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my coin chuckle for the day

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rons

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Today I made an offer for a coin on eBay. The dealer, a very very well known dealer, was asking $328.60.  I offered $285 figuring I could negotiate up to 290.  His counteroffer was 327.99.  The explanation was "my cost is 300...with fees I lose money "  I had to laugh and thought perhaps you all would get a chuckle as well. I don't believe he had $300 in the coin but what a ridiculous counteroffer. Why bother with "make an offer" if you are going to drop the price 61 cents. Anyway I still think it is funny and hope you do too:)

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I'm dealing with something somewhat similar currently. I've been trying to negotiate with a dealer listing a coin at $600 and "or best offer" a week ago or so he offered me and the other person watching it $540. Neither of us took it.

I offered $460 in response and he offered $540... Today I offered $500. He countered with $540... He's not budging from that $540. I'm pretty sure the coin is actually only worth about $450-480, but the coin is PERFECT for a set I'm trying to build. But I'd really been wanting to not go over $525... I'm trying to decide if $15-40 is worth letting it go when this is the first time I've seen something like this coin come up in years. 

I've recently had cases where I made offers on 5 items from the same (another) seller and they countered by offering $1 off each item. I didn't take it and waited while the notes sat on the seller's inventory for 4 months. After relisting them and dropping their prices 2 times, they finally played ball with me a little. Of course, with my current situation with this coin, it has me wondering if I should do the same with this difficult seller. But that again risks losing the coin by waiting.

Edited by Revenant
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We would need more details about the listing to chuckle 

If it was an auction style listing the starting bid price is the reserve the best offer is used to try to settle before the bidding starts which may drive the price much higher then the opening bid 

If the listing was a fixed price then yes it signals they are willing to negotiate 

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3 hours ago, B.C said:

We would need more details about the listing to chuckle 

If it was an auction style listing the starting bid price is the reserve the best offer is used to try to settle before the bidding starts which may drive the price much higher then the opening bid 

If the listing was a fixed price then yes it signals they are willing to negotiate 

All of the above is very true, and my response was talking only about fixed ask / "Buy it Now or Best Offer" situations I've seen in the past. I naturally defaulted to this because I do a lot of stuffy with "Buy it Now" if I find something with a reasonable price because I don't see a lot of what I want come up in an auction format. If I do, the price is set so high that it might as well be "Buy it Now" and often times there's only one or two bidders and it goes for what the starting bid price was or very close to it. Personally, I always view that as a sign of a poor starting bid price. Yeah. It makes sure that you don't give the item away for a song, but if you can get several people interested and bidding you can often do better, and a lot of these listings end with the item unsold with 0 bids because the starting price was just too high.

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5 hours ago, B.C said:

We would need more details about the listing to chuckle 

If it was an auction style listing the starting bid price is the reserve the best offer is used to try to settle before the bidding starts which may drive the price much higher then the opening bid 

If the listing was a fixed price then yes it signals they are willing to negotiate 

My bad, it was a buy it now or best offer.  I just can't imagine the logic of dropping the price 61 cents.  This guy is a big time dealer and I figured  he would be willing to wheel and deal a bit. What a shock to me when he responded with his counter. I wished him best of luck without my usual sarcasm and just thought I would share my experience here. :)

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Yeah, that same thing happened to me a while back. Made an offer about 5 dollars below the selling price - which was around 50 bucks - and the seller countered with an offer less than a dollar below the original price.

No thanks.

 

Enjoying a tall cup of hot Kona coffee as I type this. :cloud9:

 

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That is an odd buy it now price. Are you sure the item was not listed at a higher price and currently included in some sort of sale? There are times when I have a sale running and can't take much more off through offers because it is already discounted that week.

Now, if you are running a sale that lasts indefinitely, it is not a sale at all, and in that case I can see a problem not accepting offers.

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I had a similar experience on eBay, where a seller had a $495 BIN or "best offer" on a coin actually worth around $400, and it sat there on my watch list for weeks.  I offered the actual value of $400 based on recent eBay and Heritage completed sales and got a counteroffer of $490. Didn't bother to respond, and nine months later it's still on eBay at $495 BIN or best offer. Meanwhile I won one the same grade at Heritage for a little under $380 including fees.  

And Bob, I love that Kona coffee.  Almost as much as I love Ethiopian Yergacheffe. 

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36 minutes ago, CBC said:

... and nine months later it's still on eBay at $495 BIN or best offer. 

I've seen things sit for 2-3 years, with the seller just renewing the listing every month - waiting for the right sucker I guess.

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rons.. nicely toned 1941-D at great collections--currently just $52 for this MS67FB.. bet it goes for < $200

810002-3.jpg

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Jackson, Thanks for the heads up. That is one amazingly toned dime. I will check it out.   :)

Edited by rons
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Well, I got distracted last night and didn't check the auction until it was over. I had put in a bid of $152 and figured I would get notified when I was outbid. I just missed it and it went for $157 :(  Dang it   I just checked and I was sniped with 20 seconds remaining in the auction.  Good prediction Jackson, I just blew it.

 

Edited by rons
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