I'm quit new to collecting coins via ebay. My question is how does one buy coins in Europe when the seller does'nt accept Paypal?
Carefully. Some possibilities: Send cash, which takes a certain amount of courage and/or extra expense for registered mail. Use International Postal Money Orders, and be sure the postal clerk gives you the right kind. Purchase money orders in foreign currency from your bank. Make arrangements with someone in the seller's country to pay the seller and accept your Paypal reimbursement. Talk the seller into using Paypal.
About the wisest choice is to use a credit card. If the deal goes bad - your credit card company will refund your money. But on another note - I would not recommend buying coins from sellers in Europe under most circumstances. For one thing - you would have no legal recourse against a seller in another country. If the seller is US based and a deal goes bad - you can rely on the authorities to a certain degree. For a European seller - you have nothing. The exception would be if the seller has a stellar reputation and conducts a good deal of business with US clients that you can get references from. But then sellers like that - usually accept PayPal because of the convenience and the problems involved with other forms of payment.
Not that any of the above is bad advice, but I thought I would share a couple experiences I had with two German sellers recently. In one case, one sent me the wrong items (beer tokens), and after I let him know about it, he sent me the right ones without asking for the wrong ones back. In the other case, the coins broke through the envelope and I got an empty envelope in the mailbox. I had bought two coins – the seller sent me FOUR as a replacement, at no additional charge. These were low-end items ($5 or so), but the service was better than what many experienced sellers in the US would provide. It is true that there is little recourse for an American buyer against a European seller, but that is really almost as true if the seller is in the US. Unless you plan to go to his town and knock on his door, there isn’t much you can realistically do about a bad seller. BTW – some of the coins I have bought in Germany are MUCH cheaper than they would be in the US. If you know a little German (or have a dictionary) you can use the German eBay site to do searches for German auctions, and maybe save a ton of money. This is not for the faint of heart, though as language uncertanties can be an issue at times. I had been trying to get a French coin from the 19th century counterstamped SEDAN (a satirical jab at an embarrassing French military loss), and in the US I kept getting outbid in the $10 or $15 range. I recently got a nice example from Belgium for about $4.
I have to have a bit of a chuckle reading this Doug. When I first started buying via the internet, all the stuff I was interested in seemed to be in the US. I had all the same problems but in reverse. All the stuff I was after fell into the under $50 category at the time, but sometimes it went higher....sometimes much much higher. The options I had when dealing with the average John Doe were cash in $'s or take a hike. I also had the option of American Express cheques at the addition expense of time, effort, admin fees and a less than `Ian friendly' exchange rate. Either way, if I was interested in the item, I had to consider the REAL costs involved. Change £'s to $'s there are fees and less than favourable exchange rates too. so a $5 item might cost $6 by the tiome the money has been changed....then there is the cost of getting it to the other side of the pond.....(postage) In over 1,000 deals I only had one real bad experience, and it wasn't postal. It was a bad egg in the US . I won't go there though. A bad experience is a bad experience and detail is unimportant. Suffice it to say that as a european buyer I had no recourse. My normal approach is: a) trust until proven otherwise. I would say that 97.5% of the human race is fundamentally honest and above board. I make no assumption that I am destined to only meet the bad eggs. I do my due dilligence in finding out who or what I am dealing with first (as anyone with any spark of intelligence would) but after that I assume that they want my repeat business and that they wish to maintain a decent reputation. b) postal services are in business to deliver letters. They deliver letters. Letters that don't get delivered are in the minority. Sure, there are bad eggs everywhere but statistically speaking if you lose any more than one letter in a thousand then either the gods really do have it in for you and youn should insure every letter you send, or the sellers are not being honest when they say `it's in the post'. I've been asked for as much as $16 to send a $5 item. (Sooper dooper insured registered, signed for, fighter jet escorted.....). If i'd taken all the options I was expected to take I would have spent three times as much on delivery of the item than it's cost. My delivery preference is simple airmail. It gets posted incognito and invariably arrives without problem. Take a registered package splatter it with `look i'm valuable', and insured as it may be.....if it goes missing the insurance does not get the item back, just the cost (AND if you are lucky). As I said in over 1,000 (pre paypal) deals with the US....only one bad egg encountered. All transactions done by cash / ordinary airmail in both directions. I reckon the amount I saved in not going OTT on `trust' issues (insurance / registration) is in excess of $5,000 over the duration. That is a sizeable part of anyone's coin purchasing budget! Sure, on big money purchases, a little extra to provide some comfort is not a bad idea. However on day by day items such as circa $50 and under one has to be a tad more pragmatic. I would however say that my experience with buying from France of late has not been a happy one. Their postal services seem to be in a state of some confusion at the moment. I have lost a few letters (with payments enclosed) in the past few months. The French postal service even lost a registered letter (I got the financial compensation of what I paid for the coin involved, but that does not compensate for the fact that the coin was extremely rare and my chances of finding another one are little to none). I don't accept credit card payments whether by fax or by paypal. Most people in europe don't use credit cards. They do in the UK (and how!). Paypal is slow to catch on, but for transfers from credit balances....it can't be beat. Ian
I looked into purchasing coins thru European dealers, after all it only makes "cents" to go to the source if one is buying coins minted in Europe in the first place. However, I found the exchange rate, the shipping cost, and the cost of insurance to make the purchase's price inflated beyond reason when I could buy the same type of coin state side thru American dealers.
I've had several successful transactions with German (and other European) sellers, using Babelfish. I always include the statement "I do not speak [name of language]. This is a machine translation so please forgive any mistakes." Unless I have dealt with the seller before, I e-mail first about payment arrangements and shipping charges. Unlike American sellers, Europeans almost always respond to questions.
This brings up an interesting point. Where do you suppose a coin would cost the most ? In its country of origin - or in a foriegn land ? Now stop and think about that a moment. Let's say the country is France. Who do you suppose collects more French coins - the French or the Americans ? The French do - far and away more. And the more an item is in demand - what happens to the price of that item ? It goes up. Nuff said.
Reply to the Replies Thank you all very much for providing your experiences regarding buying coins thru ebay. I'll post another thread after implementing your suggestions. Again thanks, Dick
It is a Catch 22, I guess. The demand is highest in the country of issuance, but that also means that the best selection and highest quality material will probably be there as well. Then again, if the item is more specialized and that particular specialty is not widely collected, then there is less competition. Also, sometimes the uninformed are more likely to overpay for an item. For example: Nazi silver coins tend to be overpriced on eBay in the US, but here in Munich, a Nazi 2 mark coin sells for 2 euros, and a 5 mark coin sells for 5 euros. In the US the price often is higher. It is (partly) because the locals know the real value, whereas the less informed think the coins are rarer than they really are.
