Seller pet peeves

[kirispupis]

These two pet peeves have been on my nerves for some time, so I thought I'd vent here. Please add your own pet peeves, while kindly remembering that we have esteemed sellers who contribute here and are not guilty of the below.

The hide and grab

There are two well-known sellers I won't identify here. In fairness, I've purchased from and have a good rapport with both. The first seller usually lists coins at the same time each day. He also has the tendency to post bargains, so I - like others here - wait for the coins like birds for their daily suet. On this day, I was bummed to see two coins I would have loved to own picked up before I could grab them.

To my delight, very similar coins appeared several months later at seller B. I bought them immediately. When I received them, I noticed the tags for Seller A were still there - meaning Seller B had grabbed them, then sold them at a reasonable profit to me.

I would have been quick to write that off as "it's just business" were it not for the fact that Seller B has his coins set to be listed just a couple minutes after Seller A. So, the strategy is to push Seller A's coins off the "new listings" page and then pick through them himself. For me, the technique no longer works since I've learned about the trick, but IMHO it's still a bit on the dirty side.

 

Inventing new market prices

It's commonly known that many sellers buy from auctions and other sellers. I accept that. In this case, a coin appeared at auction I was intrigued about. It's not particularly rare and decent copies go for 100-200. This was a very nice one, so I felt 300 was appropriate and maybe, if I was lucky to pick up my higher priorities at a fair deal, I could go up to 400.

Come the day of the auction, I noticed it was at 600. That was by far the highest I'd ever seen this issue reach at auction and so I just didn't bother to bid. No one challenged it and the coin went for 600.

Only a few weeks later, it was listed by a seller for 2000. I can understand sellers picking up coins they feel are low and charging a market rate, but that was ridiculous. I've since ceased buying from this seller because I don't want to encourage artificially inflating the prices of coins. I've since noticed that almost every one of his coins follows this strategy. Since he's a large seller, it actually affects the market.

What are some of your pet peeves?

[Edessa]

Well, we all react emotionally when we lose an auction and feel that something has been unfair, but in reality, as a bidder in an auction you only have one friend who is concerned about the "fairness" of the situation and that is the Consigner. Like a Politician, the Consigner is your friend until a better offer comes along. Auctions are not designed for bargain hunting. Auctions are designed to bring as many interested parties together bidding against each other to drive the price up as much as possible.

[ewomack]

This comment applies to just about every auction site, not just those for coins: I generally dislike the "irrational exuberance" that seems to often go with auctions. @kirispupis comments about the high auction bid above triggered that thought in me. Sometimes one can find bargains and under bids, but, in my experience, coins (or other things) I want generally skyrocket to prices that I would never have even considered paying for them. I don't know if people get competitive, or exhilarated by the process itself, but in general I find that many auctions seem to bring out the irrational in people. I'm speaking from experience, because it's also happened to me at least once or twice. So, I tend to, or try to, avoid them.

[John Conduitt]

There are plenty of sellers who price very high. I've given up trying to work out who buys these coins, as there aren't enough billionaires around. If I try to sell anything at that price, they all disappear.

One annoying thing about dealers buying a lot of coins at auction is that there's always someone there to stick in a bid if it looks like it might be in any way a good deal. So many times I've been the only person interested in a lot for weeks, right up until the last few seconds. Then someone will try the next increment, often someone in the room, not sniping, but just because. I then have to bid again, and of course they don't bid anymore - they didn't really want the coin, and their profit's now gone, and I've lost $40 +20%.

It's not just dealers, either. I saw a Nero denarius on eBay that went quite cheaply, and a few hours later it was on a Facebook page as a private sale at triple the price. Someone bought it, presumably because Facebook people seem to believe Facebook is the best place to buy cheap coins. It's just as full of flippers as eBay, of course.

[kirispupis]

It seems that my second pet peeve is a bit misunderstood here. I'm not complaining about high auction prices. If someone else wants a coin more than I, they'll pay more. I'm also not bothered by sellers picking up items at auctions, listing them for roughly market rates, and making a profit. At auction, if I really want a coin I shouldn't have to worry about sellers because there will be no margins for them.

What I'm not crazy about are sellers who try to turn what should be a $400 coin into a $2000 coin. Not only do they pay an extremely high price at auction, but then they try to justify it by listing the coin for an even more ludicrous price.

[Salomons Cat]

What we are observing is that ancient coins are becoming objects of speculation…

When we see such absurd prices (as mentioned by @kirispupis), I think that it shows that some vendors are probably not really interested in the coins - they just see them as a possibility to generate quick money. From a collector’s perspective, that’s sad. But I have my doubts that they are successful in the long term when they cannot estimate market prices.

 

[John Conduitt]

Yes in terms of economics, it's a confusing situation. On the one hand, we have close to perfect competition, the internet bringing buyers and sellers together so that it's very hard to get a bargain. On the other, we have people buying coins online they could've bought for a fifth of the price an hour before. What is the market price, anyway?

[robinjojo]

I've found auctions to be a stew, boiling over with the ingredients of bidder ego, gamesmanship (bidding for the sake of outbidding),speculation, auction firm profit margins, consignor expectations (realistic and not so realistic) and the sheer psychological drive to own a coin, common, scarce or rare based on its merits, which can be unique to the bidder or by a consensus of collectors.  This is a bubbling, frothing pot steaming over with diverse motives, but it is by no means limited to ancient coins. So, the pattern of buying an auction coin at a "low" price and then jacking the price up, usually aided by a slab to cosmic heights doesn't surprise me.  I just shake my head with the constant reconfirmation that it is part of human nature to do these things.  Such is the world we live in.