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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;-jeffB, post: 1400552, member: 27832&quot;]One of my favorite eBay sellers listed a set of seven &quot;employee appreciation&quot; rounds, &quot;composition unknown.&quot; They looked like silver, but had no markings, which generally means they aren&#039;t silver. 7-day return policy.</p><p><br /></p><p>I Googled around for them, and the only thing I found was an eBay auction where one was listed as &quot;.999 silver&quot;. But the auction was ended early, and there was no feedback, so no way to tell whether the description was accurate.</p><p><br /></p><p>I won the medals at $51. When I got them, they each weighed exactly 1 troy oz, and they were dimensioned right to be solid silver. I decided they looked good enough to risk digging into the edge of one (i.e. I decided not to return them); that didn&#039;t reveal a different color.</p><p><br /></p><p>I ended up getting them tested at a recent show; .999. I sold them for $220. (That was about 10% below spot, a bit below par. Another guy was offering $33.30/ozt for .999, $1 below spot, but wouldn&#039;t touch something that wasn&#039;t marked for content.)</p><p><br /></p><p>Do I owe the seller anything? I think not. The seller chose to list them as-is, rather than getting them tested. I chose to bid on the chance that they were silver, and gambling that, if they weren&#039;t, I would be able to determine that non-destructively and return them. (If the seller offers a seven-day return policy, I see no ethical issue with this, either.) This seller runs a pretty high volume, and has presumably determined that it works better to list high volumes with minimal attention to each item, rather than spending the time to optimize each listing.</p><p><br /></p><p>I work pretty hard not to take advantage of people, including offering to let people off the hook when I pounce on a BIN that&#039;s way out of line with actual value. But if something is listed as an open auction, I figure that the seller is happy to let the crowd price it, and I have no ethical qualms about winning it at any closing price. If the description is poor enough to make bidding a gamble, the closing price will reflect that risk, and it&#039;s not up to bidders to &quot;make it right&quot;.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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