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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;SuperDave, post: 92350, member: 1892&quot;]All of the views expressed in this thread regarding the integrity and commitment of the members here are most likely true. One point to be made, though, is that the type of person with the drive to become an active member at a forum of this type represents a specific subset of the collecting community. A very small subset.</p><p><br /></p><p>There are over 28,000 US, 14,000 world, and 1800 ancient coin auctions on Ebay ending <b>today.</b> A quick perusal of completed auctions indicates that at least half of those coins will sell. What does that say about the size of the market? Are we all doing that buying?</p><p><br /></p><p>I don&#039;t think so.</p><p><br /></p><p>The overwhelming majority of people buying these coins are, I believe, unaware of the existance of forums like this and equally unaware of the points Mike is making. They are the sheep which are feeding the wolves he&#039;s talking about. The market exists, and unscrupulous dealers are springing up to take advantage of it. </p><p><br /></p><p>Peruse the Ebay Morgan auctions section some time and see what you can come up with as a percentage of sellers you&#039;d consider questionable - people misrepresenting coins who <b>should know better</b>, evidenced by their sales volume or statements about their experience/business status. If you don&#039;t question a third of the sellers, you&#039;re not looking hard enough.</p><p><br /></p><p>And some of these sellers are doing huge volume. Abon Enterprises has over 50,000 feedbacks, and almost all of them are coins. Another seller I shall not name, an NNC specialist, has over 22,000. It isn&#039;t you and I buying this crap.</p><p><br /></p><p>If you do not believe that our hobby is in the midst of a major moral crisis, you aren&#039;t seeing the reality. I haven&#039;t even addressed gradeflation, another unscrupulous practice in which even the major TPG&#039;s are participating.</p><p><br /></p><p>And, on a personal note, although I wouldn&#039;t consider myself dishonest, I would certainly assign myself the &quot;scheming&quot; adjective Mike mentions in A.1. I most assuredly snipe Ebay auctions I perceive to be held by someone who doesn&#039;t know the value of their coin. I most assuredly work very hard not to pay the true market value of what I buy.</p><p><br /></p><p>Any among you who ever engage in paying less than market value for your coins, to the deliberate detriment of the seller, are acting in a less than completely honest fashion. It&#039;s just been an engrained aspect of business for so long that we&#039;ve lost sight of the fact that it&#039;s a practice which will likely have us squirming when we meet our Maker.</p><p><br /></p><p>Mike&#039;s words rankle, and disturb, and probably truly don&#039;t apply to those who are reading my post. However, you, reading them in your small rooms, seem unaware that your rooms are in a very big house indeed.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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