How Many Of You Collector's Buy From E-Bay?

I have bought a lot from ebay, mainly because of selection and ease.
Nothing beats browsing on your computer, paying with paypal and letting the coin come to you.

It is getting more difficult to find good stuff through all the garbage though. Maybe I'm maturing?

Good 75% of my collection is bought on ebay.

The reason is that the coins I collect (8 Reales) are hard to come by in my neck of the woods and the few that pop up are outrageously priced.

I will add that when it comes to bullion including ASE's, I do buy all of them locally.

I buy occasionally from ebay. When I find a seller I really like, though, I usually go on a long streak of buying just from him/her on ebay. And build a relationship while I'm at it, so we both know what I'm looking for. That works very well for me, and I ended up building up good sized orders to save on postage.

I have one main coin store I go to. Good atmosphere, dealer and the price is good. I also like to look at my coins up close before I decide on it.

I've spent most of the past year catching up on more modern issues, proofs and such. This being the case, ebay has served me well. I'd be much more reluctant to buy a true high-dollar item on there, though.

About 30% my coins are from ebay. I specialize in Mexico and know most the dealers and go to them when I'm looking for something. If they are selling on ebay, I'll call.

I use ebay to buy and sell. I've also bought from Heritage and TeleTrade.

I've only had 3 issues on ebay. One was a Morgan with a 1" scratch, that was not the coin pictured, but it was only a $35 coin. The seller refunded my payment and paid for all shipping cost. The coin pictured was sent to the wrong person and they wouldn't send it back to him.

The 2nd was a "sealed" mint bag of 5000 cents. The coins were falling out of the box when I got it and it looked as if something had been spilled on the bag. The seam was open 3" on one end and the bag had several holes. All of the coins were brown and some were green.

I looked at the photos he took and it looked as if he wrinkled the bag to cover up the holes and shot only the front. The stitching was intact on the front and pulled away from the back of the bag. If he had a shot of the reverse, I would have seen that the stitching was only full on the front.

He blamed it on the Post Office and wanted me to wait until he worked it out with them before giving me a refund. He also told me that he had talked to ebay and that I didn't need to open a case.

I opened a case with ebay and had my money back in 2 or 3 days. I was out the $15 he charged for shipping and then he wanted me to give him good feedback even though the bag was bad and I had to open a case to get my money back.

The last one was a sealed 1961 proof set. When I opened it, the cello had "decayed". All the coins were corroded and were in one end of the set. I contacted the seller and he said he didn't give refunds if the set had been opened, but he wanted me to be satisfied with the set, so I returned the bad one for a nice new one.

If you research the seller, you don't get taken most of the time.

ebay is easy to use, but they get you for 9% when you sell and you also have to pay the fees on PayPal.

I'm not near any coin shops, so ebay is all I have right now.