I was intrigued on a particular aspect of dealer openness; one which I find laudable but just cannot understand. Why do some dealers, when selling higher value coins, let you know exactly where they acquired the coin (eg, Spink) and, thus, enable you to find out exactly how much they paid for it. I think it's great, but it does sort of put me off buying the coin.

Yes, authenticity and provenance are the reasons. If it was bought in a Spink auction for example, since they starting archiving their auctions on line, you should be able to find a picture and details of the coin to check it is the same one. That also means that Spink's experts have verified the authenticity, although even they can occasionally make mistakes in indentification of varieties. Provenance is importance for very rare coins, where there are only a few examples known, and it can be essential to trace the auction history of a particular piece. Disclosing the price the coin was previously traded at may only be a secondary consideration. If prices have gone up since then, buyers know they have to pay more to get desirable pieces. Anyway this openness is certainly to be commended. On the other side of the fence there are a lot of shady characters about who don't want to disclose auction provenance because they are trying to make a quick buck by upping the grade and/or deliberately misidentifying a piece they have just acquired at auction where it was correctly graded and identified. Many of them are to be found on Ebay masquerading as bona fide dealers.

Barry, a couple of years back I was interested in a Q Anne guinea on a respectable auctioneers' site. I had corresponded with the auctioneer to get more information but didn't in the end bid on it. Soon afterwards I spotted the same coin being offered on Ebay by some one who claimed to be a dealer with trade body recognition both in the UK and the US. It was an elephant and castle variety but the castle was weakly struck and rather close to the truncation, as pointed out in the auctioneer's description. The dealer had touched up the photograph a bit and described it as "a very rare and unclassified elephant only variety". In fact there are no elephant only varieties listed in the entire Q Anne gold series and the likelihood of one turning up seems virtually nil. In addition to the misidentification, he bumped the piece up two whole grades from the auctioneer's description and his enhanced photograph made this look credible. I never checked to see whether the dealer was really accredited or a complete phoney. His account was shut down soon afterwards due to complaints but he might easily have set up another.

There are also some accredited UK dealers who regularly hype up varieties of sovereigns as being much rarer than they really are on Ebay e.g. making out that closed or open 2 George III 1820 sovereigns are very rare and they hardly ever see them come up etc. Presumably they hope to catch out new collectors who jumped into the sovereign craze when the price of gold shot up. These cases are more grey area as they are not actually guilty of misidentification. They can always argue that the rarity was only their personal perception and they didn't set the selling price themselves but, whatever they say, they are still unethical. Ebay is great in many ways but makes it really hard for the watchdogs to do their jobs. It is probably OK for non-rare pieces where there is less incentive to cheat. It's also great for general consumer items.

While I'm at it, I once saw a so called accredited dealer offering a rare piece on Ebay UK that I also found on a US dealer's fixed price website. When the bid went over the fixed price, I checked with the US dealer who said he still had the piece in stock, so I ordered it. But a few days later he said there had been a mistake and it had already been sold before he offered to me. I then noticed that it had just been sold on Ebay by the second dealer for significantly more than the US dealer's fixed price. The dealer on Ebay was apparently auctioning coins that he didn't own or have on consignment and the US dealer was obviously lying to me too. Perhaps they were in fact the same person operating under different identities.

FleaBay = Scammers' Paradise!

Caveat Emptor - Buyer Beware!

Aidan.