Buying and selling Collectible Coins on E-Bay

We started our business on EBay with our EBay store, which we still run. We have since opened our own direct website at davescoins.com and a bidStart store, which is a site like EBay, only specializing directly in collectibles. They began with stamps, but have quickly expanded in the US collectible coins market as well.

It would be nearly impossible to argue against the fact that eBay has continuously made it more difficult for both buyers and sellers of collectible coins, to find satisfaction in using eBay as a medium for engaging in the numismatic activity we all enjoy so much. So, certainly the balance between Joy and Pain referenced in the article has been tipping towards the Pain side as time goes by, and is probably at an all-time high in the Pain department at this moment, both for buyers and sellers alike.

However, I think the wrong approach is to throw in the towel, wave the white flag, or otherwise quit on a service that has ultimately been a massive positive force in numismatics as a whole. I would instead suggest that everyone who has found this service worthwhile in the past, take some time to let eBay know what is needed and wanted by the numismatic dealers and collectors, while working together to make the best of it.

I could probably go on forever discussing all of the many changes and ramifications and suggest countless potential solutions for each individual frustration. However, the bulk of it boils down to one specific important point in my opinion.

Communication; Sellers need to put in the extra effort to more effectively communicate to the buyers what exactly they are selling, how the transaction will unfold and describe the coins more meticulously and take better photographs.

This is extremely important in my opinion, as one of the most frustrating problems for sellers, (particularly sellers like us that try to be meticulous in our customer care), is that eBay has cut us off from being able to communicate to buyers unless they specifically communicate to us first. This is the major problem, because that was the most effective way to resolve problems for buyers before potential issues became a serious problem.

This in turn places as emphasis, as stated above, on the seller needing to do everything they can in their listings, photos and descriptions, to answer any potential problems for buyers beforehand. In this respect sellers need to take more responsibility and put in more effort on their part.

Buyers need to communicate more readily themselves, PRIOR to making the purchase. Moreover, they need to be more selective in determining not just the products they want, but WHO they want to sell the product to them. Establish relationships with sellers that do go the extra mile to make your experience better. Find out who those sellers are from your other contacts and communicate to those contacts when you find a trustworthy seller.

In essence; sellers need to go the extra mile to help the buyers. Buyers need to understand and recognize the sellers that do that. There is currently no alternative to the traffic and exposure that eBay offers sellers. Conversely, there is currently no alternative to the selection and freedom of choice that eBay offers buyers.

Additionally, how many new coin collectors have been created, or otherwise encouraged through eBay? Hundreds of thousands would be my guess. It would seem a shame and ultimately self-defeating, for all of us as the wider numismatic community, to give in to this frustration, rather than apply a little extra intelligence and honest effort to rise above it.

We are now selling BU coins in the mint cello!

Hello! If you have not been to our coin store for a while, we have added many new items that we did not offer before. The most recent is a wide variety of coins in Mint Cello - the coins haven't been touched since leaving the mint. These items all use a stock photo so that, coupled with less handling time for us, we can offer them at lower prices. They are not graded except to pull out any obviously spotted or damaged coins and are otherwise in the same condition as when they left the mint. We are offering many of these in sets of P and D (or P, D and S if applicable to the coin) for even more savings! Come to the store soon to see the new items.

Thank you and have a great day, Dave

"Unsearched" Defined

(As used in the eBay coin market)

Have you ever noticed how frequently coin sellers on eBay advertise groups of coins as "unsearched"? It is such a banal term on eBay that I have come to ignore it, except to occasionally chuckle to myself when I notice it as part of an obvious attempt to increase sales of an inferior product.

I have yet to find a group of coins that I think is truly "unsearched". The history of most circulated collectable coins is as follows: They get circulated for a few years until a collector finds them and puts them into coin albums; the albums get sold to a coin dealer when times get tough or by the grandchildren who inherit them; the coin dealer dumps them in buckets (watching for the obvious high dollar coins as he does, of course) and sells them to other collectors or dealers; the collectors or dealers sort them by dates or categories and sell the majority to other collectors or dealers, except for the nicer ones they pick out that bring higher dollars as individual coins or match an empty slot in an album; the majority then get mixed back in with larger groups of similar coins which then change hands (sometimes after being stored for a while) again and again, getting sorted for notable coins at many steps of the way.

One imaginable way to acquire "unsearched" coins would be to find a horde of coins someone has been pulling out of circulation and stashing away for many years without any knowledge or regard for the value of any particular date or condition of coin. Such a lot could be a fairly random sampling of coins and may possibly contain its fair percentage of the higher dollar coins -- but then as the dealer who purchased it, how would you know if it was such a lot without searching through it? And very few dealers I know would be able to resist the urge to look through it to find those 1909 S VDB pennies that must have gotten into the group.

But if most circulated coins go the route of changing hands from dealer to collector many times over, what really does "unsearched" mean here? Except for that very unlikely circumstance above, it seems to me that it wouldn't mean anything really useful about the coins. Although in all fairness, it could have a bit of value to the seller in that it gives the coins being sold an aura of mystery, generating a feeling of "there could be something really valuable in here!" without, unfortunately, conveying any truly factual information about the coins being sold.

If a guy is more or less honest about it when he labels a group of coins as "unsearched" to sell on eBay, he could mean that he hasn't personally searched through them. But they are almost certainly very far from being "unsearched". Even if the eBay seller hasn't personally searched through them, the constant weeding out process as collectable coins change hands over and over keeps most of the better coins carefully accounted for in the hands of collectors or dealers.

Another route that some coin dealers resort to is to label a group of coins as "unsearched" and then carefully make up a group that would be acceptable to the buyer, possibly throwing in a few nicer coins to ensure the recipient will be pleased. While this method does have its merits (if done fairly it should result in a happy customer and adequate profit for the dealer), it is still a bit dishonest in my opinion.

I personally prefer to be blunt and state what is contained in any group of coins I sell. If I am selling a random scoop from a bag of coins that have been picked through for high dollar coins, then I say so. If I am selling a lot of cull coins, that is how I promote it. And if I carefully make up a group of coins with a variety of different dates, including some higher dollar coins, then that is what I say in the description of the lot.

As a buyer on eBay I often think to myself: Wouldn't it be nice if everyone simply stated exactly what was being sold?

Best,
Derrick Enders
Dave's Collectable Coins eBay Store
(a division of FAS Coins Inc)