Incredible! Stupidity Has No Limits!

Unbelievable.

Sometimes you wish you could email the victims a slap across the face. Given the way the auction is written, and the fact that the seller has now answered three questions about the coin's origins honestly, I cannot fault anyone but the buyers in this one. Let them waste their money.

While I tend to agree with your assessment, I believe it would be more accurate to say: "Incredible! Cotton-headed ninny muggin-ness has no limits." But instead of belittling potential numismatic family members, perhaps we should reach out to both the seller and the bidders to try and save them from themselves.

It is a classic ebay scam, the "I don't know anything about coins scam." People get victimized by their own greed. They are conned into thinking this simple fellow really doesn't know what he's got, and they can get a real rare coin from him for a tiny fraction of its value. This is a tried and true method for getting big money for cheap replicas. The marks forget one of the most important rules of ebay - if it is way too good to be true, it always is.

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Is greed, or the hope of taking advantage of someone's supposed ignorance and desperation, at play here?

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Absolutely. Given that deliberacy on the part of the buyers, the term "ignorance" has no place here. Of course, by the same token "stupidity" does not, either.

Just greed. In my opinion, the high bidder will get precisely what they deserve - an education. And education ain't cheap these days.

It's difficult to figure out whom to blame more for something like this, the buyer or seller.

The seller does represent that he is selling an "1804 silver dollar," so that's a specific factual representation as to what is being sold. It might be just that, but who can tell from those pictures, and he admits he doesn't know for sure.The

The terrible quality pictures and no stated return policy should be red flag warnings. It's impossible for me to believe an experienced E-bay seller can't take better pictures than that. I just bought my sub $200 digital camera about 10 days ago, and with no experience started shhoting and posting clear pictures.

On the other hand, maybe the bidders figure it's worth risking $150 or so becaus eit just might be real.

You can't blame the guy? I can blame him if he represents that he is selling an "1804 silver dollar" if it is not, in fact, an 1804 silver dollar. That is fraud and misrepresentation. It is theft.

So who would you blame, the buyer? It's their bad because they assumd that an item listed on E-bay was what it was represented to be? If that is true, then E-bay is just a trap for the unwary and it's just buyer beware. I think E-bay just has to police this type of auction better.

As to doing DD, that's rather difficult when E-bay allows pictures that conceal more than they reveal. But that flaw in E-bay's policies is probably just what the seller was counting on.

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If that is true, then E-bay is just a trap for the unwary and it's just buyer beware.

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Ding ding ding. Which is why this place is such a great wealth of knowledge. Bottom line, even if this listing seemed perfectly represented to everyone here, that wouldn't have prevented the price from going to this level. I personally don't know too many people that will spend $300 on something without having some clue of what they are getting. If someone has more money than sense, it's hard to figure out who is really to blame.