eBay trustworthiness...?

[Booky586]

4 hours ago, Maxford said:

Personally I prefer Victoria young heads though and there appears to be a large influx of these on eBay, are there known fakes?

I have bought a few Victoria young heads, both Shield and G&D reverse, from eBay in grades VF, good VF and almost EF. None of the purchases, to the best of my knowledge, have been fakes or forgeries and most of the coins have been good value. I always target coins which have a good enough photo to judge the grade.

The only poor purchase I made was a coin that had been cleaned, which is almost impossible to tell from a photo. So nowadays I always ask the seller "what condition is the coin in and has it been cleaned or polished?". If I receive a cleaned coin I would be able to return it under "Not as described".

I avoid proof coins because it would be too easy to receive a proof with scratches or rub marks, which again are almost impossible to see with a photo.

There's a lot of rubbish on eBay, but you can still find a gem or a bargain!

[Robb]

6 hours ago, Booky586 said:

So nowadays I always ask the seller "what condition is the coin in and has it been cleaned or polished?". If I receive a cleaned coin I would be able to return it under "Not as described".

That is very good advice!  Doing so also creates a paper trail (email trail?) that can be referenced if there are questions as to the seller's description of the coin.

Ebay's (and PayPal's) buyer protection plans are the best, and together with my Sigma Metalytics tester I sleep very well at night 😉

[Robb]

What is more worrisome to me isn't buying a fake, as Paypal and Ebay will cover you there.  What I find most often are sellers advertising "proof" coins (I'm talking about silver Kookaburras specifically) which aren't proofs.  Many sellers seem to think that if a coin is shiny with a mirror field it must be a proof, and are unaware of the differences between a business strike and a proof strike.  I'm not taking about BU strikes that are advertised as Proof-like, that is an accepted grade for a business strike on a bullion coin.  I'm talking about the sellers advertising a silver 1993 Proof 10 oz Kookaburra (mintage 1,495) and what they really have is a silver 1993 Kookaburra  10 oz common bullion coin (mintage 10,160)  Many sellers also don't realize the bullion and proof strikes of the same year/same denomination Kookaburra typically have different designs.  

Every single time I search Ebay for proof Kooks there are bullion coins incorrectly being sold as "proofs".  If you are not well-versed in Kooks and their proofs it is very easy to get taken and not even know it.

[Chorlton]

4 hours ago, Robb said:

What is more worrisome to me isn't buying a fake, as Paypal and Ebay will cover you there.  What I find most often are sellers advertising "proof" coins (I'm talking about silver Kookaburras specifically) which aren't proofs.  Many sellers seem to think that if a coin is shiny with a mirror field it must be a proof, and are unaware of the differences between a business strike and a proof strike.  I'm not taking about BU strikes that are advertised as Proof-like, that is an accepted grade for a business strike on a bullion coin.  I'm talking about the sellers advertising a silver 1993 Proof 10 oz Kookaburra (mintage 1,495) and what they really have is a silver 1993 Kookaburra  10 oz common bullion coin (mintage 10,160)  Many sellers also don't realize the bullion and proof strikes of the same year/same denomination Kookaburra typically have different designs.  

Every single time I search Ebay for proof Kooks there are bullion coins incorrectly being sold as "proofs".  If you are not well-versed in Kooks and their proofs it is very easy to get taken and not even know it.

This is common on EBay with various non proof coins being represented as proofs. It does less often go the other way as well.

[Prophecy]

Stick to slabbed with a clearly verifiable picture on the databases.

[StackerCollector]

Same here - I would only buy graded (PCGS or NGC) sovereigns on ebay.