My Ebay Editorial

Elmer, you did very good. You also had for sale some pretty desirable pieces. You obviously have a pretty solid collection if these were your duplicates and non keepers. Congrats.

When I started on ebay it was a lot nicer - it is probably us who were around when they started up that complain the most of the greed that has taken them over.

They got large by makong it .25 to post things and then took a percentage off of the winning bid that was a lot smaller.

But the typical business attitude of the day took over and they decided to see how much they could make off of people after they got their base established.

When they bought paypal, the old-fashioned American business mindset would have been to first try Paypal as a free benefit for sellers ti incite even more sales from them.

Instead it became a way for ebay to double their take.

You used to be able to contact anybody on their own private emails just by clicking their seller name. This allowed a lot more freedom between buyers and sellers. When I had duplicates of an item, I could contact the next highest bidders and offer it to them at the selling price. ebay allowed this - it was a great incentive for me to want to sell more andmore on ebay - and I did.


Someone used to only today's ebay might say, "well, they were losing money from people making deals not put up as auctions." But these were the days ebay was growing to be the giant it became - even advertising on TV. They incorporated and we ended up with the much worse version we have.

Don't get me totally wrong, if a person only experiences the modern ebay -not able to compare it to its much better past, then it seems like it can be a good place.

But when they used to let the seller keep more of their winnings, it was a greater incentive and this is how they became large.

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I remember when you could sell a black powder rifle/pistol.
I remember when you could sell a B.B. gun.
I remember when you could sell a toy cap gun.
I remember when you could sell a WWII German Dagger.
I remember when you could insist on a money order or personal check.
I remember when BidPay was free for sellers.
I remember when you could leave a buyer negative feedback.
You can't sell a police baton but you can sell a miniature baseball bat.
I started selling in December of 1997 (15 years ago). So many changes since. Yes, some are for the better but some have been for the worse.

I love the part where you said a small batch of coins. That small batch sold for 6500 bucks. I think a lot of your success comes from the coins being slabbed as well as the other things you pointed out.

Just out of curiosity why didnt you end up selling the 1835 bust half?