http://www.ebay.com/itm/221014299989 I'm trying to figure out what is going on here. According to the auction, this was part of an estate sale where he's selling a coin collection that supposedly belonged to his late grandfather and he's using the proceeds to pay for expenses of his passing. This seller hit the ground running in Dec of 2011 and he's been buying and selling mostly gold bullion. If you take things at face value, he's been losing money. Why would he continue doing that? Unless he's running some sort of scam that allows him to reach "Step 4: Profit!" So, with only a little bit of digging, I found out that virtually everything in this auction can be linked to auctions he won within the past couple/few weeks. I doubt he even had some of these items in hand when he created this auction. (Which would explain why he re-used the pictures from the auctions he won) So, he's willing to compromise his integrity in an effort to gain some sympathy bids. Whatever. I figure my CC company has my back if I decide to bid. I calculated the bullion value and the value of the wheat pennies and buffalo nickels to add up to a minimum of $3,900 at today's prices. I figure with a little premium added on the graded Silver Eagles, the Morgans and the name brand gold bullion, the value might have reached $4,330. So I would have been willing to pay somewhere in between. The closing bid was $4,660 + $20 shipping. My calculations: Low end Gold - 1.3 Oz @ 1,584.74/Oz = $2,060.16 Eagles - 17 @ 28.95/Oz = $492.15 .90 Silver - $10 Face Value @ 20.70/$ = $206.99 Morgan/Peace - 50 @ 22.29 ea = $1,114.58 V Nickels - 7 @ $0.75 ea = $5.25 Wheat Pennies and Buffalo Nickels = $30 Total low end estimate: $3,909.13 Add a 5% premium for the gold bullion and a $5 premium for each Silver Eagle and a $4 premium for each Morgan/Peace dollar and the estimate grows to $4,330.14. Keep in mind that the auction shows the item location to be APO/FPO, so the guy is probably a service member. Good for him assuming he's telling the truth, but then again, I also met a lot of dirtbags in the Army. A couple of his early feedbacks that he left for someone else mentioned fast shipping, all the way to Japan. So he could be stationed in Japan. With the general downward trend on gold and silver lately, why would someone pay such a premium for something that might take two weeks to receive? What are the possibilities? Someone bid too much. (FeeBay is full of idiots) Someone was suckered into believing they were helping a service member in need. Someone knew more about the value of specific coins in the auction. Someone actually believes graded bullion coins are worth $20 extra. The buyer is known to the seller and they are scamming FeeBay, the shipping company, or their insurance somehow. The guy was buying bullion expecting the price to rebound and is losing his shirt. Your mission: Don your tinfoil hats and figure out what this guy's purpose in life is, and why the auction ended so high.
I'm thinking a few bidder's failed to read the fine print at the end of the auction description: "I made a small typo in the body of the description, it should read 1 ounce and 10 grams of gold, not 2 ounces and 19 grams of gold " The seller uses a very large font with bright colors in the description, then adds an edtiting memo at the very end in a small, black font. I almost missed it myself.
jloring you are right just notice the bidding history what happened here is lot of bid sniping, bidder likely set up the snips before the auction description changed. I see it all the time and guess what ebay will never back the bidder in this case. One of the reasons' i set up my bids when auction is listed forcing seller to re-list the item if he plans on changing the description on me. Added also noticed this seller is willing to ship overseas: fyi last 6 months i have seen a lot of bidding coming from overseas driving up the cost of any items where the seller is willing to ship overseas. Someone in other forums mentioned that after some calculation of a auction price for few bullion he noted 5-10% min difference between domestic only and auctions with no restrictions.
Report it. The seller is obviously trying to hide the truth and hoping for someone to miss that last print and get stuck with the "gold" bar.
The only thing reportworthy at this point is the fact that he obviously lied about where the coins came from. To me, that isn't a terribly huge issue, but it is indicative of ethical issues. I'm just curious how deep those issues run. If he's running some sort of scam, I imagine we'll see it show up on his feedback in a couple weeks. If I call him on the lie, he'll do what 99% of scammers do and say "Oops, I was using an old template" or some other excuse.
