NGC EBAY deal

Hi Barry I may have met you at the fun show I share a table with tom from Ephesus Numis. Anyways I'm worried about is I will lose sales from coins that are not able to authenticate over a picture its not always ideal to to this from photos that is why I authenticate everything myself I'm personally not a fan of slabbing many of my customers like handling coins.but some send then to be slabbed. even an authentic coin can look suspicious in a photo now I'm going to have people balk because of this issue which should not be an issue for my coins. You see what I mean?

 

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My ebay id is xago

 

And if the photo is bad, or we can't tell from the photo if a coin is a forgery or not, the ebay bidder gets a report that says we can't determine authenticity from the photo and the ebay bidder isn't charged a penny and NGC doesn't make anything and no on loses a sale.

Barry Murphy​

 

I am part of a task force that reports listings in violation (fake, claims to be certified when not, etc.), verifies that in fact that there is a violation (to avoid false claims), and then removes the listing.

There are people in eBay who do care about this issue. It is impossible to automate the detection and removal of all of the fakes, so they rely on reports from trusted individuals. There is only so much time all of us can devote to searching eBay for fakes and reporting them.

 

that's out of line

 

I got few things from you and I follow your store

 

This seems like a contradiction in terms. Algorithms leave out subjectivity and common sense, but how can a fixed decision process without human involvement be anything but "objective"?

 

When I pay for an item and then get the purchase canceled, I can get pretty steamed about it. Like you said, "two weeks before Christmas" -- what if that left the buyer without time to look for another gift?

To you, it's one incident. But to eBay, and likely to your buyers, it's a separate incident for each coin, and "less than 10" (but more than "a few") can certainly be enough to seem like a problem.

 

I'm convinced at this point that ebay has probably internally circulated a memo to staff to redirect all complaints of authenticity in the ancients section to the trash icon on their desktops while whistling a short tune and rolling their eyes.

They clearly couldn't care less.

Rasiel

 

I have reported many, many fakes on eBay only to see nothing happen and some unfortunate buyer getting stuck with a bad coin from a known fake seller. It wouldn’t even be worth having a fake seller list if eBay did something about them. Maybe ebay does have people that look into fakes but from my personal experience I haven’t seen it... quite the opposite.

As it stands today I do not think ebay is a net positive for the hobby. The NGC deal does seem like a positive step to me though. If only NGC would offer an opinion on all their ancient coin submissions without the plastic tomb (still think you’re awesome Barry)

 

You are right Jeff. But, I didn't mean to say that the algorithm was not objective. What I meant was eBay management has no sense of objectivity or reason. Their mission is to make money and ensure that the process is politically correct.

 

That's for sure.

Nope, lost me again here.

 

I get the general feeling that the posting is controlled to the point that they don't want to take a chance at offending anyone. For instance, could I post for sale my 1943 WW II button that has a bullseye around a Jap soldier and says "...Remember Pearl Harbor - Keep 'em dying..."?

 

1) With ancient coins?

2) It doesn't seem to slow the posting of "heads I win/tails you lose" nudie novelty coins and the like, not to mention modern over-the-top partisan political tokens from "both" "sides".

3) The things they do control -- Cuban coins because of perceived restrictions from US law, Nazi coins not being allowed for sale in Germany, obsolete food stamps because someone interpreted US code to say selling them was illegal -- are controlled not because they "offend" someone, but because eBay decided they'd face legal repercussions if they didn't try to block them.

I'm just having a really hard time seeing eBay as an agent of the "PC police".

 

I guess I don't spend enough time on eBay.

 

'S OK, I'm sure I spend too much.

 

I may have developed an unfair bias. But, I just became very soured by them over the years.

 

I used to be a BIG eBay booster. I was a Power Seller for a couple of years. My brother was active enough early enough that he talked about email correspondence with "Pierre" (Omidyar, the founder). I've soured quite a lot on them over the years, partly because of ever-rising fees, but mainly because of their terrible decision to ban negative or neutral feedback on buyers.

But I still find eBay useful in some contexts.

 

If it is like so, how do I know this potential customer isn't put off by the undetermined status and is now scared to buy a single coin off of me? The buyer assuming if this one coin is odd then they all are...this ebay_ngc deal has many holes

 

This is why I think there could be a lawsuit because a third party who has not seen the coin in hand is giving an opinion on it. How much potential sales can one lose from these opinions? If I have a coin that ngc is saying is suspect but I have handled under magnification and deemed it authentic there is a big problem here.