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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Hiddendragon, post: 25405585, member: 25270&quot;]To the actual question of has eBay changed, what sticks out to me is when I first started buying and selling in the early 2000s it was really focused on auctions and on selling things like collectibles and used items and it gradually shifted to encouraging buy it now and selling more retail style items. eBay might not directly come out and say it but their policy changes all are pushing sellers in this direction. eBay clearly wants to be another Amazon.com and focus on new items with bar codes that are easily classified and promoted. Also when I first started buyers could pay by check, money order, cash, Paypal, credit card, and now it&#039;s only electronic payments. Everything is expected to include tracking, even if the item costs 50 cents. As for what&#039;s for sale, there&#039;s more coins available than ever. When I sell I usually do a price comparison with current listings of the same item, and very rarely do I not find at least a few, whereas ten years ago when I was buying more on eBay I&#039;d often search for a coin and not find any available for sale. </p><p><br /></p><p>As usual when discussing eBay on this forum I find myself in opposition to most opinions. I use it to sell world coins and it&#039;s great for this. There is real value in foreign coins but most dealers in the U.S. don&#039;t have the knowledge or interest. The only way you&#039;re going to get the true value of them is to sell them on eBay. Yes, the prices have increased a lot in recent years, but that&#039;s the free market, not some inherent feature of eBay. If buyers are showing that they will pay a little more to get the item that they want shipped to their door then sellers are going to charge that much. Any of you would do the same thing if your business was buying and selling things. If no one is buying at those prices then someone will come along and sell it for less. When I sell I do a comparison search for my coin, sort by &quot;lowest price to highest,&quot; and list mine around the same price of the lowest comparable item because I don&#039;t want my coins sitting around for a year. The people who make it sound like everything for sale on there is fake items sold by Chinese bandits are exaggerating. I can&#039;t speak for the U.S. coin market but most of what I see for sale in foreign is legit. There are fake items, usually from outside the U.S., so you do need to be educated but that&#039;s the case no matter where you buy.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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