Cuba coins still banned on Ebay, even when selling from the UK!

I tried listing the attached coin on Ebay UK today and ran into the US embargo on dealing with Cuban artefacts. I found this a bit unreasonable as I reside in the UK and Ebay UK is registered entirely in Europe. USA playing "World Policeman" again?


50 Peso struck in 1991 - 5 Ounces of 0.999 Silver, KM# 432.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

The Ebay prohibition of the sale of Cuban coins is an Ebay corporate decision dating from 2013.

It applies to all Cuban coins regardless of place of manufacture or date.

 

That's what I thought too, willieboyd 2. I don't think the government would be concerned about that.

Bruce

 

U.S. policy has historically been to dictate rules, laws, and regulations over the whole world. This of course involves companies, who are easily swayed and kowtow out of fear, ignorance or weakness to stand up for themselves. eBay's "corporate" ban on the listing of Cuban numismatic items, even to sellers and buyers who live and reside beyond U.S. borders, exemplifies all of this quite well, unfortunately.

 

The US law only applies to U.S. companies and persons, but where ever in the world they act. For instance, the U. S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act applies to actions anywhere in the world. Otherwise, for example, a U.S. company could bribe in Nigeria to get an airplane contract, on the contention that they were outside the USA.

And keep in mind the law only applies to U.S. companies. If a UK entity set up a company equivalent to eBay, the US-inspired prohibition on the sale of Cuban coins would not apply to them.

That being said, I do not agree with this US-inspired prohibition by eBay on the listing of Cuban coins. It's overkill -- and wrong for so many reasons that have already been stated elsewhere.

 

Good post, and USA has been world police for 100 years.

 

What really irritates me is that Ebay lumps in the pre revolutionary Cuban coins in with the rest in prohibiting their sale, even though they should not fall afoul of the embargo. I really like the silver one peso coins from the teens and 1930s, but have to resort to my local coin show to find them most of the time.

That said, I have been able to get some very good prices on a few items (gold diez pesos, etc.) simply because no one could find them on the site! (They were listed as "Caribe" or some such nonsense. Every embargo has a silver lining, I guess.

 

I have seen Cuban coins on Ebay listed as Carribean, Peso, Centavos. Sellers get around it by listing coins this way. Very cool coin by the way.

 

I looked your coin up in my 2019 World coin catalog. KM#432, 1991, 50 Pesos, .999 silver, Mintage- 1,000 , PF65-$225
I am guessing it might be worth more because of the very low mintage ???

 

Paypal will nuke your account if they get wind that it was a Cuban coin

 

Have you tried using a non-US auction site instead, @PaddyB ? Here in Germany I would use this: https://www.muenzauktion.info/auction/list.php?lang=en&categoryId=77 The US government's (or just eBay's?) rules and restrictions do not apply there, but I do not know about the scope of that site in the UK for example.

Christian

 

Thanks for all the thoughts. The problem I have found with most of the non-Ebay sites is they do not get the number of buyers and so things sell rather too low. I have a fallback plan - I sell regularly at local antiques markets, so I will try those, EDIT: Too close to an attempt to bypass the rules. Play Fair!

 

eBay was great when most listings were no reserve auctions. In its current form with mostly Buy-It-Now listings (which might as well be called Rip-Me-Off-Now), it takes too long to find anything even remotely reasonable in price that might be worth adding. As for Cuba and their prohibition on listings, --even pre-revolutionary coins from the early 20th century being banned-- it's just another representation of what a bunch boneheads are running the company. I'm just glad most of my collection consists of coins that will do just fine in a traditional auction ran at Stack's Bowers or other auction house. Aside from occasionally browsing prices realized on American Silver Eagles I never visit eBay anymore.

 

Too many sellers were getting killed doing those so they moved away from it especially once eBay started not showing every listing to everyone, promoted listings etc.

Not really. They made the decision it isn't worth their time/exposure trying to figure it out. They've made tons of bad decisions that have chased a lot of people away but that really isn't one.

 

You want Cuban coins ??? Come to Las Vegas coin shows tons of Cuban coins and great ones too. High grades and high values too.

 

I will concede it's one of the infinitesimally small examples compared to the more blatant sail north into icebergs policy decisions, but representative none the less of the imbeciles running the company. As for sellers getting killed in no reserve auctions, I suspect it has less to do with promoted listings than changes to the search function that produce fuzzy results. Or maybe that's one in the same issue. Yet another reason I no longer go there, --the search function works about as well as a Soviet made washing machine.

 

EBay made the decision to become a retail site like Amazon instead of an online yard sale. That's why they started to incentivize people to use buy it now instead of auctions and to sell things like phones and electronics. I remember a time when there were discounts for sellers who started their listings at 99 cents for auction. Those haven't been around for years. Now most of the promos I get are for buy it now, and they also switched to "good til canceled" instead of buy it nows that expired.

I agree that the Cuban thing probably isn't even a drop in the ocean for them, which I'm sure is why they did it. They're just avoiding potential headaches by taking the easy way out and banning everything instead of having to decide what's OK and what isn't. It makes sense from their perspective. It's annoying for those of us who want coins and other collectibles from there.

 

Agreed though promoted listings certainly haven't helped. The glut of common things did no favors either, but I will never understand the logic of hiding listings on something like coins where they aren't all identical like a blue ray.

Which was a huge mistake in my opinion. That's when large quantities of sellers really started getting fed up. The Amazon style returns (30 day free returns) and delivery speed is really easy for them to try and impose when they carry no inventory and the sellers have to bear the entire burden.

I truly believe that eBay is successful in spite of itself not because of it. There's a reason why Amazon trades for almost 2k a share and eBay rarely breaks 40 bucks.

Another way to try and get sellers to miscalculate and collect listing fees if they forget to cancel things. I really don't like the lack of options for the listing time.

Which you can't really even use anymore since you'll get charged next month if it runs over and you didn't hand cancel the listings that didn't sell.

Agreed, and the fact that PayPal has the same policy really limits the venues that coins from places like Cuba and Iran can be sold.

 

No argument here. I hate all the changes they've made. The Good til cancelled actually bit me last night because I had a bunch of listings scheduled to renew and I was watching Game of Thrones and got caught up and forgot to cancel a bunch of them.

Ebay and Amazon serve different purposes. I think eBay works best for common people trying to sell stuff they no longer want, or collectibles. But I can't really speak to the totality of their business model since I only see a small part. I know that when they make their policies it doesn't seem to be coin collectors they have in mind.

 

I agree with much said here about the wrong direction Ebay seems to have taken, but I am less at issue with the "Good til cancelled" policy. I get 1000 free listings per month and items that recycle round come out of this allocation. The only fees I am paying are the Final Value fees and any International visibility fees - and it has been this way for at least 6 months now. Is it different for others?
At least with "Good til cancelled" I don't have to keep going back in to relist items. I just have to watch at the beginning of each month to see that the next 1000 free listings has come on again.
The bias to Buy it Now against Auctions I disagree with, as well as the difficulty in getting your items seen by international buyers. Coins suffer particularly from this issue I fear.