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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Cherd, post: 21799564, member: 24754&quot;]Considering the fact that I severely dislike auction companies and the hegemony that they have over collectables markets, it takes a lot of effort to not let my biases run away with me on these topics. I mean... they feel justified in taking 20+% of sale prices as &quot;Buyer&#039;s Fees&quot; (which are actually an underhanded way of implementing &quot;Seller&#039;s Fees&quot;), sometimes pile seller&#039;s fees on top of that, and then charge overblown prices for shipping.</p><p><br /></p><p>All of this based on the value of other people&#039;s stuff! And for simply having provided an electronic user interface for making buying/selling convenient. This type of web-based interface isn&#039;t difficult to produce, I develop database/user interface packages as a hobbyist, and I could reproduce their websites and mechanics in a month! (Probably take 2 months including debugging and beta-testing, but still!)</p><p><br /></p><p>But, to avoid letting my biases run away with me, I&#039;d give them the benefit of the doubt:</p><p><br /></p><p>- The confusion about NGC&#039;s listing of the 3C coin was probably honest human error on their part.</p><p><br /></p><p>- I&#039;d assume that auction companies parse coins out over multiple auctions in an attempt to maximize variety (and therefore profits) in each auction.</p><p><br /></p><p>- So long as you eventually get what you are due, then I wouldn&#039;t assume anything nefarious on their part when it comes to your money.</p><p><br /></p><p>All that being said, it still really sucks that hobbyists have to continue feeding them inordinate amounts of money for the purpose of buying and selling collectables. I really wish that we could develop and system for buying/selling/auctioning/trading with each other that eliminated middle-man money skimming. But, with such a system, there will always be garbage people that try to abuse it for their own gains, and therefore, it will probably never happen <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie3" alt=":(" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>The things that auction companies have going for them are exposure and security (they know who the buyers and sellers are). Avoidance of the extravagant fees would account for &quot;exposure&quot;, especially for low value items (&lt;$1K). But, covering security would always be the hang-up.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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