Message:

<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Reid Goldsborough, post: 1, member: 34&quot;]Per request, I&#039;m posting this along with two other article-type messages.</p><p><br /></p><p>Online auctions can be a great way to buy coins. You can shop from the convenience of your home or office any time day or night. There&#039;s a huge selection, and though the selection is skewed toward the bargain priced and aimed at bargain hunters, many big-ticket coins are auctioned as well.</p><p><br /></p><p>The big three online auction houses are eBay (<a href="http://www.ebay.com" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.ebay.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.ebay.com</a>), Yahoo Auctions (<a href="http://auctions.yahoo.com" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://auctions.yahoo.com" rel="nofollow">http://auctions.yahoo.com</a>), and Amazon.com Auctions (<a href="http://auctions.amazon.com" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://auctions.amazon.com" rel="nofollow">http://auctions.amazon.com</a>), with eBay being far larger than Yahoo Auctions and Amazon.com Auctions combined.</p><p><br /></p><p>Unlike most in-person auctions, online auctions typically stretch out over days and end at a specific time. The highest bidder when the clock strikes, wins. There are tricks to placing winning bids, and other tricks in maximizing the bids placed on items you&#039;re selling. The strategizing, ticking clock, and winning and losing impart a game quality to online auctions. Online auctions, in short, are fun.</p><p><br /></p><p>Online auctions can also be risky. Fraud is common. eBay contends that the rate of auction fraud on its service is very low. It says that only one &quot;confirmed&quot; fraud occurs per 40,000 eBay listings. That is indeed a low rate -- 0.0025 percent.</p><p><br /></p><p>The FBI, on the other hand, contends that the figure is much higher. As a part of its &quot;Operation Cyber Loss&quot; project, it determined that the rate of online auction fraud is about one in a hundred, or 1 percent. This is a very high rate of fraud, a whopping 400 times higher than what eBay contends.</p><p><br /></p><p>The FBI&#039;s figure is the one to believe. eBay, whose earnings continue to soar, is very reluctant to intervene in individual auctions, describing its service as merely a venue that brings buyers and sellers together. Its policy is that it won&#039;t interfere, for instance, with the auction of a blatantly counterfeit coin that&#039;s auctioned as an authentic coin unless it&#039;s contacted first by law enforcement authorities. eBay is very much skewed toward promoting the interests of sellers -- they&#039;re the ones who pay fees and earn eBay its profits -- and not bidders.</p><p><br /></p><p>Common problems with online coin auctions range from overgrading (sometimes with the help fringe grading services), inaccurate or misleading descriptions, and deceptive photography to counterfeits being sold as authentic coins (with or without the seller&#039;s knowledge) and outright nondelivery of coins purchased.</p><p><br /></p><p>All the online auction services provide buyers and sellers with some protection against fraud. eBay provides fraud insurance, but it&#039;s limited. It offers only up to $200 of insurance per item, with a $25 deductible.</p><p><br /></p><p>One protection against fraud is &quot;feedback&quot; -- a way for participants in a transaction to rate one another and for others to see those ratings. A large percentage of negative feedbacks is a clear signal to stay away from a particular buyer or seller.</p><p><br /></p><p>But feedback is far from foolproof. The ratings are always skewed positively, since leaving someone with negative feedback opens you up to receiving retaliatory negative feedback in return, and many people are reluctant to risk tarnishing their feedback record this way. One trick to avoid getting retaliatory feedback is to wait to leave feedback until the seller has done so first, after receiving your payment.</p><p><br /></p><p>You should also avoid buying a big-ticket item from a seller with few feedbacks. But buying a more expensive item from a seller with many feedbacks can also be risky, depending. One trick that scammers use is to sell a number of low-cost coins or other items to build up positive feedback, then auction off a big-ticket coin and skip town, virtually or otherwise, without sending it. It&#039;s always best when buying an expensive coin to make sure that the seller has sold similarly priced coins in the past.</p><p><br /></p><p>If you have any suspicions about a coin being auctioned, send a message through eBay to the seller asking for clarification. If he or she doesn&#039;t respond or if you have doubts after getting a response, refuse to bid. You can also ask in rec.collecting.coins if anyone has had dealings with a particular seller or sees anything suspicious about a particular auction.</p><p><br /></p><p>It&#039;s usually good policy to refuse to buy any higher end coins through online auctions in which the seller doesn&#039;t offer return privileges. Even if the online image of the coin hasn&#039;t been deliberately manipulated, you can see far more of any coin in person than you can from a photo. Sellers who claim they&#039;re liquidating estates and that therefore all sales are final may be hiding something unpleasant behind their no-returns policy.</p><p><br /></p><p>Online images of coins that are too dark or too small or too fuzzy may indicate the seller lacks imaging skills or is deliberately trying to hide something. Sharp, bright photos of coins in which the fields seem overly smooth may have been manipulated in an image editing program. One way you can sometimes spot this is by saving the image to your hard disk, loading it into an image editing program, and looking at individual pixels to see if they&#039;ve been blended together.</p><p><br /></p><p>It&#039;s also usually good policy to refuse to participate in private auctions, where the seller keeps the bidders&#039; eBay user ID private. Being contacted by other eBay users is one way to avoid getting cheated. Cheaters know this. Another common tactic among cheaters is running three-day auctions, long enough to snag someone but, in the minds of sellers, not too long so as to attract undue attention.</p><p><br /></p><p>An auction with unusually low bidding for an authentic or undamaged coin of its type, date, mint mark, and grade may indicate that bidders are staying away from it for good reason. The old saw, &quot;If it&#039;s too good to be true, it probably is,&quot; very much applies to online auctions. Deals can be had, but you need to be careful.</p><p><br /></p><p>On the other hand, of course, not all low-feedback or no-returns or bad-photo or private or three-day or low-bid auctions are scams. But these are all possible warning signs.</p><p><br /></p><p>Ultimately, with online auctions, knowledge is power. Arm yourself with information like this, and you&#039;ll greatly lessen your chances of getting duped. You can find more at the following Web sites:</p><p><br /></p><p>Auction Watch&#039;s Tips and Tactics</p><p><a href="http://www.auctionwatch.com/awdaily/tipsandtactics/index2.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.auctionwatch.com/awdaily/tipsandtactics/index2.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.auctionwatch.com/awdaily/tipsandtactics/index2.html</a></p><p><br /></p><p>Internet Fraud Complaint Center&#039;s Fraud Tips</p><p><a href="http://www1.ifccfbi.gov/strategy/fraudtips.asp" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www1.ifccfbi.gov/strategy/fraudtips.asp" rel="nofollow">http://www1.ifccfbi.gov/strategy/fraudtips.asp</a></p><p><br /></p><p>The Federal Trade Commission&#039;s &quot;Internet Auctions: A Guide for Buyers and Sellers.&quot;</p><p><a href="http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/menu-internet.htm" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/menu-internet.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/menu-internet.htm</a>[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

Your name or email address:

Do you already have an account?

• No, create an account now.
• Yes, my password is:
• Forgot your password?

Stay logged in