Hi - This is a topic I talked about a couple years ago and had some response on.
It seems to me the problem has got slightly worse with some people making multiple accounts to list common coins with massively inflated values (e.g. £5000 for a basic £2 coin and that sort of thing).
The discussion last time was about whether this was scamming. I argued that it was (not going to get into specifics again) and many people agreed with me. Now, however, these sellers seem to have gone the next step and set up multiple accounts selling coins to make it look like these coins actually have this value.
Yes, you might say "Ah but if you are stupid enough to buy this then that's your fault" but personally I feel this damages the market and eBay's quality and community in general. And also, how do you know that these sellers aren't targeting people with disabilities or the elderly? How would you feel if your old mum/dad, grandmother/father etc (perhaps with a degrading mind) was on eBay one day and reported back to you they had spent £1000 on a 2 pence coin with a supposed 'misalignment'.
To be clear, I am not talking about genuine coin sellers and whether I think these coins are worth it or not. I am talking about these scammer types. Some examples, a seller with 3 feedback is trying to sell a common 50p coin for £15k! Another with 1 feedback trying to sell a 50p coin for £5k. Another with 14 feedback also for £5k. Another with zero feedback trying to sell one for £3.5k. The list goes on and on and I have only looked for 5 minutes.
It is my opinion that eBay should not allow this - clearly market manipulation and scammy behaviour (in which a scam is defined as a misleading strategy i.e. 'this is coin is very rare' when it is not). It also annoys me because if I wanted to look for actual coins then all this junk just gets in the way. What are your thoughts? How can we stop this?
