Major ebay sellers tell me that the only way to make money as sellers is to have your coin buddies shill up the items waiting for the suckers to come in not seeing all the fake bidding. Of course buyers can avoid this with highly disciplined pricing analysis. And sellers cannot compete effectively with shillers and will probably have to do buy it nows with offers.
Very true. Coin collectors, especially ones spoiled by sites like this and get to discuss coins, do not really understand how we are a tiny, tiny little minority.
I won this because of mediocre pictures, but had a strong hunch. Purchased raw. Paid less than AU money:
I like to snipe my bids on items. I don't give anyone more than a few seconds to realize they've been outbid. Unless someone just happens to set a really high max bid before the items ends, which is not all that often.
The buy it nows where you see the listing before anyone else does with fuzzy pictures may be the best opportunity. A friend bought a gold coin for $800 that graded at the $3500 level every day of the week. The major auction companies say in their contract they have a right to bid on consignor coins. On Great Collections you always see a lot of low risk bids early in the auction cycle. Heritage is so big that they probably don't bother unless it is on their want lists.
There's no rhyme or reason to the results of ebay auctions. If it's an honest auction with no shill bidding, the winning bid will depend on how many bidders at that point in time want that coin and how bad they want the coin. It can get competitive at times. We all have seen hungry bidders drive the price up over what that coin is worth. And on the flip side some very similar coins won't have that competitive bidding and the winning price can be much less than true value.
By choosing ANACS, aren't you still looking at getting ~AU money for that? I've noticed ANACS slabbed coins get about 50% of the PCGS list price at grade. If you think it will hold the RB color status and MS63 grade, it'd behoove you to get that into PCGS plastic. Otherwise, I couldn't see it going for much more than $225 for what should be a $380 coin.
Sometimes a bidder will set a maximum bid and then not check the auction until after it is over. If they win they win, if not, they don't really care.
This is really the smart way to bid. Nobody can ever snipe in above you if your first and only bid really is the maximum you want to pay.
If the images support MS63 RB on the coin, they will pay around it if they like the coin. PCGS does not = $$. Drinking the koolaid....
There are 2 reasons that people pay PCGS money for a PCGS coin: 1. Trust 2. The Registry Neither of those apply to an ANACS coin - so they will not pay the price. If they really like it, at the most they'll pay a soft price minus the expected cost of crossing to PCGS.
What percentage of coin commerce is registry? Those are generally those into that and the stratospheric price coins.
The great majority of all PCGS coins don't even sell for PCGS guide prices. Not sure what your point is here. When the OP said he paid less than AU money, how do you know he was talking about PCGS AU money? AU money by PCGS guide may still be a lot more than the OP's "less than AU money" if he wasn't referring to the laughably high PCGS price guide (for more coins and series).
There could a variety of reasons you won the auction at a low price. It really sometimes just depends on who is on Ebay at any given time.