Coins Selling for Inflated Prices from Zero Feedback Sellers

About 10 years I have been researching coins and basically just took up checking pocket change my pocket change and everyone else’s in my family and I’ve been trying that entire time to read articles watch videos myself and anyway I can. Everything is to know about. I obviously don’t need to tell anyone here that there is so much to know, and one of the ways I try to gauge the value of a coin I think I might have, I go to eBay and do a search on a specific coin and filter the results to items that have already sold and sort them from highest price to lowest. Just so I can get a basic idea of how much the coin has sold for. I noticed something strange when doing these searches, I kept seeing coins selling for amounts that seemed totally unjustified. Plus, each time I see these odd auctions, with the seemingly valueless coin going for $2500, nearly every time it’s from a zero feedback seller. Which is odd. That’s a lot of money. How are many people so trusting of zero feedback sellers? I’m like what is going on here? money laundering? I just went to eBay and just picked a random coin & year-1972 Washington quarter and filtered the results to already sold items, sorted highest price first and the first two results are for coins that should not be worth $1000(I’m definitely not an expert by any means but it doesn’t seem like they’re worth that) and both from zero feedback sellers. This happens way too often to be a coincidence. What bothers me the most about this is that I’m trying to get an accurate idea of how much coins are worth and that is definitely throwing it completely off. Lol
Am I missing something here? Is there some reason why those two coins are that valuable? I could totally be oblivious.. been trying for years, but like I said, there is a lot to know about coin collecting.

 

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Sadly, the thing about Ebay is that you can put any value that you want to on an item. That first quarter was run over in a parking lot. All 1972 Philly quarters have no mintmark. There is no reason under the sun that any circulated 1972 quarter should be worth anything more than a quarter.... I do appreciate your investment in learning the hobby, but just be aware that on Ebay there are a lot of folks without any moral character auctioning random junk and hoping for a sucker. Sadly, it would appear that some have.... Don't buy into the hype and keep educating yourself.

 

Wow… it does not surprise me there are a lot of suckers out there, but I have seen this countless times(not on the 19 72/4 it doesn’t even matter what I put in like you said any value I put in and it doesn’t surprise me that people will put astronomically jacked up prices on an item, but it does surprise me that that many people would actually pay it and a zero feedback seller no less I guess there is a soccer born every minute, but don’t worry I’m not gonna be one of the ones falling for buying one of them. I did learn a valuable lesson though. That way was not a good way to educate myself. As far as getting a real idea of the value of something, Don’t go to eBay. I just want to be an honest seller and not inflate prices but I also don’t want to put something up for half of what it’s worth obviously… so yeah, more education to come

Thanks for your help.

 

Your 1st 'guess' is spot on. Could be gaming the 'insurance' companies as well.

 

I think a lot of that is simply shenanigans. People bidding on their own stuff to try to increase the hammer price, or people bidding with no intent to pay, etc. All 3 of those have 1 bid at the opening price. And heck, you may be right about money laundering - ebay's hefty fee is still probably lower than the mafia's.
But regardless, it's all shenanigans.

 

My guess is these are shell bids. See it all the time on ebay.

 

Believe half of what you see and nothing of what you hear.



Except for here on Coin Talk........

 

Some very good advice there. I think all of us after many years continue to educate ourselves here and there a bit.

Good advice from a "saying" I have not heard in years.

 

Lmao, good one about the fee comparison

Who said money laundering? Not me…

I don’t want the next headline to be, “CoinTalk community member hunted down and slain for outing eBay money laundering scam”

 

I’m really trying, it’s just a heckuva job sorting through all of the hype and the BS and the scammers to get to the real info and being able to know when I have definitely found that correct info isn’t always so hard to tell either little by little I’m getting there.

 

Buy yourself a Redbook and stay here at CoinTalk. I been collecting since the 1970’s. I thought I was a seasoned numismatist having memorized the Redbook…. Then I joined CoinTalk 4-5 years ago and REALLY learned what coin collecting is all about.

 

There are a lot of games going on.

When I was a dealer, I had dealers, who were offering items on eBay, who asked me to bid on pieces they were offering. "You don't have to buy them," they told me.

All we want to do is establish a selling price. We also want to avoid selling something too cheep. I put the last sentence in italics because that was the message.

I always told them, "No." I am not bidding unless I want it.

These dealers were not selling junk like the 1972 Washington Quarter sales you posted, but you get the idea. If you can get a sucker to believe auction results, you on your way toward turning junk into real dollars.

EBay is like the old wild west. There are a few sheriffs and many honest citizens in town, but there are plenty of stagecoach and bank robbers too.

 

My advice is to stay away from YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and the like if you're looking for real info. Forums devoted to coins and reputable publications are your best sources. PCGS and NGC value guides have tables of past auction results, and go to those auction sites to look up specific coins. Heritage, Stacks, Great Collections are where I go for value info. Numismedia also seems to be fairly accurate. To me ebay is worthless for that. There's so much scamming going on there that it's not worth the brain cells trying to figure out what the scam is or where those ridiculous "sold" values came from.

 

I'm thinking it has something to do with selling an elicit item.
There are way to many listings and sold listings for it to me a random coin and stupid buyers.
Money laundering or a way to move money would make more sense.

 

If you look at bidding history for many of these listings after a few weeks you will often see this.
https://www.ebay.com/bfl/viewbids/2...63087440&rt=nc&_trksid=p4429486.m145235.l2565

"Not a registered user" The "winning" bidder had there account suspended. Probably for non payment.

I think people are teasing the delusional sellers.

You can also see this in the number of watchers for these auctions. People are teasing the sellers to get their hopes up.

I also noticed that for many "sold" buy it now listings there will be no winner listed, often with the top bar saying it was relisted.

 

I just checked the 1972 washington quarter at the start of this thread and

https://www.ebay.com/bfl/viewbids/3...93629490&rt=nc&_trksid=p4429486.m145235.l2565

Yep, the winning bidder is no longer a registered user and...

https://www.ebay.com/itm/3154936294...17LjW+HlaiWSDy4jSg=|tkp:Bk9SR5bc6dO7ZA&edge=0

yep, the item is relisted. Dispite being marked as sold it never sold.

 

I have done this once or twice many years ago now, when it was an obvious counterfeit and ebay wouldn't remove it. I don't remember exactly what happened but I refused to pay, told them it was counterfeit, and there weren't any repercussions. I don't bother with it anymore.

 

OK, so people trying to sell a fake coin for a jacked up price set up a fake account, and use it “buy” the item. The seller has to put in a non-paying bitter request or they would have to pay the fees on the auction so they report the nonexistent user as a nonpaying bidder, which makes no difference to anyone because that is a nonexistent person. This whole thing is to get people to think a coin that doesn’t have value does?
That does make sense. It’s sad that it makes sense, lol, but it does. The lengths losers will go to to scam money from other people knows no bounds… lol

 

Oh yeah. And if you really want to see some crooked coin dealers in action….. Go peruse the Etsy coin offerings.

 

I think I better pass on that. Ebin YouTube are already messing around enough with my coin knowledge (or lack there of)