We all see the threads on CT concerning ridiculous ebay auctions. I say question the scammer "en masse". I question them all of the time. Of course, you do have to really look at the auction before you go making rash judgements and/or accusations. I prefer to keep my questions polite, but at the same time, pointing out that I KNOW you're a scammer please prove me wrong. Questions to ask? 1) How can you guarantee they are unsearched? 2)How can a tubed roll be unsearched? 3) How do you know the roll is all Indian cents etc.? 4) Why are bidder ID's kept private? 5) Why is your feeback hidden? A personal favorite. .....and so on and so on. Any other things YOU might ask? I repeat, as stated earlier, no rash judgments etc. Getting opinions from forum members is a good idea but once it's "denounced" let the questions flow! clembo
Clembo, I do it all the time and as polite as I can be, lol. I've never seen my question put up on an auction or ever received an answer because then it will be put on the auction. If we can get everyone to do "en masse" we may be able to stop a few scum and save some honest people some of their hard earned money to these crooks. I'm all in!
My Son sells on ebay and has neighbors, friends, etc send in fantastically great wonderful feed backs. Gee think feed back means anything? And everyone knows that all those UNSEARCHED coins are truly UNSEARCHED. I always wonder how anyone could fall for that. If someone says I have ALL UNSEARCHED something or other, how would they know they all are whatever unless they did search? If I said I have 5 dimes in my pocket and all are Mercury Dimes but I never looked. Gee, would you believe me?
EDIT:cancel statement out of respect for Just Carl Read what you just typed......seriously it sure takes all kinds I guess, ( amazed)
Not everyone on ebay is a scammer. But i will say at some point we have all been scammed at one point or another on ebay. The fact is its up to you if your the buyer to use your head. Iv too have questioned plenty of ebay sellers and for me at least, I have had veru few problems. The few I have had I thought i would and i did. You know what im saying.
I dont bother, I just move on to a seller that isnt questionable... I used to do it a lot with ancient sellers but to be honest, its a full time job in that area...I just leave it to the ebay crusaders I figure the unsearch thing is the same as the uncleaned 'gold found' in ancients...its just a common trick and I dont want to spend time on all of them when I could be looking for a good deal.
Guys, Not here to start an argument as it were. I've posted this sentiment in other threads. The key is really knowing/suspecting that an auction is a scam THEN you start the questions. LOTS of questions from LOTS of people. I word my questions very nicely 99% of the time to see what response I might get. Calling someone a scammer right off the bat puts their guard up. Asking a "question" doesn't. Of course as they get more "questions" the guard goes up as they start to realize that a LOT of people are onto them. Gotta be careful with it but it can have fantastic results. AZJack, I think you know this from your "personal" crusades. Gotta let them know they are being watched. clembo
Two things get my goat. First is Civil War dates. Sellers list 1866, 1867, even 1868 coins as being Civil War dates. Hello? It was over. Second is gross errors in spelling. And I send questions all the time on these two subjects. Many times I get answers and thank yous. And most of the time I see the seller correct the listing very soon afterward. However I will not bid on the item even after a correction. The seller does not care enough to get his facts or spelling right in the first place. So how much did he care about the coin while in his possession?
A bit strict, not bidding on an item just because of a typo or spelling error lol... I've actually got some decent items at great prices, because they were misspelled, and nobody but me found them lol... I do have a personal rule about explamation points. No more than one per sentence, and no more than 2 sentences with one, or not going to bid... if your item is that great you shouldn't need to yell about it lol...
You are correct sir, it does work somewhat......I think this forum is responsible for a good number of scam listings being ended by seller or yanked by ebay. My 1st reaction was to the " shill " feedback statement, I took it out.
Frankly I am getting sick of eBay altogether. Recently I bought a coin on eBay from a member of this forum. I sent two messages asking how the coin would be shipped. No answer to either message. So I paid $1.95 for shipping and he sends it in a regular envelope with 58 cents postage. No wonder my questions got ignored. I am buying less and less on eBay. And once my Seller account balance of $4 is used up as a seller; I will no longer sell on ePay either.
I am sorry but victor will not be able to have any further contact with you as you do not care enough to make sure all words in your posts are spelled right. In all seriousness, I type fast and this is the internet. I might make a typo here and there but I certainly will not fret over punctuation and a sentence structure. I discarded that long ago in casual conversation in forums in favor of stream of thought quick posts. I am not in school anymore and if some internet professor doesnt like how I post here (or anywhere), I wont lose any sleep. To internet professors I would have to say you can get paid (very little) to do it in the real world!! If you feel the need to correct the spelling, sentence structure, and punctuation of people you dont know on the internet, I have no time for yah. Like was said above, more for me if spelling keeps you from buying. I couldnt think of a more absurd reason for not buying a coin. I used to try and make sure every post was correct when it comes to these things and I was even an internet professor myself at one time. If I was in a debate and someone used the wrong form of a word or had misspellings, I would disregard what they had to say and correct the post. A forum moderator sent me a private message saying that he felt it was a weak tactic of mine, that I had little to offer the thread but correcting peoples casual conversation on the internet. I felt rather silly so I stopped and after a time, decided that I would not bother correcting people or following strict rules of grammar on the internet as it just didnt matter and there are better things to do with my time. If I have nothing but that to offer, best just not to say anything. I think someone contacting me about a spelling error in a posting would just make me giggle and hit delete
As far as typos and things, sometimes the best coin auctions are the ones where the seller doesn't even know what they have. I've pulled a couple AU 1909 VDBs for $5 recently because they were listed as a part of another auction without the 'VDB' tag. One of them was 1909, 1910-S, 1911, 1912, 1913, all with clear images, and I was amazed to see the V.D.B. clearly on the reverse of the 1909 image. Got the whole auction of the AU 1909, VF 1910-S, and the other two nobodies for around $12 after shipping, all looked genuine to me. What really grinds my gears is that sometimes to find a decent deal on ebay you really have to gamble. You bid on a fuzzy picture or a guy who sells only a handful of coins a year... I've had it turn out good and bad. Worse yet are the shipping charges! I find all too often $2 shipping charges in a $0.50 envelope, or see a $5 shipping charge for one coin that usually ends up packed and shipped in a little bubble wrap for a cost of no more than $2 to the seller. I've even seen some $15+ shipping on a $10 coin. Insanity. My #1 rule is never buy anything that you can't be sure its worth the gamble. That usually means never buying any real pricey coins on ebay in fear of counterfeits, or sticking with the high feedback. Always ask questions when possible. My #2 rule is never buy on an impulse. There is almost always going to be another auction in the same week for the same or similar coin (if its not super-rare) for a better price or for a lower risk. Some sellers are even dumb enough to flood the market with 4-5 of the same item at the same time, driving the price way down. Shop around!! My #3 rule is never cry over spilt pennies. If you weighed the risk and still bought and lost, thats just ebay. Same motto I have when I lose at poker
It would never stop me from bidding, but spelling errors do make me think less of a seller. Its the digital equivalent of a messy shop. But exclamation points... THOSE annoy me!!!!!!!!!!!!!! CAPS ANNOY ME TOO!!!!!! Shipping doesn't bug me much. I've paid as much as $15 to ship a coin. Just factor it into your bidding.
Same here. If you can't take the time to re-read an auction for basic spelling errors, it's pretty sad. It just looks sloppy. Although it won't always stop me from bidding. Unless it's really bad. What bugs me the most is the amount of absolute garbage and over-priced crap on there anymore. I feel like I have to browse through 500 coins just to find one I'd 'consider' buying. It doesn't matter what I'm looking for. For example, try finding a nice, lower grade, problem free half cent right now. Everything has a problem with it. Almost none of them are slabbed. Then, just because gold has shot up so much recently, some sellers list their gold coins at just plain stupid, insane prices. Hundreds, sometimes thousands more than something's worth just in hopes of that chance of scamming someone who doesn't know any better. There's just so much of that on there anymore that ebay isn't nearly as enjoyable to me as I thought it once was. I actually feel sorry for the few who are trying to sell something halfway decent at a fair price. I have more time than most and I still don't have enough time to adequately search through all the junk. I've only been browsing there for less than two years for coins. My view from where I started to now has changed drastically, to say the least. If you do manage to find something half way decent, it gets bid up well past what it's worth, most of the time. On very, very, very rare occasions, a good quality deal comes along only because other people miss it. The term "deal" is thrown around here way too much when it comes to ebay, IMO.
