Welp... My auctions ended...

...and the results are the exact opposite of what I thought should naturally happen.

For all my silver coin auctions (including one auction involving gold), I got less than melt from them. The auctions resulted in about $100 less on average than what I thought they would bring in.

But the kicker is that all my auctions that involved little or no precious metals, have mostly sold for way more than I have expected.


:scratch: ?


At least I have (almost) reached my minimum overall sales goal. If it wasn't for the latter auctions making up for it, I would have been quite upset.

 

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Selling coins can be an eye opening experience if you've never done it before. Buying and selling coins can be profitable, but you better be able to select the right coins at the right price. In regards to your gold and silver: You would have done better to carry the bullion to a show and sell it to one of the silver buyers.

 

I rarely see silver for melt on ebay.

 

Wow, that's tough man. Why the sell off?

 

Realizing less than melt and selling them for less than melt are two different things when one keeps in mind the 10-12% that ebay/PayPal take as well as shipping.

 

Yeah that sucks like a big wet & dry shop Vac. Terrible through and through!! Better luck next time vision.

 

Sounds pretty bad, but ebay has turned into a giant Buy it Now store. Most auctions end up a bit low due to buyers looking for deals or setting snipes at last seconds instead of bidding. The sellers that really wants something might click the BIN and bypass the wait and see approach.

 

depends. the bin listings are generally absurb

 

Well there are always the crazy sellers. But at times you can find something for average price, or even something that is only slightly higher.

 

I try to get them at melt but never can. I usually bid on Barbers and standing quarters which never go for melt. The Redbook people bid them up. I do better for silver coins at a PM shop. I did get a couple 40%er halves though for under melt that is just because silver went up the next day or so. I paid 15 cents over melt. I did get quite few silver coins at the PM shop.

What kind of silver coins were you selling? Silver coins that are sought after by collectors always get a few dollars over melt. Some silver coins like roosies, Washingtons, and Kennedys just haven't matured. How much was your shipping? How much do you get including shipping? Many bidders deduct shipping from their max bid since many sellers use it to cover overhead expenses which is unfortunate for those sellers who charge what it costs to ship. If that was the case all the time a buyer might say "I would pay for gas if I went to a show or shop".

I noticed that coins that are copper or nickel always go for the same amount since spot price for the precious metal is not considered. You got a coin a few bidders that want what you got, a bidding war starts. I know a few coins I bought got driven up by snipers but I wanted the coin so kept outbidding them. After that, I figured I am paying the value since others were looking to pay a close amount that I paid.

I was looking at BIN but rarely see a good deal and many of them are overpriced. I always bid on auctions since I think I am getting the true value when a few people are after the same coin. There are some coins that people may want where the correct value for it is hard to determine, like an older coin that has been cleaned at some point. Going by that, it appears an older VF harshly cleaned coin drops down to Redbook G4 price.

 

I think it's really tough to trade melt-grade silver; I don't even try. With silver so volatile, and the costs of acquiring and selling, you're lucky to make anything - all the profits are eaten up by overhead.

The silver I'm buying will be HELD for years.

 

I agree, silver over the short term is highly manipulated and very volatile. People always look at coinflation.com when bidding. I did get those halves for well under melt but the seller used an expensive shipping method. For $8 he should have just put a stamp on it for 45 cents. I know what you mean about over head. I sold a 1913 wheat cent for a little over a buck and Ebay and Paypal took 46% total. Fortunately the cent cost nothing since someone found in their change and gave it to me. But for silver though right now it is a bad time to sell, great time to buy. I bought some junk silver. Silver is a nice long term investment though because of the steady increase and it is good hedge against inflation. Fortunately for me, when I started buying "junk silver" in March, I really mostly bought lower grade collector coins out of coin books I just thought were junk at the time because the prices hadn't been changed in a while and they cost the time. I went in buying junk but was being picky about it and returned one quarter because I didn't like the way it looked.

 

If you believe in silver market manipulation (like I do), Google "Andy Hoffman's rants."

 

If I'm going to go through all that trouble I'd just buy silver on the Commodities exchange.

 

Were these sold on ebay or on another auction site?

 

That's because the ones at good prices get bought before you see them. If you're just looking at BINs that have been around for a few hours or days, yeah, the only ones left are the ones that aren't great deals. Look at the newly-listed ones, and you'll see occasional bargains. Better be quick, though; some last for less than a minute.

 

Just a heads up a lot of counterfeit items end up as bins (since they are hoping the auction ends early before it gets tagged as counterfeit) just a word of warning before you hit buy on a time because the price is too good to be true, as the saying goes....

 

The thing is you have to know what you want. Hitting the BIN on a impulse buy is a terrible idea. You really have to know what to look for and sometimes even take a chance by the seller's reputation.

 

Yup. I've had to use Buyer Protection on one or two BINs, and I've reported quite a lot of others. There are still legitimate bargains to be had.

 

Regarding the OP's disappointment with his auctions, I remember seeing his listings the day they were put up. What struck me as odd was how the items were grouped together. Some of them didn't make sense to me. Maybe that supressed the bidding?