Another Auction Autopsy Thread!

Is 5X face really so bad? My dealer sells circulated, readable-date buffaloes for 20 cents each.

You photos could be better. Most of the coins in your stock photo appear to be dateless. You can say that they all have dates in your description, but most people shop with their eyes.

Sight is the most powerful of your senses. That is unless you're sitting next to me and I'm eating a hard boiled egg and jalapeno enchilada.

How can it be that high? The total % is usually about 13% after shipping. carmykle, you're probably right, and I've noticed that with other auctions. I'm going to try to take better better photos that show the dates better. I think a lot of those were actually part dates but from far back they look dateless.

I would include the dates of the Buffalo nickels and sell them in smaller lots of maybe 30 to 40 pieces. Pictures of each are not needed but a group photo of each surface might help. They should bring 50 cents each IMHO. A 40 piece auction with dates/pics/$20 start should get some bids.

Your 1835 Bust quarter went cheap. Barely VF money. It looks like a $200 coin, $300 if it's in a problem-free slab. Again the economy is hurting and Christmas shopping season hasn't started yet for most people.

These are interesting threads...

I'd spend some time looking at completed listings as a comparison. On the bust quarter, here's a couple I looked at that ended near yours as a comparison:

$204.17 - http://cgi.ebay.com/1834-XF-BUST-QU...em483c4ac8cd

$65.00 - http://cgi.ebay.com/1833-CAPPED-BUS...em5d2b0d2c86

That's the competition and perhaps it set your price at that point in time as your's ended up in the middle.

On the buffalos - one thing is that they all ended close to each other, so you may have saturated the market. There's only so many people looking for a lot of 100 buffalos at a given time.

Also, if there's nicer grades in there, I would separate them out and list the dates. So, sell a lot of 20 (or 40 or 50) VF or better, a lot of VG-F, a lot of G+, dateless, etc. I think people are paying dateless money because they don't know what's really in there and probably pleasantly surprised when they get the lot. I know that if I bid on a lot and can't tell grades or dates, I typically bid "worst case" - i.e., common date G-4 prices.

All that said, I'm no expert and sometimes it's just how the fates fall on ebay.

Ken

My feeling is that common Buffalo nickels, wheats , Indian Head cents and related is becoming more plentiful on the market and things are softening a little, plus the fact that the economy is causing people to buy less. Wait another month or so and things should pick up for the holidays.

Personally my guess is the wording "Earlier/better dates will often come with partial or weak dates", I think cynical buyers, used to rip-off artists (given how many there are), expect most of them to be weak/partial in the lot. I advise selling them in separate groups - full date ones where the listing clearly says !!FULL DATE!! as emphatically as you can, and another that emphasizes earlier/better dates (and makes clear they'll be partials).

Shadow, you need better/more pictures. Like someone else mentioned, you are only showing a few on top and I see no real nice date examples. Also, make sure there is variety in your pics. They almost look like "stock" photos, and lots of buyers will be skeptical since folks will show some nice coins and you will end up getting junk with what you don't see. Try to list all dates as well for those looking to fill specific holes. I know it's 100 coins, so maybe trim it down to 50 and show obverse and reverse of all coins. A variety will help those folks looking to start an album or a YN.

Make sure your titles include US coin, buffalo head, nickel, five cent, etc to capture the largest search audience.

Just my opinion of course.