Just Because You Saw It On Ebay...

doesn't make it collectible.

There are thousands upon thousands of people buying and selling coins with doubling or apparent 'errors' on ebay every day. Of those thousands and thousands, only about 25% have a clue what they are buying or selling.

The error and variety market was built on a foundation of rarity many years ago (before the internet) by people who knew what they were doing, and by collectors who wanted to achieve the goal of completing a collection of coins that were never supposed to leave the mint for one reason or another. There are specific forms of doubling and specific errors that have rarity that are valuable, and it's these coins that solidify the market.

When you see a mutilated coin or a coin with die chatter ( Machine Doubling) sell on ebay for collectible premium value, you are looking at a case of someone who doesn't know what they have selling it, or a case of someone who doesn't know what they are doing spending their money on something hoping the seller is being honest and knows what they are doing. You are actually seeing a lot of junk being passed back and forth between novice buyers and sellers who do not understand the real market, don't know what the real errors are, and are selling or buying anything they can get their hands on to attempt to create rarity in very common non-error coins.

When I see someone pull up an example of one of these transactions on ebay to justify value in a non-collectible mutilated or non-error coin, I have to wonder what their intention is...do they want to sell this common non-collectible piece of pocket change to someone else just to collect a profit? You know, the buyer didn't have a clue and what they don't know can't hurt them...

One of the things I like most about the numismatic community is its level of honesty, and that level of honesty is shaken every time someone is told they have a worthless coin and they insist on proving value by selling it at a profit to someone who doesn't have a clue. This proves only two things...that there are people who wouldn't take knowledged advice no matter what, thus they shouldn't be asking questions in the first place, and that there are people who would do anything for a buck, including risking their own integrity.

Bottom line...you come here with a coin and ask questions. The questions are answered by people with experience and knowledge. Take those answers and do the right thing or don't ask the questions in the first place. If you are going to insist your ground off, beat up, and machine doubled coins are valuable, then you have your answer without asking the question. If you sell them, you are chancing having another novice collector lose interest because they bought a damaged face-value coin from you trusting you knew what you were doing, and you either didn't know or didn't care enough to bother listening to people who do know. It's just not right to do it that way. Understand the market you're dealing with or don't deal within it. There are other people out there who depend on income generated by this collector market, and those who are ripping others off with common junk are ruining it for the ones who do the research and spend the time it takes to locate the coins with real value for people to enjoy.

Okay, I'm done.