Ebay finds, got em? Post them here.

I just got 8 ounces of junk silver for$50. IDK if it is a scam so far...

 

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Check the description, most of the time war nickels make up the majority of the lot.

 

But if your bid is equal to or higher than the reserve, eBay will bump the current bid up to the reserve, right?

Suppose the current bid is one dollar, and the reserve is at twenty. If you bid fifteen, you still haven't met the reserve, but you'll be shown as the high bidder at $1.25 (or whatever the minimum increment is at that level). But if you bid twenty, you'll immediately be shown as the high bidder at $20.00, with the reserve met.

In other words, it doesn't take two people bidding at or above the reserve to meet it. At least, that's what I've observed.

 

Even if it's 8 avoirdupois ounces of war nickels, that's still not a bad price for 45 or so war nickels. I generally won't pay more than $1 each, given the haircut when you try to sell them, but then I'm cheap.

 

I dunno... Just sounds fishy to me. I once came across a guy selling 12 mercs claiming they were an ounce (it's not).

 

Worst case scenario, they ship you 8 avoirdupois ounces of war nickels. But even then, you did OK as long as it was $50 shipped:

War nickels weigh 5.0 grams.
28.34 grams in an avoirdupois ounce.
5.668 war nickels in an ounce.
45.344 war nickels in 8 ounces.
Coinflation lists their current melt value at $1.54.
Which means $69.83 is the melt value for 8 avoirdupois ounces of war nickels.

War nickels often trade at a small discount to melt, but usually not that much of a discount. If they're in decent shape, you can them sell for $2 each if you are patient.

 

With any luck, that's how it is now.

I have had this happen on several occasions. Not recently, but definitely within the past year.

Perhaps some experimentation is in order...

 

12 Mercs at full weight is 30 grams.

One troy ounce is 31.1 grams.

One avoirdupois ounce is 28.35 grams.

12 non-slick Mercs will make an avoirdupois ounce. If you see an auction specified in ounces, unless it specifically says troy, expect avoirdupois. If it's specified in pounds, make sure it's avoirdupois pounds (16 avoirdupois ounces, 454 g), and not troy pounds (12 troy ounces, 373 g). As far as I can tell, the only people who currently use troy pounds as a measure are eBay ripoff artists.

 

bq, that one doesn't count. It makes all of our "deals" invalid.


I have had so many great deals on ebay, I couldn't post them all.
I will say, the majority of the deals occured due to terrible seller pics, or they simply didn't know what they have.

Two examples:

I bought a large lot of Canadian large cents. It was somewhere around $75.
Part of the description said "no key dates". Considering this, the price was still very fair.
When it arrived, it was near complete, in addition to 20+ duplicates, and included the the best key date (1858). That's the first year for the large cent series.
A pretty nice one to boot! I feel it's a $150 coin. Some wonderful toned coins were also in there. Petro has since stole the toners from me.





Here are a couple extreme examples of toners bought for melt, or very close to it. Due to very poor pictures, or a scanner was used.




I realize toning is a personal preference and not for everyone. So what I consider a "steal" may differ from what others define it as.

One more example:
Many folks know I am a raw collector. So it gets a little risky when buying older coins, and in high grade.
It doesn't always work out for me, but in this case, it certainly did:
This was XF money. My opinion is this is a gem.

 

Yes, always expect the worst.

I've even seen auctions where the title read something like "5 ounces of silver" and in the auction details specified it was 5 ounces of junk silver coins (probably war nickels or 40% halves). One of the worst ones I saw was a guy selling the Mexican Peso coins that only have 10% silver, and he was selling them by the ounce. Nowhere in his auction did he specify the coins only contain 10% silver. Buyer beware! :rollling:

 

Won this a few months ago for about $170 and just sold it last week on eBay for $295.

 

NICE One

 

I love hunting for eBay "hidden treasure", even though it's getting harder, and even though I'll never top the 1942/41-D find.

Beat-up but VF-EF detail 1872 IHC, $12 shipped, should get $50-100

$716 silver melt for $730 shipped, which turned out to include a VF-EF 1901-S half that probably covers the cost of the lot

33 war nickels for $13, $260 melt of silver for $121.48

The bargains are out there, but if I didn't count the time spent searching as entertainment, the hourly rate would still be pretty low. Not something I could support my family on, for sure.