E-Bay As A Training Ground

Or, alternately, My Adventures in Wackyland

I'm stiil a newbie on this forum and tend to ramble, so don't give up on this - I'll get to my point eventually.
I got back into collecting about three years ago when my Dad gave me his collection just before he died. He had quit getting anything new in 1982, so I spent the last three years slowly catching up to current year issues on everything (still missing a few proof sets though). To do this, I've bought a lot of coins on e-bay.

Now, I'm into collecting coins for the fun, not bragging rights over the value of my sets or high grade numbers. I'd just as soon have 10 different MS-63s as 1 MS-65. For my foreign 3 from each country, I prefer circulated as I like thinking of my coin having been in someones pocket or buying groceries.

I've learned that my best deals on e-bay are from misdescribed coins. Instead of searching Morgan silver dollars and bidding against everybody, I search Liberty dollars excluding Norfed, Ron Paul, Seated, Bust and Walking. That way, I'm not bidding against quite so many people. (Still not to my point, but don't give up, I'm getting closer.)

So today, working on building a 20th century type set to mount on the wall, I find someone selling 1973, 1974 and 1978 type 2 proof sets. I think, "What on earth? Didn't know there was such a thing!" I bought two 79 type 2 sets over the last year, one missing the SBA and one with a bad penny to get good deals on loose type 2's for my Dansco albums (have extra type 2 nickel, dime, quarter and half now if anyone needs them). Does this mean I'm missing some other sought after variety of proof? More expense! I read the guy's description and he starts in with "These proof sets are the rare ones with S mint marks on all the coins!" Oh, really? I emailed him and got a reply of basically, "Look, that's what they are."

A couple of weeks ago it was a guy with a set of 2000 to 2005 P and D Proof Sacagawea's and a set of Proof P and D Westward Journey nickels. And here I never knew. When I emailed him asking about it, he said they were sealed in cello, were brand new and never touched, so of course they were proof.

So now we get to my point. This same guy with the proof P and D coins had a 1937 uncirculated gem mint nickel. Well, I wanted one for my new type set, trying to do it all as proofs or MS coins, and it was only at 99 cents when I bid. Could barely tell it was a Buffalo nickel from the photo, but I figured why not. Won the bid at $1.50.

Got the coin, and yes, the 2 x 2 it was in did say MS-65 on it. But the hair and braid were heavily worn, date worn, most of the horn gone on the poor buffalo - with my copy of photograde I give it at best a Fine. So it's back to Wackyland to look for another MS buffalo for my new type set. Then someday when I'm really feeling masochistic, I'll try to upgrade the coins in my 7070.