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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Ed Snible, post: 2780825, member: 82322&quot;]eBay used to be an auction site.&nbsp; It is now mostly a fixed-price site.</p><p><br /></p><p>For example, there are 868 Greek coins listed for auction plus 19,835 “Buy it Now” items.&nbsp; Only 4% of the category is auction items.&nbsp; In Coins/Publications/World, we see 235 auction items and 3949 “Buy it now” (5.6%).&nbsp; Very few of the auction items start below the retail price so it is hard to consider them true auctions.&nbsp; Search results are clogged with the same undesirable items month after month.</p><p><br /></p><p>(If eBay offered a way to select only items that had not been relisted and to filter by sellers with 98%+ ratings it would be a very different experience.)</p><p><br /></p><p>Auction consolidators sixbid.com and numisbids.com gather nearly all auctions, no matter how obscure, and provide easy searching.&nbsp; There is less of a chance of finding something others have missed.</p><p><br /></p><p>CoinArchives used to be free.&nbsp; Novices could compare historical prices with current offerings.&nbsp; I believe that gave them more confidence to bid.&nbsp; Many mid-level collectors have told me that loss of access to historical auction search results and prices took the fun out of collecting for them.&nbsp; They lack confidence bidding against folks who know recent auction values.</p><p><br /></p><p>The MOUs make it awkward for Americans to buy coins minted on the territories of Italy, Greece, Egypt, and Bulgaria.&nbsp; It isn’t difficult — many auction houses seem happy to send coins without detailed customs paperwork.&nbsp; The difficulty is placed on those of us who wish to follow the rules.&nbsp; The auction houses have not made it easy to find out the documentation that will be provided if the lot is won.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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