PWCC Messaged Me...
 

Heard a number of folks are getting cold calls. I haven't bought from PWCC in 3 years, but used to be a regular. I received a message a couple days ago, not asking me to bid or consign cards... but asking if I had any coins I'd like to sell. Seems they are selling coins and will facilitate getting them graded for sale. Have others experienced this push toward expanding into another large market - numismatics?

On a related note, do many of you collect coins, bullion or otherwise? I do. I found several tobacco guys who also collect US silver dollars or 1800's gold coins.

I recently noticed that their weekly auctions have coins now. Their prewar baseball offerings seem to have really dried up.

I also collect coins, but my collection is tiny compared to paper things.

Goodness, coins now? Can't wait to see what else they ask for in 2023 :D

Desperation.... Their market seems to be dropping pretty quickly.

They did have a very generously graded PSA 4 T205 Cy Young go for $5K last week, but yes, generally less pre-war than before.

They have 6000 items in this week's auction, how does that compare to when they were on ebay?

5,000 plus of those are 1985 and newer ugh

That's where the money is these days, I bet 99 percent of PSA submissions are 1985 and newer.

The modern market is tanking, they might not want to admit it but it is......They can keep grading garbage all the want let them have it.

Crazy you mentioned this. Pre-pandemic I stopped at their then new location to drop off a submission and they were trying to talk me into using my potential funds for future purchases. I passed and told them my focus was going into coins. They told me that they were going to have a coin auction down the road but I never heard or saw anything. Now that my son fell out of coin collecting, I'm left with a small impressive lot of coins. Since I collected graded cards in the past, I made sure any coin I bought was graded but only PCGS. Not to kill or hijack your thread but if you're looking for a particular coin, let me know. I tried selling on here only to get crickets. I still find them fascinating, but I'm a card collector by heart. Any interests please check out my photo album. Thanks community!

I started collecting coins a few years ago when I just had to have a $20 St. Gaudens. Still mostly cards, but I do like the coins a lot. It's a mostly fixed price market, so I would think an auction is a good idea for a seller like PWCC.

PWCC haters crack me up. Pointing to a weekly auction that ends on Christmas Day as if it's reflective of their normal volume. And people pointing out the fact that they are expanding their business by auctioning coins as somehow being evidence that the sky is falling lol.

Yet every week I'm bidding on their auctions and getting smashed despite bidding cards up to 3x and 4x "comps". I think they're doing just fine. Or great rather.

Here was my most recent failed attempt to buy a nice key vintage card in this week's auction...

1975 Topps George Brett PSA 6 RC. It's "worth" about $150. I bid this one up to $600 and gave up.

I doubt this is indicative of any kind of financial problem for PWCC. Expanding your business into other areas is the normal progression, for those in trouble and crushing it both.

People have voted with their wallets and made it clear that most will happily bid with shill bidding plagued schemes and fraud rings, time and time again. For some reason, many hobbyists will even do unpaid PR work denying inconvenient facts related to these fraud rings. The vast majority clearly have no interest in things cleaning up because they see profit in the future as values lift, regardless of how legitimate those values are. PWCC will be just fine as a result. Shill bidding and fraud clearly pay off big time.

Would trimmed coins be easier to spot than trimmed cards?

Coin doctoring, actually, is a huge problem.

How did that 6 not even get one of those eye appeal stickers?

I can only imagine.

My knowledge of coins, in general, is limited. I know practically nothing about the market.

The market has a loooong way to fall


Sheesh

"...the total number of doctored classic U.S. coins that have unfortunately received numerical grades has significantly risen over time and has become substantial. It is relevant that coin doctors may re-submit, sometimes through intermediaries, the same coins over and over again..."

Gee, that sounds familiar.

PWCC provides great customer service and has plenty of cards in the weekly and monthly auctions.

I enjoy doing business with them.

Satire?

Hopefully.
I too buy from them but not as much after the whole 3 month or 3% rule. As far as customer service,Middle of the road at best. Can’t even call them.
Thomas Church

It seems the new generations much prefer text and email and chat to actually talking to anyone? So maybe it reflects the times.

So true! My 30 year old children prefer texting me on Father’s Day instead of calling me 😩😂

Curious what the 3 month or 3% rule means. Can someone explain?

Funny, my 77 year old father only prefers texts over phone calls. I call but he had already texted me everything of his day, week, month and so on. My birthday and Christmas were GIFs this year. I'm stuck in the middle of generations.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Maurice Rosen courageously discussed coin doctoring in a subscription-based newsletter aimed at non-collecting investors. Travers, though, was the only expert then who brought the matter to the attention of a very large number of coin buyers and other interested people. If additional experts had publicly supported his efforts during that era, there would be fewer doctored coins now.

Funny, the same thing happened at during the 80s and 90s at card shows.....

Remember the Underdog cartoon? How he bit his coins to verify their authenticity?

Here's a contrast between the two categories of collectables:

A card might have unwanted foxing around the edges, but in the coin world its considered "wonderfully aged toning" and often carries a large premium, particularly if the "toning" has more than one color! pretty amazing....

I know nothing about coins. That "colorful toning" has always looked like someone heated the coin to make it look that way to me.

True enough Ben, using heat (or chemicals) to create artificial toning is a big problem. Many examples have gotten by the TPG's... there's something in common with cards - undetected doctoring. I firmly believe whether you buy a vintage baseball card or an old coin, you need to examine it for yourself under magnification.

And the dictation software takes all the effort out of texting.

I have no idea what it is called. It is through texting but you record the message and the recipient hits the play button and you hear the recorded message.

I do both. I have younger friends that will not answer their phone but will then return a text almost instantly after they didn't answer their phone.

Me too. I just don’t get it.

There is zero evidence of PWCC having ever been involved in a shill bidding operation, and in fact quite a lot of evidence to the contrary.

eBay on the other hand... is beyond plagued with shill bidding and they have deliberately chosen to ignore it. I'd wager good money that you give them your business though, right?

You got me. Perhaps they didn't have a sticker for 'Top 0.01%"?

You never really explain your full conspiracy theory about why eBay threw away millions of dollars from one of their biggest sellers on the platform and opened themselves up to legal risk by very publicly banning them over a claim to fact that you claim is false. Still denying their complicity in the Gary Moser trimming and the mountains of evidence that they both knew and some of the cards were Brent's own? I'm sure you are. You always just claim the evidence doesn't exist, it's then presented to you or linked for the 5,000th time, and then you either double down and ignore it or claim others have done bad too and so PWCC is still a victim. Like clockwork.

I completely understand, just disagree with, doing business with fraud rings when it is to one's benefit. Unpaid simping for somebody else's fraud ring at every possible chance one gets, I will never understand.

I've explained why eBay accused "individuals associated with PWCC" of shill bidding numerous times. It's pretty simple, and quite obvious really. No conspiracy theories necessary. eBay learned that PWCC would soon be launching their own platform as a major competitor in the sports card auction space. Less than one month later, PWCC's website was live and immediately a zillion times better than eBay's. That sort of web development doesn't happen overnight. PWCC's auction platform had already been in development for a long time. eBay found out about it and, like eBay has shown numerous times over the past ~30 years, they AGGRESSIVELY go after their competition by any and every means necessary. eBay has also VERY CLEARLY demonstrated that they couldn't give two shits about shill bidding on their platform. In fact, they welcome it with open arms. Gotta make those shareholders happy! eBay tried to sling mud on their competition before they left on their own. This was absolutely a case of "You can't quit! You're fired!!!"

And your claim that they opened themselves up to legal risk by very publicly banning them? LOL. Please. Read it again. "Individuals associated with PWCC engaged in shill bidding". That's the snakiest wording possible. They didn't even accuse PWCC directly in their bullshit letter. They accused "individuals associated with" them (AKA - consigners).

But you already knew all of that.

As far as Gary Moser's (and other scissorhanded people) connections with PWCC goes, I've stated every time this topic gets brought up that I don't think they should be doing business with him. And guess what? They banned him. But just because they took his consignments in the past doesn't mean they too are guilty of trimming cards. Every single auction house and platform is going to have card trimmers washing cards through them. It's absolutely unavoidable. There are millions of trimmed cards in this hobby. Literally millions. If you want to stop buying cards from auction houses that sell trimmed cards, then you're going to run out of options real quick. Good luck with that.

You can’t trim a coin . But maybe you can manipulate Certification Companies to give you better grades to screw the market up .


Sounds familiar.

PWCC was a pimple on the butt of ebay and nobody there gives a fart about PWCC's system.

+1 and PWCC's site is awful IMO

It's actually quite common, call coin clipping

This is absolute nonsense. eBay has invested heavily in the sports cards and collectibles division of their company over the past couple years. They recognize the present and future value of this market. They also recognized PWCC as the soon-to-be top competitor in this space. If you honestly believe this was about shill bidding, I've got a bridge to sell you.

You're free to hate it, but it ranks the highest of any major auction site on every poll I've seen.

Could you post links to all of these polls?

I've seen a few on Instagram. I'll try to remember to post next time I see one. I think the LukasTigersBrons podcast did one recently too.

I just looked at their completed monthly auction. 9 cards sold for over 200K each. It seems they are still getting good cards, even if they're mostly modern? I would be hesitant to count Brent too far out of the game.