How do I or Should I buy coins from Ebay?

Ebay is often referred to as an "online auction house". It was one of the first of its kind, so it has the largest selection and the most established reputation. However, it's not strictly speaking an auction house: each auction is run by the individual seller rather than by the Ebay company. Ebay only provides the venue and resources such as server space for the images and listings.

This means that you will have to be careful what you buy and whom you buy it from. While Ebay does have ways of investigating fraud, it can often be difficult to prosecute. The main piece of advice I can give is caveat emptor : "let the buyer beware".

To start with, learn how Ebay works and what an auction looks like before you get an account and start bidding. Ebay has a very good tutorial, but here are the basics:

• You can just look at auctions without an account. In order to buy and sell on Ebay, you have to register with them and get an account.
• In the "search" box, you enter in what you're looking for. The results are displayed by the end date and time of the auctions- ones that are just about to end are listed first.
• In the results list, you will see whether or not there is a picture available of the item, the title of the item, the price it's currently going for, how many bids have been made on it, and what time the auction will close (all times are in PDT).
• Click on the title of an item to see that particular auction. This will give you more detailed information about the auction, including who the seller is, the seller's description of the item, the terms and conditions of the transaction, and an area where you can bid.
• If you have an account, and see an item that you're interested in, you can bid right from the auction page!

Once you have an account and want to purchase an item or items on Ebay, here are some recommendations to avoid getting a bad reputation as a bidder and to avoid getting scammed.

• A bid is a legally binding contract. Only bid on items that you seriously want to buy. You may only retract a bid under special circumstances. To be safe, bid on only one thing at a time until you start to feel more comfortable with the system and can keep track of multiple auctions.
• Don't wait for the seller to contact you if you have won an auction- check on the status of the auction as soon as you can after it ends to make sure that you won.
• Use proxy bidding. This means that you tell Ebay how high you are willing to bid and what price you want to start at; Ebay will increase your bid in increments of $.50 until your maximum has been reached. If you request it to, it will also notify you when someone has outbid you. Using a proxy means you won't be tied to your computer constantly checking your auctions, and it allows you to avoid overspending (as long as you don't give in to the temptation to increase your limit).
• Decide how much you're willing to pay for an item before you start to bid on it. Don't forget to take into account the shipping & handling charges and insurance- for heavy and/or expensive items, you can often pay more in S&H than you do for the actual item.
• Read the seller's terms and conditions carefully. In particular, what forms of payment will they accept? Not all sellers accept personal checks. How soon do they want the payment? If you live far away from the seller, you may want to consider wiring the money to them via a service like Western Union rather than waiting for the check to arrive by mail and then clear, especially if they want the payment within a certain number of days.
• Only buy an item if there's at least one picture of it available. The picture should be good quality, with adequate lighting, showing detail. Often the seller will have two photos: the first a general shot, then a second close-up shot of key details. Keep in mind that a picture can be altered. This is particularly a problem with coins- since even a slight scratch can drastically lower a coin's value, it is not unheard of for an unscrupulous seller to airbrush an image. For valuable coins, make sure they are certified through an independent reputable grading service. (According to the regulars at the Usenet group rec.collecing.coins, ACG is not a reliable grading service. Take this tip as you will- I've been reading the group for a while now; there are many knowledgeable collectors and dealers on there so I generally trust their opinions.)
• In any case, whether the coin is valuable or not, check the seller's feedback rating. Ebay community regulates itself through the feedback system. Sellers are listed with a star next to the their name; the color of the star shows whether or not the seller has sold few or many times before. Whenever a transaction occurs, the buyer rates the seller on things like how quickly the seller shipped the item, was the item in the condition that the seller advertised, etc. Does the seller have any recent negative ratings? What was the buyer's complaint? If a seller has 500 positives and 2 negatives that are several months old, I wouldn't worry. If a seller has 100 feedbacks, with 10 recent negatives and several neutrals, then I'd worry.
• Remember that just as there is a feedback system for the sellers, there is a feedback system for the buyers, too. A seller will not be happy about late payments, bounced checks, and other problems; s/he can and will leave bad feedback about you, too so that other sellers may not want to sell to you.

Here are some final notes:

You may find an item that says "reserve not yet met". Sellers can place a reserve on an item. This says, "if I don't get a bid worth at least $ X , then I will withdraw the item from auction". Ebay does not list the reserve prices for items. If you are interested in an item but the reserve has not been met on it, contact the seller to find out how much they're looking for. If you're currently the highest (or the only) bidder, sometimes the seller will cut you a deal.

Besides the problem of altered images, two other problems that can occasionally occur on Ebay are "shill bidding" and "sniping". "Shill bidding" is when someone who knows the seller bids on a item solely to up the price of the item when the bidding is not going as well as hoped. If discovered, this practice is considered fraud but it's often hard to prove.

"Sniping" is when someone waits until the very last minute (literally) to place their first bid, then outbids the current highest bidder to win the auction. This is especially irritating since Ebay is run mostly by computer, so the computer will take whoever it logs as the last bidder, even if it's by mere seconds. A slow net connection or a computer crash can keep you from the item you want if a sniper has a better setup than you do. This practice is not technically against the rules, so while it's frustrating to lose an auction to a sniper, there's not much you can do.

In the past, Ebay did have a rash of troubles with the traffic on its servers being too much for it to handle. They have since done extensive upgrades and no major problems have been reported recently. However, you do enter the auctions at your own risk- Ebay will not compensate people for money lost because of a temporary loss of service or hardware problems on their part or on yours.