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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Bartelmoose, post: 726912, member: 21313&quot;]<b>eBay; risk tolerance; &amp; experience</b></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>You make some good points.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>My orginal post regarding people adverse to eBay auctions was not meant to inflame, but simply to illustrate each person has their own individual level of risk aversion i.e., a risk acceptable to me may not be acceptable to you. </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>However, I don&#039;t accept the premise that only fools buy raw coins on eBay.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>eBay wouldn&#039;t work if it&#039;s perceived to be a rigged game manipulated by crooked sellers. If eBay was a rigged game or crooked crap shoot for coin sales &amp; purchases it would collapse; yet it is the biggest auction house for coins in the world, and its coin auction sales greatly exceed the aggregate total of all other worldwide auctions/ sales of coins each year.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Indeed, a substantial number of major buyers and sellers in the US trade on eBay and monitor eBay sales.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Certainly there are crooked sellers that appear on eBay.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>But &quot;The Bay&quot; does a pretty good job of quickly weeding out problem sellers once they become aware of them. </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>They have to; eBay via PayPal has substantial exposure on billions of dollars of transactions.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>How do they find the crooks? </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>A fair number are discovered by their security monitoring staff through a sophisticated screening process. But most are discovered via eBay members who alert them to potential &amp; actual bogus auctions.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>How do I know all this?</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Since I&#039;ve conducted well over a hundred thousand dollars of activity on eBay (mostly purchases) I&#039;m a member of the eBay Voices program. A few years ago I was invited to the Big House in San Jose for two days and was shown how they monitor auctions.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>In fact, I just directed eBay to a thread on this forum that describes a recent eBay auction between a crooked eBay buyer and crooked eBay seller.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Yes, eBay is very much a Caveat Emptor environment that is predicated upon a knowledgeable buyer who&#039;s capable of researching not only the item being auctioned but the track record of the Seller.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>It epitomizes the expression &quot;if you can&#039;t stand the heat stay out of the kitchen.&quot;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>But many people are surprised when they discover that eBay has more detailed guides on how to buy coins safely than a lot of authoritative books on the subject.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>As a final observation, I was pleased to see you state &quot; I&#039;ve worked for an investment firm for 10 years. Obviously, I&#039;ve done a fair amount of trading over that time...&quot; followed by some wise advice re: investing.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>I&#039;ve been enforcing the federal securities laws for over 32 years myself and agree with those points wholeheartedly.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>I need to stop posting dialogue and take some pics of the the 1895-O Morgan and the replica &amp; post them.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Bart</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>:thumb:[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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