buying coins on eBay advice needed

[pulltabfelix]

I have lately been buying Morgan Silver Dollars on eBay. The ones I like are the ones that have been circulated and have some black tarnish that causes the high areas to really stand out.

Here is how I do it.

My eBay filters: I look for Morgan Dollars selling for under $15.00 and are circulated. Then sort by ending soonest first. this reduces the numbers from 4000 or so available to 1000.

Then I look for those ending within 1-2 days and a zero number or low number of bids. I look at prospective Morgan dollar coin photos and try to pick the nicest looking ones. then I decide the max price I will pay including shipping and use auction sniper to put in my max amount. Usually $14.00. I rarely wish to pay any more than $14.00 plus shipping. Melt value now is $12.25 for Morgans.

If I lose, I lose, no big deal. tomorrow is another day. But often I get my winning bids on coins I want for less than $14.00.

I have seen some guys win auctions at $1 - $2 for Morgan dollars. How do they do that? Just luck? or do they know tricks I don't know?

any advice will be helpful.

 

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[eman1000]

Do you think those guys are waiting until the last second to put the 1st bid in?

 

[Diver_Down]

What's your buyer's ID?

 

[port ewen ace]

quality determines the price of a coin. not many higher grades will go for $14. junk silver will always be junk silver. better grades, better MM's & VAM's ain't cheap. better just to buy bullion. I have a Morgan listed at $50...... because it is worth that.

if ya want to snipe--- place an automatic bid, or wait for the clock to run out.

 

[cyberdan]

What’s your eBay ID? I think I need to block you

I will be listing a bunch of Morgan’s and peace soon. I can’t afford to sell at spot, there is still 13% in fees.

But I do like how you think, I still look for bargains. Most of my coins came as a bargain.

Good luck.

 

[kingskid1611]

That is how I do it. If I like the looks and the quality I put in my top bid and ride it out. If I win then yay me if not there will always be another day....I will be looking for your cyberdan…...

 

[Plumbata]

I like using sniping software as well; too many goodies to bid on and spending all day behind a screen is no fun.

If you don't search "worldwide" or on international ebay sites I suggest trying. Obviously avoid most sources in Asia, though good stuff can come from Japan. Figure out the Spanish, Italian, German etc. keywords and try searching the eBay.es, .de, .it etc sites for US coins (many wound up over there via tourism, trade, and troops during the World Wars). Some European sellers are not familiar with mintmarks and key dates so occasionally good pieces can be scrounged up.

edit: Don't log in to the different international eBay sites, as it will see that you are located elsewhere and will block from view items that are only shipped within country or the EU. Just search around without logging in and if they do ship to the US then great, if not then search for a reputable mail forwarding service and when you get that forwarding address after signing up you can add it to your eBay addresses. This adds expense of course but if the deal is big enough it's well worth it.

Sometimes sellers won't ship outside their country or outside the EU, so getting an account with a mail-forwarding service may be helpful. I had found a small collection of ancient roman and hammered medieval English coins and 18th-19th c. English and US tokens being sold by a seller in italy who wouldn't ship to the USA, so used a forwarding service and it all worked very smoothly. The other eBay sites are much more sleepy than ebay.com, but when good things do show up they often go for way cheaper than they would here. Using google translate to ask simply worded questions in the native languages of the sellers is very helpful if details or terms are ambiguous. Good luck!

 

[cyberdan]

Obviously avoid most sources in Asia, though good stuff can come from Japan.

Yes, stay away from China unless you collect counterfeit like I do.

Only be careful of Japan unless you are sure it will be shipped from Japan. I once came across a great buy (not ebay) the seller said he was from a certain part in Japan. I knew where he was talking about and did a search. It was steep mountainsides. Very few lived there. His icon pic was a cute Japanese girl. I looked up past buyers from him and a few said counterfeit. So I contacted one and asked if he was really Japanese. He had to go to the trash and pulled out a wrapper postmarked Hong kong. What is going to stop a seller of fakes faking his selling location?

All in all most Japanese sellers are pretty honest. Based on my knowledge of the Japanese in general. I have been there many times.

 

[Megalodon]

Are you sure others are actually getting real morgans for $1-2? I suspect those might be auctions that have ended early for a variety of reasons. One of those reasons is that some buyers convince sellers to stop an auction and then sell to them outside of ebay to save the fees. This is unethical of course. They could be fakes. The other, less likely, possibility is that a lister has made a mistake with a "buy it now" option and someone jumped on it as soon as it was listed. Your search method would miss those. When it is something I really want to see, I search ebay by new listings - maybe before a buy-it-now buyer scoops it up.

 

[A2coins]

Most silver will be bought on auction for very close to melt junk silver anyway if the seller has it listed on auction for 2 dollars he has a min bid they must be had for it to sell

 

[DaveVanP]

Morgan "Culls" go for about $15-16. Peace culls go for about $14-15. By "cull", I mean absolutely NO collector value: bent, holed, so worn as to be nearly unrecognizable. Any prices lower than that is either a fake, or someone has no idea what they have (not likely). While melt value right now is about $11/$1 FV for dimes quarters, and halves, for some reason, dollars always run almost 20/1 over face value, or 10-15 dollars over melt.

 

[dejapooh]

All in all most Japanese sellers are pretty honest. Based on my knowledge of the Japanese in general. I have been there many times.

The people in Japan are remarkably honest. I've left thousands of dollars of Olympic pins on a table so people could see them. I stood 10 feet away. People would take what they wanted and pay me when they had everything. I didn't lost a pin in 3 weeks.

 

[dejapooh]

Aren't there a lot of Counterfeit Morgans from China now? Is there any way to tell on Ebay if you are getting sweaty silver or fakers.

 

[huntsman53]

Aren't there a lot of Counterfeit Morgans from China now? Is there any way to tell on Ebay if you are getting sweaty silver or fakers.

There is always a lot of Counterfeit Morgans as well as other Counterfeit coins on eBay and there will likely always will be. It seems that most often, eBay ignores that a Seller sold or is selling some Counterfeits if he or she has sold thousands of genuine coins with no problems. It is the high volume Sellers that get away with a lot of things on eBay, while the low volume Sellers often get crapped on if they sell even one or two items that are not or aren't quite what they said they were. Knowing what to look for and recognizing the same about Counterfeit coins is about your best defense against ending up with a Counterfeit coin purchase off eBay. When I did buy and sell on eBay, I would save all of the listed pics of a coin purchase just in case there was a problem with the coin and when I got the coin, I would have the coin and the pics as evidence and hope that eBay and PayPal will get your' money back if there is a problem. With the way eBay treated me on a high dollar Target Rifle Scope return in 2017 and getting the refund of my' listing fees, I would say it would be best to wear a body condom like Leslie Nielson did in the movie, The Naked Gun.

 

[BC1969]

I'm glad that I read this post and its associated replies.
I've learned a ton of things here today.
Thank you all.

BC

 

[cyberdan]

The people in Japan are remarkably honest. I've left thousands of dollars of Olympic pins on a table so people could see them. I stood 10 feet away. People would take what they wanted and pay me when they had everything. I didn't lost a pin in 3 weeks.

Are you stocking up on pins? Next olympics is Tokyo 2020.

I just bought a Tokyo ticket last night. Got a good price of $1200 but took 4 hours of internet searching for price, route and shortist time. Then I went to pay through kayak and it would not even ask for my credit card number. So I had to call Delta and spent another 1.5 hours on hold and talking to some phillipino girl. I had to constantly have her repeat what she said.

 

[Wickaboag]

Been getting sniped left and right with just a few seconds left to spare on Morgans and Peace Dollars... Anything under 17.50, it's getting swallowed up.

For anything under Peace, Morgans, and other more premium-requiring coins, I'm aiming for 10-11x Face (Halves, Dimes, Quarters) Going to try to get a bit invested in silver and coins again... If nothing else, I'll build my collection off a few e-bay snipes.

Anyone else out here doing this? What are you looking to pay? (ex. 10x, 15x, etc).

Please share wisdom and guidance so we an all learn. Feel free to PM me if you want to chat about it