argentumandcoins

I just had this arrive in an assortment from a client as a part ex. My own personal slant would be take a hammer to it and then throw it in a skip.

I mentioned CC, that i sent a coin back to him as i did'nt agree with the grade, he freely accepted the return and got my money back as did Chris Perkins i think mentioned the same. Personally, I expect dealers' grades to be accurate. After all, they will often have more grading experience than the majority of collectors. We are also often told that a dealer will only pay 50% of what a coin might be worth - therefore that is the dealer's profit margin. So when I see a dealer inflating the grade, I see that as an attempt to take an extra profit at the expense of the buyer. I too have complained about CC grading, but at least they are consistent and do accept returns. Nick, with all due respect, your 50% comment is way wide of the mark. I am lucky to buy from individuals at 70% of selling price and I will point out here that does not mean 30% profit for me. From that 30% I have to deduct tax, national insurance (tiny amount for self employed but still a deduction), VAT, advertising costs (presently about £110/month), stationery, electricity, phone, diesel etc etc. I don't want to fall out with you but please don't make ill informed sweeping statements about how much mark-up or profit dealers make. The truth is most of us make enough to get by and getting by means a 20% margin on your sales. I have bought from some members on here and I think you will find I have offered considerably more than 50% of either "book" or asking prices. I have also sold/given to some members on here and again I think you will find I have been more than generous. As for grading I try to be fair to the buyer, so harsh on myself, that comes from being a collector myself. Returns; in 3 1/2 years I have had one coin back without a reason given and 2 returned because the buyer already had those dates but had not recorded them in his inventory. Any decent dealer would give full refunds or offer replacement/part exchange if the customer so required. I am sure that the other full-time dealers on here will give similar reponses to mine in relation to the points you made.

Even the sharpest get stung there occasionally. The most successful strikes on e bay fall into two camps, in my experience:- a) Nice coins with a high initial bid price, which nevertheless is still nowhere near their true value. Would be bidders are strangely put off by the high start price, and often by-pass it completely, leaving someone else to make the only punt at the original price, thus bagging a real bargain. b ) Really high end coins which would be better off in a proper auction. They will sell, for sure, but usually end up at between 55% to 75% of what they could potentially realise elsewhere. It's a real mistake for high quality expensive coins to be put on e bay. Gambling strikes which may or may not pay off, are on those with poor photography, where the coin cannot properly be seen. This often puts buyers off, leaving the speculator room for a potential killing, or to get their fingers burned. There has been (and will probably continue to be) another more sinister ebay tactic; the seller of the major/undiscovered rarity, thta is actually a forgery. 2 examples leap to mind; the 1860 unrecorded die pairing penny about 3 years ago and the "plain edge proof" 1819 Crown that is now on offer at a major auction house with the tag that the edge has been deliberately smoothed. The first coin was an excellent effort and I think I pushed it to about £1500 (I am sure there will be another member or two on here who also had a stab at it). I cannot comment on the second as I did not see it sold on ebay. This type of scam is very worrying, particularly when the forger is very skilled. Another area of selling is the "unable to price it" item. I sell lots of things on there that seem to fetch incredible prices (mainly exonumia) and foreign coins where I need access to a worldwide customer base which you just don't get with your website (or seem not to get). For all the pitfalls of ebay the plain truth is that I need it to survive (where else do you get rid of 1971 first decimal sets?)

I've tailed a few birds in my time but I'm a happily married man now....... well, married at least. Not tailing in the work's car I hope? Gotta be a good pull, though! ;-) The only females that were ever attracted to a traffic car were the sort you wouldn't touch with your mates barge pole

Good job I'm out of the Force now. I used to live on hot pies (and doughnuts of course). Now there's a thing, what if the doughnuts have just come out of the oven and they're hot? Can they be sold immediately without VAT going on? Do they incur VAT if they are still hot? Do they have to be cooled before they can be sold? Grrrrrr where's confused dot com when you need them???????????? Anyway I know a posh bloke and he eats pies all of the time. He told me he will not be able to afford them now and will have to stick to caviar and jellied truffles.

Possibly an article in the BNJ or maybe added by Davies himself as he disposed of his collection via London Coins, much the same way as Michael Gouby adds letters to his own reference numbers when new variants are discovered.

I also have a few "pristine" mirrors lying around. Ebay, land of the dimwit!

Yes, Rob has bought the rights and intends to update with a second edition at some point.

Is it sensible/ethical/allowed by forum rules to start a topic under the members only pages where we can alert members to problem buyers? I have just had a new ebay user open a dispute on £65 of items won and paid for that were shipped 5 days ago to Eire (I once had a lot take 6 weeks to arrive there). Paypal have of course frozen my funds even though I thought the buyer had to wait 14 days or so before they could escalate? I sent them via Signed For and refunded his overpayment on postage so I should be okay (he says touching wood). I don't block people on a whim and in this case he has been a pain since being told I had posted, funny that isn't it? If we can work together on this we may at least be able to help each other protect our prize assets? An ebay user name and story behind the problem would allow each of us to decide whether or not we should take the risk of allowing the buyers to bid on our lots?

I've tailed a few birds in my time but I'm a happily married man now....... well, married at least.

You can't use blue it's the main colour on my website, so I own it. I like black and white stripes, but not orange. Whiskey and wine, but not together. Port and stilton, but mainly port...... Sorry, I'm having a Peter moment

Thanks for the thought! However I don't really collect later counterfeits than George IV/William IV so perhaps if you could find an Edward VII specialist he'll have better use for it. No problem. I do have 1818, 19 and 20 in brass put to one side for you though

There is a half decent free translator on google. I have used it in the past and although some of it comes out weeding strongly sic the main thrust is usually comprehensible. If you can't take a joke you shouldn't sell on ebay I suppose!

The owner has agreed to give it to Seuk, so if you want to pay me the £3 to cover the Royal Rip off charges and my packing I will send it on to you Peter?

The 2 light coloured patches to the right of the bust are "blisters" for want of a better word. Raised bits of metal that do not give under pressure. The area around the A of GRA has multiple small blobs of extra metal as does the A itself. The picture is not too clear but the patch on Eddies head is really dark and looks like it has casting bubbles in it. The weight is 5.61gms which on it's own does not give much cause for concern. The edge milling (which you obviously can't see in the pictures) is very flat and almost non-existant at some points. The width of the milling does not correspond to the other Eddie shillings. Without a specific gravity test I can't be 100% sure but I am 99.9% there. At first glance I saw a decent 1905 shilling. The pictures make it look more convincing than it does in the hand. I have been in touch with the owner (who lives in Australia) and he has had the coin for over 10 years so it clearly isn't a recent Chinese effort.

If Dave has got a star rating I think he must have got somebody to shill it up for him....

A nice mid-grade example and a fair price.

That's weird. I genuinely thought she was Jeremy Clarkson's daughter. Didn't she also try her hand as a pop singer??? What was her name again? If she were, that would be enough to put me off her immediately. I was sure I heard Clarkson's daughter had released a record! And each time I heard Kelly's name mentioned, that's who I thought they meant ! As I don't watch American Idol or any such show, and as TOTP is now deceased, I guess you could say I'm now an official dinosaur. Except not so much that I don't know that James Blunt is for grannies only, Dido is boring as hell, and I know from my own nightmares that Sealion Dion is someone to run shrieking from. I'd be equally rude about La Houston except she's no longer with us, poor shrieker. I don't like Green Day, I do like McFly, I think Keane and Coldplay and suchlike all sound the same... so I that's my street cred out the window. Except I also hate U2 so I just won it back again Sorry Peck but I haven't even heard of half of them, but I do like U2 and I mostly listen to Handel, Bach, Strauss, Mozart, Beethoven et al now. Street cred, shmeet cred, who cares

The big problem for me is with lower value International sales, where the minimum that the Royal Money Machine charge for tracked is now £8. who in their right mind would pay that for a £2-£4 coin? Ebay is my way of shifting dross that is not good enough for my site or coins that need a worldwide audience to achieve the best results. In relation to blocked bidders, yes, they do know they are blocked when they attempt to bid. I have blocked countries on my listings and nobody in those countries can bid on my items now (unless they email me and I add them to a pre-approved bidders list). Those countries are Spain, Italy, Romania, CHINA, India, Ukraine and Russia. Todays pain in the posterior was a Russian gentleman who won a halfpenny token for less than £3, his total with airmail was about £4.40. I was messaged by him last month "me not got my item when you post?" I gave him the date of dispatch (from the ebay site) and told him to open a dispute and I would refund him immediately. Todays message; I will be forced to leave negative feedback..( Is opening a dispute such an arduous task? That is the only way ebay can keep tabs on scammers and how I manged to get the last one kicked off the site. I had another "lady" of Eastern European nationality now residing in Belgium rape me for a £22 Netherlands 10 Cent. She is an ebay seller and will only sell with registered postage as an option. She has obviously been the subject of claims but is more than happy to rip somebody else off? I'm surprised Spain and Italy are on your list of blocked countries, John. I would have thought they might be OK. The rest I can understand though. Italy is a nightmare (probably post office thefts), Spain is there purely down to one buyer who had caused multiple problems for multiple sellers. I got him kicked off ebay but opening a new account on ebay is as easy as getting fat on KFC. Over the years I haven't had any major sales to Spain via ebay (a couple of good buyers from my site though) so I figured better safe than sorry. Any genuine bidder is more than welcome to email and I will put them on my accepted bidders list (as long as they agree to pay for tracked shipping of course). China is a no no both for customs reasons and the fact that I don't like them having a steady flow of GB silver coins (which is all they seem to want to buy for some strange reason). All of the others have had multiple non-receipt "buyers"

It all changes with the amount of posts you have. 1000 and over you will be a God or in your case Godess like me. I'm thinking of changing my name to Adonis now "in your case Goddess like me" Is there something you are not telling us, come on we can keep a secret. He's a sweaty sock Gary, they all wear skirts!

The big problem for me is with lower value International sales, where the minimum that the Royal Money Machine charge for tracked is now £8. who in their right mind would pay that for a £2-£4 coin? Ebay is my way of shifting dross that is not good enough for my site or coins that need a worldwide audience to achieve the best results. In relation to blocked bidders, yes, they do know they are blocked when they attempt to bid. I have blocked countries on my listings and nobody in those countries can bid on my items now (unless they email me and I add them to a pre-approved bidders list). Those countries are Spain, Italy, Romania, CHINA, India, Ukraine and Russia. Todays pain in the posterior was a Russian gentleman who won a halfpenny token for less than £3, his total with airmail was about £4.40. I was messaged by him last month "me not got my item when you post?" I gave him the date of dispatch (from the ebay site) and told him to open a dispute and I would refund him immediately. Todays message; I will be forced to leave negative feedback..( Is opening a dispute such an arduous task? That is the only way ebay can keep tabs on scammers and how I manged to get the last one kicked off the site. I had another "lady" of Eastern European nationality now residing in Belgium rape me for a £22 Netherlands 10 Cent. She is an ebay seller and will only sell with registered postage as an option. She has obviously been the subject of claims but is more than happy to rip somebody else off?

Thought I'd revise this one after another gaggle of claims (mainly Eastern European). My blocked list is now larger than my regular buyers list Any of you fine folk that sell on ebay are more than welcome to a cut and pasted version if you wish to ammend your own.

I had a nice letter from HMG around Chistmas time telling me I need to work another nine months. Trouble is it's all changing so fast it's not possible to know what will happen in the next 8-10 years. I had a nicer one telling me that the tax rebate I had been paid against my first year losses in 2009 was not due and I owed them a 4 figure sum that was payable immediately,,,,,,,,,,,TOSSERS! I asked the helpful chap how I could avoid this happening again and he said "the safest thing to do is keep any repayments for a year without spending them, then, if we have made another mistake it's not a problem" Wife, cash surplus, save.........."aye okay pal"

You could try just collecting Japanese Bu's Huss. As they are horizontal and viewed standing upright they should stretch and distort into circles? Sorry mate I'm hopeless on tech stuff.

That would be very kind, thank-you, I was just beginning to feel a little lonely on this thread!:-) Would you mind if I had the original full-resolution images to work from, could I see if there's a Lis, lion, or privy mark, on the reverse I might be able to use? I'll PM my email address if you're happy! That's great, very much appreciated! Yes feel free and I will send the pics. The reverse is 1561 dated and grades around VF as well.