeared to be genuine and he had good feedback. Would have been worth the gamble. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Silver-Dol...D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557
That 23-S alone, if genuine, would've paid for that set. The closest I've come to finding something like this was a beat up 1909-1940 folder with some blurry pictures, but with a coin in the 1911-S slot. I was the only bidder at $2.75. Opened it up and it had an 09 VDB, 11-S, and a nice woodie MS 1928, along with a ton of common dates. Sold the 11-S for 10x what I bought the album for.
I've had a few experiences like this: 35 Barber dimes for $80 ish, including a 1913-S in decent shape that was worth around $20 on its own. Complete Great Britain Silver Type set, including a 1928 Wreath Crown. I don't remember the exact price I paid, but I know that when I did the calculation, the rest of the coins in the set came out to around $100, including a gem BU 1902 crown.
Yep. I bought a lot of metal-detected, heavily cleaned Mercury dimes, I forget how many, maybe 30. But many of them had high-grade details, including one 1926-S. I sold that one for about twice what I paid for the lot. Then there was the junk lot (which old-timers here are sick of hearing about) that featured a holed trade dollar. It turned out to be a proof-only issue, and I sold it for about four times the cost of the lot. (And there were a number of other goodies in that lot, including a heavily-verdigris'd 1931-S cent, a corroded 1912-S nickel, and so on...)
I was looking at some more of this person's sold items and they have a lot of these commemorative halves that have that fake look to them. The metal just looks off. It's this weird gray. Like I said, I don't collect these coins, but they just don't look like normal coins in my experience, and it just seems odd that they seem to have such a big supply of these coins that they always slip into lots with common coins, like they're trying to make you think they don't know what they have and accidentally offered up a valuable coin for cheap. It seems to be working though.
They have a "big supply" because they can order them for a few bucks apiece (at most) from an infamous Chinese online marketplace. I see a lot of them on eBay -- just pick your favorite commemorative issue, filter for Buy It Now auctions at an unrealistically low price, and you'll be able to see them too. As I said, eBay mostly looks the other way on this sort of thing. They used to have a responsive group (mostly one person) to accept reports and take down such auctions, but they shut that down years ago.
