Ebay Coin Sale Scammers

Odds are they're just looking for a discount.

As long as you don't have to sell by a hard date, let the market speak. Leave the listing up. If nobody buys it after a few weeks, relist it a little bit lower. If people are watching it, consider offering a modest discount.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Eventually you will find a buyer.


The other way people do this is to keep letting listings roll over and hoping the market price rises to their desired selling price. There's a couple of pieces I've watched rolling over and over and over for years.

Well, then riddle me this. Let's take an Eisenhower bicentennial dollar dated 1776-1976. Active sales for these are as low as $3. Even the ones at $20 are no worse or better than the same coin that sold for $800-$1000 the past two years (and I'm talking all ungraded, uncertified, circulated coins).

Why would people be dropping several hundreds for a coin they can pick up for as low as $3? Something a bit odd about that.

I see this all the time. 2000 P Sacagawea dollars "sell" on a regular basis for $1000 or more and they usually "sell" with a single bid. Digging into the bid history reveals that single bidder is "no longer a registered user" and had no previous bid history. Are the bidders and sellers the same people? Who knows...

Here's a link to one of the dozens out there:
https://www.ebay.com/bfl/viewbids/134351674410

@nfine

That doesn't look suspicious at all That's blatantly someone trying to jack up the price.

@AverageMercEnjoy

I think what some are trying to do (as the person who contacted me alluded to) is to list and buy their own coins at a high price to artificially raise the value of the coins.

For example, if someone listed 10 Sacagawea dollars in prices ranging from $700-$1000, then turned right around and bought them, their hope is that when they post these same coins again, users (like me) will look at Terapeak and see what these coins have sold at for the last couple of years and say "this coin must be worth at least $700, so I'm willing to pay that amount". They're willing to take a hit on paying eBays's fees for those 10 coins because they're hoping to make a lot more money reselling them at those high, inflated prices. That's my best guess.

It's not a specific coin I'm questioning in this case. The best way to see what I'm talking about is to go to terapeak and paste in the following info (I'm using a bicentennial Eisenhower coin as an example):

1776 1976 Eisenhower dollar -ngc -anacs -PCGS -proof -ddo -ddr -unc -uncirculated -roll -rolls -"lot of"

Scroll down a little ways and just look at a few coins that are not error coins or anything special. Now go to ebay, paste in the same string and sort by lowest first. Look at the coins there. There's nothing remarkable about either one (the dollars seen on Terapeak or ebay), yet they're MUCH higher on Terapeak (which again is showing you actual past sales).

On Terapeak, you can also sort to look at only those sold by auction or those sold with By it Now. Either way, you'll see several that have sold for several hundred dollars on Terapeak.

I guess the bottom line is, can I trust the sales on Terapeak real or not? It seems like the easy answer would be yes, but then when you see something like what @nfine noted, you have to start questioning things.

#############

Just found another example of someone that looks suspect. Similar to what someone earlier was talking about.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/125252593131

This seller has only been active on ebay since April 2022 and has 0% feedback. They're asking $5000 for an Eisenhower bicentennial coin and mark it as:

RARE " no mint mark"

A quick Google search finds that this year didn't have a mint mark if minted in Philadelphia. There's no other explanation as to why the coin is rare, so I can only conclude he/she is stating it's rare due to a lack of a mint mark. If that's their justification, that's pretty dishonest in my book.

@Jake Coins

I agree with you 100%. My whole point to this discussion boils down to this:

Can the prices on ebay's Terapeak website be trusted when trying to decide what to sell a coin for? For example, will I realistically be able to get, say, $500 for an Eisenhower bicentennial that has sold multiple times for over $500 (as seen on Terapeak) when I see many active listing for this coin being sold for under $50. Or am I wasting my time listing for such a high price?

In the times we live in, I can easily see someone trying to artificially inflate the price of their coins by posting several at a high price, buying them themselves (or asking a friend to), then relisting them for unsuspecting people to buy at this inflated price. Never thought about this until that one ebay user messaged me, but now I can see that being an issue.

You're right. It is a free market and I'm happy to let someone pay a high price. Ultimately, like anything else, coins are worth what someone is willing to pay.

I know it's the Wild West on ebay in some cases.

LOLOLOL That could be the case (and no, they are not in any kind of holders. They look like "plain Jane" coins). Those prices do seem "out there".