A Centsles Instant Classic !

Be careful to read the fine print



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BUY THE COIN, NOT THE HOLDER! THERE ARE MANY COIN GRADING SERVICES AND COIN GRADING IS SUBJECTIVE. IF YOU BUY A COIN GRADED BY ONE SERVICE AND YOU ARE UNHAPPY WITH THE OPINION OF A SECOND GRADING SERVICE ON A COIN THAT YOU BOUGHT, THIS IS NOT A VALID REASON FOR RETURNING THE COIN WITH US OR ANY OTHER ebay SELLER.
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Looking at their bidding histories, it looks like the current top 4 bidders are all "friends" of Centsles. The bidding must not be going according to plan if he has so many "friends" bidding on it.

Who knows it is a problem coin until they go to sell it ? Not the buyer. Nobody buys one of his coins at his prices just to flip it. It is not until the grandkids go to sell off grampa's cherished coin collection, because they need a new big screen TV, that they realize that the coin, that Gramps paid Centsles,Mike Mesack or Barry Chappell $200 for, is only worth $80, 15 years later.

These people don't answer any complaints, they just tout all their happy customers, who are think that they are sitting on their retirement investments any won't know any different until they go to cash in. Like the lady on Pawn Stars, who was sitting on her 1932 S quarter, for over twenty years thinking it was her " money in the bank " only to find out after all these years, the S was fake and soldered on.

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FRAUD

punt

I've looked through hundreds of his listings over the past year and have concluded he sells problem coins in his own slabs as non-details, overgraded junk. Oddly enough, he does sell some legit coins e.g. PCGS slabbed. Go figure. I've also concluded he shills many of his auctions based on the frequency the bidders bid on just his items yet they rarely appear with feedback from him. Another oddity is if you look at the bidding patterns of accounts who place most of their bids with Centsles, they seem to bid at the same time before closing in every auction. For example, there is one bidder for Centles auctions who almost always bids 6 days and 23 hours before the end of an auction. Very suspicious. But in any case why bid if you have no intention to win?

A comment was made above regarding "friends" bidding. I've studied shill bidding on ebay in extreme detail and believe, without proof, that accounts with many feedbacks being used for shilling can only come from 2 sources. I don't believe they are "friends", per se. One theory I have is that as a busy seller on ebay, you can set up almost unlimited accounts with high feedback ratings- if these shill accounts are either "buying" mainly from the seller, or among the seller's harem of shill accounts. They key to this would be having lots of free listings, selling in bogus sales, giving each other positive feedback, then cancelling the sales and fees. This is not far-fetched as it sounds. If you paid someone $10 an hour to work these accounts all day long, for $100 or less you can manipulate huge numbers of bids, sales, feedbacks, etc. You could make that back easily on one sale.

The other theory I have, which is far-fetched, is that sellers who shill bid are cooperating and sharing the shill accounts to help spread the bids around and provide feedback for cancelled sales.

My big question is- do high volume sellers have enough free or very low priced listings that would allow the cycle of list, sell, positive feedback, cancel, and fee refund? Would love to hear thoughts on this.

Shermae....

Short answer to your question is "yes", but most Sellers are honest and wouldn't take the time and effort to do what you hypothesized. They know they would end up here on the forums getting legitimately hammered for cheating people.

If there are ways to manipulate a system to their favor people will find it. Is Centles a crook? I don't know. Is he treading in a very gray area? Yes, by all means he is. I do not buy from him based on what I've seen happen over the years. I look it as it's eBays "problem". They know how to fix it but won't because of the numbers he contributes to the bottom line.