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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;umtrr-author, post: 280871, member: 5719&quot;]I guess I feel strongly both ways... </p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;m in violent agreement with GD that the primary responsibility for keeping oneself safe from fraud et al is oneself.&nbsp; &quot;Caveat emptor&quot; was not originated when eBay came along... </p><p><br /></p><p>On the other hand, what&#039;s different between eBay and the basic neighborhood flea market is its <b>reach</b>.&nbsp; Post a coin for sale, or any other item for that matter, out on eBay and the potential audience is huge, and worldwide.&nbsp;&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>This is clearly a double-edged sword: it&#039;s possible to get something on eBay you&#039;d almost never find otherwise.&nbsp; A non-coin personal example is an old &quot;Social Studies&quot; book I read over and over as a first grader, delivered to my door for just a buck plus shipping.&nbsp; I can&#039;t imagine how many flea markets, used book stores, garage sales, etc. I would have had to comb to come up with it otherwise.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>I would be lying if I said I didn&#039;t get some great deals on eBay as well, although not so much in the coin category, and I think most folks here would be with me on that point.&nbsp; However, you&#039;ve really got to know what you&#039;re doing, which comes back to education.</p><p><br /></p><p>But there&#039;s the downside, and although we&#039;re talking mostly completely fraudulent items here, there is also the general problem of poor or misleading descriptions and grading-- whether deliberate or not.&nbsp; It&#039;s one thing for a less than above board &quot;dealer&quot; to shove an NG-0 Morgan in your face when you&#039;re down at the local swap meet and it&#039;s another when said &quot;dealer&quot; has an audience that&#039;s potentially in the thousands, if not more.&nbsp; It does a disservice to the hobby that is far more damaging than if confined to a purely local venue.&nbsp; The net for Thalia and me is that I&#039;ve largely shied away from eBay for coins-- I just don&#039;t feel I know enough yet to &quot;Shop Victoriously&quot; (to use their silly new slogan).</p><p><br /></p><p>One other point that&#039;s somewhat unrelated-- does it seem that the Canadian TPGs have been frozen out of the official listing of approved graders?&nbsp; Though they don&#039;t &quot;slab&quot; in the strict sense of the word, I don&#039;t think that ICCS would be considered a shady player in the market, for example.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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