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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Irespire, post: 753374, member: 14858&quot;]I see both sides of the story.</p><p><br /></p><p>On one hand, there&#039;s a place for it. There is tons of garbage on ebay, and the &#039;big&#039; sellers are much of the time more dishonest (*cough* SGS *cough*).... You have to be cynical to make sure you don&#039;t get ripped off, and navigate what essentially are &#039;shark infested waters&#039;. I&#039;ve been minorly taken a few times, but because I started by trying not to be eager and buy everything, I avoided being majorly taken on the order of many hundreds or thousands of dollars. I suppose though, this is more like &#039;realism&#039; rather than cynicism. Realism though...I think that&#039;s just &#039;legitimate cynicism&#039;, since cynicism has some element of reality but is shunned as &#039;negative&#039; because its supposedly excessive or whatever.</p><p><br /></p><p>Some people take it too far, and are rude to others, etc. I&#039;ve gotten some monster deals on ebay by being patient and watching for the less obvious stuff, made a bit of money selling here and there, etc. I do one day want to start a business out of this for some side money, but even then, nothing matters as much as just treating people decently. Even when you get angry, the same applies. I get so frustrated when I&#039;m treated poorly by sellers for little or no reason, and not only does it make business sense to be reasonable, but it is pointless to treat people in a rude or dishonest manner (even if I can see why people do sometimes, despite not approving of it). I mean, not to go on a bunch of rants, but I of all people have dealt with a lot of stuff for my age, yet I still try to be decent to people as much as possible since it&#039;s how I want to be treated.</p><p><br /></p><p>There are extreme cynics who will assume that someone who is relatively new to coin collecting and makes mistakes is a scammer because they sound eager, or whatever. A year and a half ago, I posted some higher end coins here, and was eager to sell stuff and whatever....I&#039;ve kept many of those coins in my type set instead because I LIKE them and thus that is where they belong; selling isn&#039;t everything as I learned when I grew more modest in my approach...</p><p><br /></p><p>But anyhow, back then I wasn&#039;t quite aware of some things, since I was fairly new to &#039;serious&#039; coin collecting and was really eager to try to do business and stuff. I remember posting a trade dollar, which I determined later to have been dipped (I&#039;ve dealt with quite a few polished coins since then, and it did not have the same look). Some, in particular one person questioned its authenticity due to the bizarre look in the pictures, which I admit kind of brings that impression. Anyhow, this one guy went on to say that basically my grading was poor, the authenticity of ALL my coins was in question (when this wasn&#039;t true, the T$1 was the only one that had ever been questioned), and so on and so fourth. I tried to work it out over PM and basically just got a big &quot;F U&quot;. I forgive this person completely, but this just seems to be an example of &#039;cynicism gone too far&#039;. It did make me realize my &#039;selling&#039; style wasn&#039;t really appropriate however, and subsequently I adopted a more modest approach with pretty good success. But really, this kind of cynicism probably turns off a lot of new collectors, in some cases probably almost as much as the scams themselves. It&#039;s important to be somewhere in the middle of blind optimism and extreme scathing cynicism.</p><p><br /></p><p>I enjoy coins greatly, but yeah, there are a lot of &#039;sharks&#039; out there just waiting for an opportunity to ruin some unsuspecting, optimistic collector&#039;s wallet. There was this one guy on ebay who was...get ready for this (though many of you will not be surprised) cracking problem heritage slabs and selling high end stuff as problem free. I ALMOST got taken by this guy, but about 10 minutes after I won the coin, I realized that it was the same damaged-cleaned AU or whatever that he was listing as Unc with weird angles based on features unique to the coin. There was even a massive thread on another forum about it, in which he came to, LOL! Anyhow, that&#039;s another lesson learned....always check teletrade/heritage for high end coins if you&#039;re buying one raw off ebay. I&#039;ve seen other guys doing this a lot. And remember, if someone is harsh to you, as much as it&#039;s annoying and rude sometimes, it does make you learn quite fast...</p><p><br /></p><p>Just my two cents![/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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