I was curious if anyone has experience with this website and purchasing coins from them... seizedpropertyauctions.com??? I noticed their ad on our website here, visited it and it seemed interesting? Anybody ever purchase through them? Good Experiences?? Bad Experiences?? Good deals? Over priced?? Just trying to get a feel for whatcha all think... Thanks in advance for any input you all have.. DAHULK
Dahulk,there is an old thread with a discussion on www.seizedpropertyauctions.com .I don't know where it is located though. Aidan.
Just use the search tool up top and search for them. I have bid there before, but never won. Great variety, good quality, extremely high prices
There are about ten threads on this subject - all of them reiterate the same thing - stay away from seizedpropertyauctions.com. Overpriced.
They do a great job of attracting bidders subject to auction fever. I made a number of bids when I first came across the site a few years ago, and typical lots went for 2-4 times my bids.
gotcha.. thanks for the heads up! Moderator feel free to delete this thread as it is indeed a duplicate of older posts. Thank you again.
Is it that they are from SGS or the current bid? If you are not registered you cannot see the bid amount. Both I would assume...
I am always concerned if there is in house bidding to drive up the price be it an individual e-bay seller or whatever. Feel bad for the spur of the moment bidder.
I'd be surprised if there wasn't that. And I'm not intending to single out anybody in particular. But what does it take to have some stooge bid up your item to avoid a loss, or, if you're just not getting the action you'd prefer? I honestly don't know the answer to that, as I don't bid online. But it makes sense that, to the extent practicable, you'd want a ringer in there, just in case, so as to cut your losses. Of course you loose the fee, or however that works, but that's better than selling the item short. How easy or hard is it for sellers to, let's just call it, "arrange" that? Again, I don't bid online, so I don't know.
The name for that highly unethical practice is "shill bidding" or "shilling". When it occurs, whether at a live auction or on internet sites like EBay, it is relatively easy to spot. The purpose is to drive up the price, not to buy the lot. I've been bidding at live auctions for more than 30 years, and occasionally it is difficult to distinguish between auction fever and shilling, but most of the time is is easy to spot what is going on. Once in a while auction fever results from two or more bidders with more money than brains really wanting an item, and bidding it up without regard to its true value. More frequently though, it results from two or more bidders not having done their homework, and believing the phony hype about a bid lot ("Don't miss out on this extremely rare upside down edge lettering on a GW dollar. L@@k!!!!!!!!!!!!!"). Those bidders often think they have gotten a bargain, when in fact they have grossly overpaid. From the bidding patterns I saw during the year or so I paid attention to the seizedpropertyauctions site, I think it is auction fever of the second type that is primarily responsible for the excessive bidding there.
I found out about this company from a newspaper story in Maine. The feds had busted a drug dealer that was using drug money to buy and sell coins and jewelry. They confiscated his entire collection and hired siezedpropertyauctions to liquidate it. I agree with all....I have never placed a bid on anything from this auction site because everytime I log on the bidding is outrageously high.
Well then now you've got me doing a slow boil because you're saying in effect that it's pretentious nonsense when one asserts that EBay is in any realistic way a reflection of fair market value as opposed to what some pumped-up nut may have been willing to shell out at any given moment. Do you have any experience with Teletrade and Heritage? I'm curious now how easy or hard it is to conspire as such in those. And BTW, also curious...just what, exactly, are these greysheets supposed to be based on?
If I was a coin dealer and I had some expensive items not even reaching the break even point, I would be rather tempted to put a bid in myself under another e-mail address or at least have a partner another dealer who would do it for me and I would do for him. I have noticed at times dealers buying from other dealers and wondered about it. But I do understand Roy in that there are most likely also the bidders who bid for the sake of bidding. I guess it boils down to "let the buyer beware" and "know your product".
There is a statistical analysis technique that involves throwing out the extremes. Despite all the fraud and ignorant bidders, if you ignore the highest and lowest closings I've found the closed EBay auctions to be a relatively accurate source of value information in my own specialty. (I don't know enough about US coins to form a reliable opinion on how accurate EBay information is in that arena.) There's a lot less fraud and ignorant bidding on professional coin sites like Heritage and Teletrade. In fact, I consider Heritage closed auctions to be among the most accurate sources of value information. Greysheets? I've never seen one featuring Japanese coins.
Thanks you guys. Like I said, I'm inexperienced. But you both make a lot of cents (hey, at least allow me a pun, here ).
the "fair market price" on eBay is often many times the realistic street price of an item. my other interest is electronic music. eBay has grossly distorted the market - often at the hands of shills or sellers who knowingly misrepresent the item for sale. one synth that is extremely popular started to get priced through the roof because a replacement component was no longer easily available. all the chips will fail, it's just a matter of time. the price has been bid higher and higher, even though there were over 500 thousand of these made. the thought was the synths were going to end up being used as donors and eventually there would only be a limited number left in working order. with the model selling for nearly 2.5 times the street price before it was common knowledge that the part was no longer available, a cost effective solution was inevitable. a replacement part was developed and the need to scavenge has been reduced, but the high market value had been set and no one wanted to sell for less because they do not know the reason it was pushed so high in the first place. the synth still shows up on eBay with starting bids 2 times the current street price. much like someone buying an SGS graded coin, i feel sad for the "winners." in the end they have won nothing. -Steve
Very interesting story, Steve, and very well explained. Yeah, I can see how that can happen, and the forces driving it...
