Homework On Ebay Dealers

One thing I always look up is the actual negative feedback. Look what people have to say, are they rational in their comments? What's the seller's response? If nothing is actually badly done by the seller you should be fine. The huge amount of feedback, and thus deals means that this seller is serious. 

This is exactly what you can do. Not only look at the amount of feedback and the amount of positive feedback, but also look at what the negative feedback has been, how this got handled by the dealer and how old the positive and negative feedback is. For example: if an account had tons of good feedback and went dead for a year and recently started to get feedback again, then there's something fishy, as it might be a hacked account.

Imo, with 59K sales, and 99.8% positive feedback, you have nothing to worry about. Buy with confidence. ebay will back you anyway. You're always going to have a few negatives with that many sales, nobody's perfect, buyer or seller.

Good info! Agree that if you have that many sales, it might even be a little odd if there were NO negative reports. With that many customers, there have to be a few folks who are never happy.

Good point, too, about the returns. I know my favorite (so far) brick and mortar dealer, when it comes to bullion coins, warns that if you try to sell it back they will pay something less than what you bought it for. I get it--they need to make a profit. In their case, you actually got to see the coin before you bought, so you can't really say it wasn't what you expected. I also know that with a numismatic buy, if they sell something that you later discover is not what it seems to be, they will refund if you can document. As for returns for any other reason, you're going to take a hit. If this dealer doesn't want the hassle of buyer regrets, I get it, but given we are buying actual sight unseen, that policy does bother me.

That said, with such high sales figures and positive reviews, it's less of a concern than it might be with a different dealer. Seems to me that with this bunch people are getting what they pay for.

With 59K in feedback, as long as they do not have a lot of negative I would think they are a good seller. Add in a return policy and it's looking good!

It's a small thing, perhaps, but also check the seller's ebay store (and feedback) to confirm that coins are his/her principal business - many sellers with thousands of successful ratings primarily sell non-numismatic merchandise.

I wouldn't worry about it as long as you are careful about the return policy. You should check if the seller deducts a 'restocking' fee. Also, pay attention to sales tax. Depending on which state you are in dealers may or may not charge sales tax. I'm in California and I can save between almost 10%when I buy online from an out of state dealer. That may change, though.

Honestly, as both a buyer and a seller (primarily the later now), reading feedback, scores, and comments in general can be taken with a grain of salt. When looking at negative feedback, try to get as much information on the person who left that feedback as possible, most especially their age. In my experience, I have found that senile old men (usually age 65 and older) are often very forgetful or have bad eyesight... they are the ones most likely to lie about the items received and leave negative feedback.

There is so much control now over the sellers by both ebay AND PayPal that it's much more difficult to defend against bad buyers than it once was.

The best thing to do really is to look at what the sellers are offering, and pay particular attention to those that have a list of Terms and Conditions in their item description. In my experience, the sellers you can trust the most are the ones who have a list of their terms, and who also offer payment options other than PayPal. With how things are now so slanted toward the buyer on ebay, it is very understandable why some sellers no longer accept returns.