Chinese ebay sellers with 1000's of sales and 100% feedback? 0

[coinwhat]

Hi,

I'm new and wanting to learn a bit about buyer safety from the community :-). This is probably an ignorant question but are sellers with enormous numbers of sales of NGC/PCGS items tending to be legit or not?

Is it safe to link sellers or items for sale in this sort of forum when asking for feedback?

Thanks

[Just Bob]

Welcome to the forum.

I really despise counterfeiters, so I may be a bit biased when it comes to this subject, but, as a general rule, I do not trust most sellers located in countries that are known to produce fakes - especially China. They even produce very convincing fake NGC and PCGS slabs, so buying a coin that appears to have been graded by a legitimate third party service does not automatically guarantee authenticity.

That being said, feel free to post a link to any auction about which you might have a question, and we will see if we can tell more about the coins in question.

Edited to add: High feedback numbers and lots of sales do not necessarily equal numismatic knowledge or integrity.

Edited March 29, 2020 by Just Bob

[Greenstang]

Agree with everything Just Bob says down to hating counterfeiters. I read on another forum that there are an estimated 2000 sellers from China selling counterfeit coins. Many have been removed from  eBay but they just start up again under a different name. That being said, there is one legitimate seller from China that sells many certified coins from NGC PCGS. I forget his name but if I saw his link, I would recognize it. Perhaps this is who you are referring to.

 

[kbbpll]

You don't say what kind of coins these are. NGC has offices in Shanghai and Hong Kong, so presumably there are legitimate sellers of legitimate NGC coins. It's good to be wary though. It helps to look up the cert numbers, see if there's images to match with the coin. They fake legitimate certs on fake slabs, but in my observation are too lazy to embed the cert in the barcode, so you can also get a barcode reader app to check that, although I've had limited success getting some apps to work right.

[coinwhat]

Thank you for your gracious replies - I am kind of surprised to find people passionate about coin collecting because I've always felt it was a bit of a lonely hobby. The coin stores I visited a few times were always quiet and mostly empty (before Covid and the metals rush). Now, I can't just walk into the store because, well, they're closed and the store is now the internet!

The item in question:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/NGC-PF70-UC-China-2010-Peking-Opera-Facial-Mask-1st-Issue-Silver-Coins-Set/162009731856?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

I hope the link works. I don't understand how the seller can have two for sale of a unique item with unique NGC numbers, but I know nothing about checking authenticity or whether it's even possible.

 

 

 

 

Edited March 30, 2020 by coinwhat
attach image

[Conder101]

What do you mean by a unique item?  Im sure they made more than one of each of those.  And every coin submitted for grading has a unique serial number.  These even came from two different submissions to NGC.

[coinwhat]

10 hours ago, Conder101 said:

What do you mean by a unique item?  Im sure they made more than one of each of those.  And every coin submitted for grading has a unique serial number.  These even came from two different submissions to NGC.

I didn't explain very well. What I meant was that the actual sale shows 2 of this set of items have been sold:

 

 

Yet the item specifics shows that this set of items has unique ngc serial numbers:

 

 

Does that mean for example that coins with certification numbers 4415809-005 and 4415809-012 have been sold twice?

 

 

Edited April 1, 2020 by coinwhat

[coinwhat]

On 3/30/2020 at 3:30 AM, Greenstang said:

Agree with everything Just Bob says down to hating counterfeiters. I read on another forum that there are an estimated 2000 sellers from China selling counterfeit coins. Many have been removed from  eBay but they just start up again under a different name. That being said, there is one legitimate seller from China that sells many certified coins from NGC PCGS. I forget his name but if I saw his link, I would recognize it. Perhaps this is who you are referring to.

 

Hello Greenstang, I'd be very curious to know the name of any reputable seller. :-)

[Greenstang]

coinwhat-

I did a little research and found the name of the reputable Chinese seller, (Hong Kong actually) His eBay seller ID is confucions.

Right know he only has 5 USA listings but usually has many more 

[Just Bob]

8 hours ago, coinwhat said:

I didn't explain very well. What I meant was that the actual sale shows 2 of this set of items have been sold:

 

 

Yet the item specifics shows that this set of items has unique ngc serial numbers:

 

 

Does that mean for example that coins with certification numbers 4415809-005 and 4415809-012 have been sold twice?

 

 

According to the seller's current listing, "S/N might be different from the listing." (S/N  = serial number)

He is using a stock picture to represent his different products.  Looks like he is legit.

[coinwhat]

10 hours ago, Greenstang said:

coinwhat-

I did a little research and found the name of the reputable Chinese seller, (Hong Kong actually) His eBay seller ID is confucions.

Right know he only has 5 USA listings but usually has many more 

thank you very much for taking a look into that for me. I've bookmarked the seller.

[coinwhat]

10 hours ago, Just Bob said:

According to the seller's current listing, "S/N might be different from the listing." (S/N  = serial number)

He is using a stock picture to represent his different products.  Looks like he is legit.

I very much appreciate your feedback, Just Bob!

Do you happen to know if colorized coins with certificates are in the realm of fakery or do counterfeiters only focus on plain metal coins?

 

[Just Bob]

I have never seen any colorized fakes, but I would not be surprised if they started showing up in the future.

[coinwhat]

3 hours ago, Just Bob said:

I have never seen any colorized fakes, but I would not be surprised if they started showing up in the future.

This sort of input from someone like you who's been in the community since 2007 is so valuable. Thank you.

[Conder101]

22 hours ago, Just Bob said:

I have never seen any colorized fakes, but I would not be surprised if they started showing up in the future.

Could have the advantage that the colorizing agents could hide any detail problems on the "coin" itself

[Aureus-Numismatics]

Hi

You do see counterfeit chinese colorized coins, but rarely. Chinese goverment does not particulary care about fakes made for deceiving collectors ( making fakes of obsolete money), although tehnically almost none of the US coins are obsolete. On the other hand, they are very aggresive when it comes to protecting their own currency, so fakes of modern silver yuan colorized coins are almost sure not made in China but somewhere else in Asia and also a very risky business. It is just not worth it. These coins when offered are legit, but some basic precaution is still necessary.