Selling Coins on eBay: Things to Consider as a New Lister

I have been collecting coins since my childhood days and I have finally decided to sell some of them. My coins collection consists of coins from various countries. I didn’t buy any of them. They’re just coins I happened to collect when I traveled to different countries.

I was also able to collect a lot of coins because we had a retail shop and most of our transactions involve coins. If you own a retail shop, no matter the size, it’s a good idea to also be involved in the coin collecting and selling business, as coins are your byproducts.

There are currently many online e-commerce sites where you can sell coins, but I chose eBay because it doesn’t charge upfront fees for listing your coins and other products. As we’ll see later, this would be very important.

Also, far from the rosy depictions of some eBay seller cum influencers online regarding how easy it is to make money on eBay selling coins, I found that the reality was different.

Here are some of the things you need to consider when selling coins on eBay:

The Details:

1. Listing on eBay for the first time

Listing on eBay as a first time seller is easy. Whether or not you already have an account on eBay or don’t, there would be subtle messages from eBay which would ask you to become a seller with them. Registering is as easy as following the steps eBay outlined for you.

If you have already registered with eBay a long time ago, you would already know that the most common way to pay for the items you bought would be via PayPal. However, things have changed a couple of years ago, now eBay has distanced itself with PayPal.

For example, when I registered as a seller on eBay, it didn’t give me the option to pay and accept payments using PayPal. Rather, it informed me that it would be choosing the best payment option for me which later turned out to be Payoneer.

You should seriously consider this issue as the income sharing policies and rates from these online payment processing platforms might seriously affect the income you derive from selling coins on eBay.

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2. Why choose eBay?

There are two reasons why it is a good option to list your coins in eBay:

2.1 It has no listing fees: eBay continues to implement its no listing fee policy as compared to other e-commerce platforms like Etsy. This means that in Etsy, even if you are unsuccessful in selling your coins, Etsy would still charge you a fee.

This is a very important issue. Your coins might not sell for a long time, maybe months or even years or even never, but with eBay, you only pay them a commission fee once someone has bought your coins. Your coins in theory can stay listed in eBay for free until they are bought.

2.2 eBay is the biggest e-commerce platform for selling your coins: eBay is next only to Amazon when it comes to numbers of product listed. Also, eBay is way much older than Amazon or any other e-commerce platform. It also has global reach.

This means that when you list your coins in eBay. You are selling your coins to the largest possible number of possible buyers.

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3. Your coins are not as rare as you think

Although market reach and size are one of the greatest advantages of selling your coins with eBay, it might also be one of your biggest disadvantages. This is because you have a large number of competitors who all think that selling in eBay is the best marketing strategy.

What I discovered is that if you think that the coin you are selling is rare and therefore would fetch a high price in eBay, think again. Searching eBay listings for similar coins that you are planning to sell might disappoint you.

eBay is a great place for buyers to find hard to find items. If you are looking for something, you would likely find it in eBay. This is precisely why all kinds of items are listed in eBay, including what you thought to be rare coins.

As such, in eBay, your coins which you thought of as rare are actually just “basic commodities” in eBay. Be prepared to lower your price expectations when selling your coins, so you don’t get disappointed but actually become realistic with real world coin values.

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4. A lot of coins are being sold at a bargain

It might further disappoint you when listing your coins in eBay to find that there are even coin sellers who sell their coin at such very low prices that they are even much lower than the coin’s face value.

There are eBay selling professionals who explained that the reason why these sellers are doing this is to gain a lot of positive feedback which increases their rankings.

To them, they are willing to sacrifice profits and even some money just to get the all important positive customer feedback which increases their ranking in eBay.

As you can see, it’s hard to compete against these sellers who are willing to presumably lose money just to increase their ranking in eBay. This is how important is seller ranking in eBay.

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5. There are plenty of uncirculated coins

Don’t be surprised when you find that there are many uncirculated coins that are selling at the same or even lower price as circulated coins. If you must know, “uncirculated coins” are coins that have never been used for commercial transactions, leaving them in pristine condition.

Your coin might be decades old but there is still a high chance that another competitor in eBay has an uncirculated version of your decades old coin. What’s more, they could even be selling their coin at a much lower price than yours.

There are many theories why someone would have uncirculated coins which they can sell at a low price, one reason is that they have bank connections which enabled them to have access to still uncirculated newly minted coins.

So, you can choose to lower your price expectations when competing against these sellers who can sell uncirculated coins at lower prices, or wait it out until someone buys your coin even though it is a circulated coin.

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6. Be wary of shipping costs

Depending on your country, you might have more expensive shipping costs as compared to other countries. For example, I repeatedly found that there are coin sellers in the U.S. who offer a much cheaper shipping cost for the same coin I’m selling from the Philippines.

For many coin sellers in eBay, shipping costs might be their biggest advantage or weakness as buyers from all over the world give serious consideration to the shipping cost before buying a coin in eBay.

Unfortunately, for the most part, you can’t do anything about your shipping cost as they are largely dictated by the postal organizations and companies in your country.

The best that you can do is to adjust your selling price such that you can offer a competitive combination of price cost and shipping cost.

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Final Words

eBay is still one of the best e-commerce platforms for selling your coins. Even a lot of coin auction sites are linked to eBay, proving that eBay is a major online market for coins.

But having such high expectations when it comes to profits to be made from selling coins in eBay can lead to disappointment. There are many negative factors that can seriously dampen the amount of money you can earn from eBay, selling coins.

Plenty of competitors selling the same coins as yours but for a much lower price, seemingly rare coins becoming commodity items, competitors having higher quality coins than yours with lower shipping rates, a lot can negatively affect your eBay coin selling business.

But despite this, people are still making money selling coins on eBay. This is because they already know the realities of the business and have adjusted their selling strategies, policies, and prices to make their coins more sellable.

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You Might Be Interested To Read This Article:

Collecting Coins Profitably in 11 Steps

Collecting coins can turn out to be a very profitable hobby, investment and/or business. For example, there are old US pennies that have sold for half a million dollars and more.

So, take a good look at the coins in your pocket or purse, their value might be way much more than their face value.

Here are a few steps to help you have a good start in your profitable coin collecting journey:...

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