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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;doug444, post: 2625508, member: 38849&quot;]There&#039;s no such thing as &quot;free&quot; shipping -- you are paying, one way or another, but it&#039;s not always obvious.&nbsp; I prefer to deal with individuals in my home town -- no postage, and coins <u>in hand</u> to examine.&nbsp; There&#039;s plenty around; the guys who went &quot;all in&quot; 2 or 3 years ago, with a &quot;get rich quick&quot; mentality always need money for shoes for the kids, etc., and they&#039;ve been pretty badly beat up, both financially and emotionally.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>They are motivated sellers, perhaps never to return.&nbsp; They are also my fav sellers, of course.</p><p><br /></p><p>Once in a while, an eBay deal with a combination of discounts, more eBay bucks, and a claim of &quot;final clearance&quot; serves me well, but over 3/4 of what I&#039;m buying comes from right here in Columbus, face to face, in the bank lobby.</p><p><br /></p><p>I can also tailor the deal to the individual, often by offering a &quot;bonus&quot; side deal, to sell postage below face value, which is a valuable opportunity for a small business (or frequent eBayer).&nbsp; This week I bought $350 worth of new 29c stamps (on eBay) for 58% of face value.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;ll flip those around 60% (i.e., just breaking even) to get bottom-line <u>super</u> deals on bullion, eventually, with no paper trail.</p><p><br /></p><p>This is not to badmouth the big five, but they have their limitations.&nbsp; Like a numismatic buyer, I want to see what I&#039;m buying, I like to size up the Seller and see if there&#039;s more deals coming, and again, NO paper trail.&nbsp; Plus, once in a while there&#039;s a really rotten apple -- remember Tulving?</p><p><br /></p><p>CT-er&#039;s who live out in the boonies with no dealers and few, if any, coin shows, don&#039;t have a lot of choices, and then, of course, hopefully they will be rewarded for diligently investigating and discussing, like the OP suggests.</p><p><br /></p><p>By the way, last week eBay emailed me 18 &quot;bullion deals,&quot; they never give up.&nbsp; I confess, I read them all. <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie101" alt=":woot:" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" />[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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