mmissinglink
Active Member
Interesting article of yours, badon: https://www.reddit.com/r/CoinInvest...are_coins_can_help_your_investment_portfolio/
.
.
Forums Discussing Chinese Coins
- Thread starter barsenault
- Start date
badon said:
There goes that passive aggressive tone again. lol. Time to let it go dude. I'm trying to be fair to both forums. They each have their strengths and weaknesses but that is common with any community. I don't think you should say nothing good comes out of it. Heck, I helped barsenault/Andy by promoting them on my channel that shed some light on the medals to numistacker of which he became a big advocate. I was not the first, but I was one of the larger channels. Also, for a good moment pandas/medals or anything from China was generally hated by folks in the YT community. Comments about them being fake, low quality, communist, etc. Thanks to the folks at China-mint, I was able to help promote pandas and the quality of chinese mints on YouTube, even in recent I've done videos on this. I've shared a lot of information I learned through that forum. Same with this one. Very rarely is anyone afraid. There's always a check on people who say, Look at this, then try to sell it. lol Scammers man. They are everywhere and will continue to grow in numbers as metal prices increase.
We all help each other since we're all in a coin community. The coin compendium like i said is cool, but I think its fairly well known that is more favorable to medals. I don't see much on the panda series other than some of the one offs or lunar pandas, which is cool. There's an audience for it and that site is a good resource for them. There needs to be more money in the hobby for the sector to grow. Either in direct metals or collectibles. Ultimately, everyone is either sharing or consuming information. This is what should be promoted. The more people that know, the more people will buy. The niche needs ambassadors like myself, numistacker, silverslacker(poured silver) to help promote to the public and bring awareness. It'll also draw plenty of people who will recognize the work that you guys put in to building/writing the databases that were compiled on medals, panda, grading, etc so people can appreciate the work. People will pick a niche in a niche and hopefully their intrigue will spill over into other parts of the hobby.
I'll be honest and say, I don't buy medals because of what I read in the archives and the threat of pumping and dumping, Low mintage value traps and manipulation. So the records are there for people to see and make decisions about. You know, people say the same thing about Numismatics so its really no different. It's all where a person's risk aversion is and the type of things they like to collect. Where I am scared, others are aggressive. Where I am aggressive, others are scared. As they say, Sooo Many coins, Never enough Money!!!.
barsenault said:
Quite the contrary, there's a few discussions from a few different folks about preservation, conservation, medals, 1/10 pandas, new releases, etc. They do have an active buy/sell group but that is not a bad thing. A healthy market is a good one, just look at the aussie guys here.
A market alone cannot be made without some background knowledge of the buyer/seller. A forum where buyer/sellers discuss and occasionally trade is quite good. No different than a coin show.
barsenault
Well-Known Member
KOL...oops I mean KOT, shut your trap, and go some place else to whine, you sniveling baby. How old are you anyway? Geesh Louise!
barsenault
Well-Known Member
Amen Silverpv. Thanks for the analysis. I would agree that CCF is more slanted toward the medals (non-fiat coins) and China Mint more centers around coins (fiat). Both have their pros and cons. As is often stated, 'buy what you like, and more than likely, you'll be happy.' When I mentioned about the selling and buying becoming predominate, that is my perception and opinion, which I'm entitled to. I didn't deride it or say it was a negative. Just pointing out my observation is all. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. And I do remember you sharing about the Lunar Panda series, which in turn caught the attention of Numistacker. Thanks. Good job with all your purchases, coins and medals both!
Silverpv said:
That's a lot of great info! I'm going to break up your quote into parts so I can focus on each of them. Here we go...
Silverpv said:
No. Nothing is shutting down, and nothing is moving. Reddit is separate from all the other forums, and it will remain that way. Like you said, Reddit is a completely different kind of "forum" - It's more like twitter, but "crowd-curated" to surface the newest and best content above all the rest. Reddit gives people a another way to find information, no matter where it is, or what format it is published in.
A good example of something Reddit does well that forums are not so good at, is posting of news articles. If I tried to post every interesting news article on the forums, it would be too noisy. And, posting just a link isn't what is normally expected on forums. I post a link to a news article on a forum, it is expected for it to come with a detailed commentary. On Reddit, it's just a link, and if people think it's not useful, it will won't be distracting people by taking up space at the top of the list of posts (like forums do with recent posts).
Silverpv said:
I'm fairly new to Reddit, so I'm paying attention to any advice or suggestions people might have. The reason why I made so many different subreddits is because someone may be interested only in pandas, or only in gold pandas, while other people may want all of it collected in one place for all Chinese coins. The cross-posting is just me being a librarian and organizing things like I do on CCF, but maybe that isn't compatible with Reddit, and there might be a limit to how much cross-posting I do before it becomes a usability problem. For example, an article about gold pandas could go in /r/ChineseCoins, then /r/Panda_Coin/, then /r/Gold_Panda/. It's not necessary to put it in all those places, and lately I have received similar feedback like yours, so now I'm trying to make judgment calls about whether it would be interesting to each subreddit, before the voting even starts.
I'm also watching what happens to each subreddit. Sometimes the ones I thought would be the most popular are not, and others are turning out to be growing much faster. /r/CoinInvesting/ is growing the fastest, and /r/ModernCoins/ is the second fastest. /r/CoinFakes/ and /r/ArtInvesting/ are too new to know how fast they will grow, but so far /r/ArtInvesting/ is growing the fastest. Art investing is closely related to coin investing, so I'm learning a lot by finding articles about art investing even though the only art investing I'm doing right now is in coinage art. Some of the news articles have been worthy of cross-posting too.
Silverpv said:
The market has been in a long consolidation phase for about 2 years, but we're starting to occasionally see some impressive price gains rippling through the market again this year (2016). Most of the action has been in the fiat gold pandas, but I stayed out of the "master set" frenzy, since I think it got overheated. That said, I did not sell ANY of my rare fiat pandas, because regardless of what happens, they're too hard to replace. What is happening now is a sector rotation out of the overheat fiat, and into the cooler coins, both fiat and non-fiat.
The fiat cultural coin are being marketed heavily in China's network of banks right now, and they have achieved impressive price gains despite mintages in the millions. That's good news for the market, but I'm NOT following the crowd and investing in those, because their high mintages are only considered high when there are better investments available.
One reason why CCF is taking off right now (besides completing the move from LBC) is because I was right about non-fiat coins getting more attention when people start questioning the dramatically higher prices they're paying for fiat. When price versus rarity is considered, people know exactly why the prices came down recently on some of the hottest and highest mintage fiat. The most important thing to know is, the People's Republic of China (PRC) official government mints are losing interest in producing low-mintage coins. In the past, people thought they could buy them any time they wanted, and the mints will always make more.
Now, Shanghai doesn't want to mint anything with a mintage of less than 30'000, and the VIP-only panda expo series is going to be canceled because of it. Shenyang and Shenzhen are still willing to make them sometimes, but this year it appears they won't do it cheap for anything with a mintage under 5000, like the 2016 panda moon festival. Nanjing is the last of the 4 official government mints of the PRC that will still produce low mintage coins for low prices.
The unexpected success of the Nanjing pandas might change all that, which will be good for everyone who already has Nanjing pandas and other Nanjing low mintage coins. Nanjing panda collectors are hoping for a higher mintage if the Nanjing mint makes a gold panda for 2016, but there isn't much time left in the year to do that. We might have to wait until 2017 to get gold and/or higher mintages for the next set of the Nanjing pandas. Regardless of what happens in the remainder of 2016 and in 2017, the trend is clear, low mintages are disappearing, and the market is gradually learning about that fact. I'm collecting information about the decline of low mintages in this CCF article:
2016 4th panda expo coin design proposals, mint losing interest in low mintages
Silverpv said:
The worldwide coin market needs:
1. The stability of slow strengthening.
2. Participation of the general public.
3. Higher than normal inflation.
4. No large crisis, collapse, war, unemployment, or catastrophes that affect coin buyers.
We have had all of those during the last 2 years, except #3. Sometimes #3 can cause problems with #4, and vice-versa. Deflation is worse than inflation.
Silverpv said:
All or nearly all of the lowest mintage coins are non-fiat. The divide between mintages of non-fiat and fiat is so wide - often hundreds versus millions - they are sort of becoming associated with "low mintage" and "high mintage". When people hear "non-fiat" (or related terms), they naturally expect that to mean "low mintage". That trend is very old, so it's not going to go away any time soon, but what makes it so exciting is it appears the non-fiat coins are suddenly starting to accelerate.
Yes, my answer to your other question about the market acceleration quoted above means the market as a whole is could start to accelerate at the same time as some of the low mintage fiat-coins are independently accelerating. Things might get crazy and very exciting if that happens. Millionaires will be made. CCF member Y7ASyxC has attempted to research the causes of sudden acceleration in non-fiat coins, because it could lead to insights that can give us some idea of what coins might be the best investments in the future. His research is here:
The new non-fiat era - A preliminary crime scene investigation.
The ultra-short version is, "non-fiat" is developing a good reputation for being profitable right now.
The longer version is, the Nanjing 2016 pandas are probably responsible. Nanjing pandas were first minted in 2014, but at the time they were supposed to be an obscure and expensive endangered animals series. The power-players at the Nanjing mint (sponsors etc) noticed our discussions about them at LBC and CCF, and they realized they had just created the first and only pandas the Nanjing mint has ever produced. That is a big deal for all panda collectors, because everyone knows the first 1982 gold panda (non-fiat!) and the first 1983 silver panda are among the most valuable ones, solely because they were first.
All 3 of the other official mints at Shanghai, Shenyang, and Shenzhen are involved in minting fiat pandas, but the Nanjing mint is bizarrely excluded. Without permission from the central bank, they can't mint anything with a fiat number on it - it is indistinguishable from a copyright on the yuan symbol. The yuan symbol can't be copied without permission, even though it is literally meaningless. Kind of like how it might be possible to buy groceries with nicely printed copies of nonsense bad poetry, but you could be sued if you try to do it with someone else's copyrighted bad poetry.
So, without the opportunity to mint fiat pandas, the Nanjing mint decided to commit to turning the 2014 pandas into a real panda series, starting by minting more of them in 2016. That got everyone's attention, but the Nanjing mint didn't stop there. They reduced the prices AND they reduced the mintages on the 2016 Nanjing pandas, and only CCF members were invited to pre-order them. The best one, the Nanjing 2016 65 g silver panda, sold out in about 3 hours.
They sold so fast, I only got 1 for myself before I realized what was happening. After that, it was too late to get any extras. That means I can't sell mine, or my set will be incomplete. If other people are the same as me, then it will quickly become very difficult to buy one on the secondary market. That is good for the future value of those coins.
Silverpv said:
If you want to stick with fiat, look at the ones that have been overlooked during the "master set" frenzy. My personal favorite is the 1995 1 oz gold panda proof, with an authorized mintage of 2000, an actual mintage of 555, and a surviving population of about 100 known specimens. If you are lucky enough to find one for sale, it could probably be bought for between $8000 and $10'000 in 69 grade right now. Compare to the 1995 1/2 oz gold panda with a surviving population of around 3000 to 4000 specimens, and a peak price of about $27'500.
Although the 1995 1 oz gold panda proof is my personal favorite, there are other fiat pandas that will probably be more profitable, simply because they're less expensive and can rise more percentagewise before people can't afford to push prices higher anymore. Immediately coming to mind is the 1995 1 oz silver panda Shenyang small date (microdate), which has a surviving population of 4000 last I heard, which is almost exactly the same as the 1995 1/2 oz gold panda - except the silver one will cost you around $1000 or less in a nice 69 grade.
The next fiat panda that comes to mind is the 1995 1 oz silver panda proof, because it's the key for the proof pandas, AND it has 4 major varieties that split up the surviving population even more. Those 4 varieties mean every proof panda collector will need to buy 4 of the 1995 silver proof before they will have a complete set. Whatever the surivivng population is, it just got slashed to 1/4 what it would have been if everyone was buying only 1 of them.
The 1992 1 oz silver panda also has 4 major or mid-importance varieties. It's not as rare and not as expensive as the 1995.
After all of the fiat pandas above, next I would probably target a complete set of silver proof pandas. All of them are underpriced compared to their gold counterparts. Since I'm not personally targeting this set, others might be able to give you more information to help you prioritize your purchases if you pursue this route. For myself, I own the 1995 1 oz gold panda proof, the 1995 1 oz silver panda Shenyang small date (microdate), and one of the key varieties of the 1995 1/2 oz silver pandas (I forgot which one). That's it for the main series of fiat pandas, but once again, someone else might be able to name some other rare and underpriced gems you could chase.
If you want to diversify into non-fiat pandas - and all manner of diversification is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED - I think it's reasonable to start with the Nanjing 2016 pandas. Some of them are still available on ebay, and at the moment they're cheaper than all of the the other pandas I have recommended so far, and cheaper than the ones I'll recommend next. Oh, and they're rarer too! That's a very compelling combination.
For everything you could ever want to know about my favorite pandas for investment purposes, I am collecting all of it in this topic at CCF (I will probably link to this post too):
My chat with Hybridsole about 4 RELATED(!) pandas for investment purposes
For non-panda cultural coins, I'm very interested in anything from the Nanjing mint. My top most favorite is the Nanjing 2015 trimetallic silver brass and copper dragon and phoenix set, but those became expensive fast. I really like the Nanjing 2014 brass God of Wealth 2 coin set. They're still dirt cheap despite being by far the most popular gods in Chinese culture, with a mintage of only 100. The copper version is recommended too, once again because of popularity potential, and rarity combined with low price. There have been privately minted imitations that are just barely marketed, and they sell for more money than the official Nanjing mint versions. It appears to me the Nanjing mint has little or no experience or success with marketing their coins. For investment purposes, I'm betting that is all going to change now that the world knows about the Nanjing pandas.
I also have some classical gardens, some lunars, and LOTS of very expensive hand engraved coins from the 1980's and earlier. My #1 most favorite coins of them all are Yi Shizhong's hand engraved goldfish sets, minted in silver in 1984 and 1990. They're also available in brass and gold or silver plated brass, and many of them are quite inexpensive still, so most people should be able to afford SOMETHING that's hand engraved, even from the most expensive goldfish series. The hand engraved 1984 pagodas are also minted in expensive silver and cheaper gold plated brass, and I have a complete set of the silver, but not the brass ones yet. The pagodas and goldfish are closely related, so I collect them both, but I'm only super-serious about the goldfish, with specimens of all dies and varieties, etc.
The one coin that ties together the goldfish and pagodas is the Chen Jian's 1980 silver God of Longevity. There's an interesting story about all that, but this post is getting too long already, so do some searching to find it. Like the pagodas and goldfish, the 1980 God of Longevity is also available in much cheaper copper/brass/bronze (CBB) and gold and silver plated versions.
I'm going to stop here, because I could go on forever about all the wonderful choices that are still available. If you find some favorites, you can ask me for more info and I'd be happy to answer, within the limits of my available time. Silver Stackers is getting my attention just because it's a good forum that I have been reading off and on for years before finally starting to post here now.
Silverpv said:
There's nothing "passive" about it. I made the decision to compete directly with that forum, and we are winning. That will probably lead to its eventual demise, and the loss of all of the information posted there. I sincerely doubt that is the ideal place to invest your time and effort posting information for the benefit of future generations. The faster that forum dies, the faster people will go to a healthier forum with a better future. Then they won't be wasting energy to share their research and enjoyment of numismatics. Share it with friendly people who will appreciate it.
People who don't read CCF never even knew the 2016 Nanjing pandas existed, until they were already gone or nearly gone. People were afraid to post about them on the hostile forum, so the smart people went to where the action was - at CCF, Silver Stackers, and any of the other friendly forums that don't abuse well-meaning members, and don't delete or suppress valuable information.
KeepOnTrying!
Member
barsenault said:
Doesn't take much for the sewer to burst!
Silverpv said:
No they aren't. Making people hate is the easiest way to control them. I prefer other methods to deal with fraud that doesn't involve witch hunting and public executions of innocent people.
Silverpv said:
This is just a coincidence due to the timing of the move from LBC to CCF, because right now the best investments are all non-fiat. If you look at the older content at LBC, it's all fiat. Sector rotation happens much more dramatically in an immature market like the Chinese coin market. Give it some time, and I'll be talking about something different there. Before fiat at LBC, it was precious metals. Before that, art. Before that, actual business, haha
Silverpv said:
Ignore it. Learn about everything they tell you not to learn about. That's where the best profits are. They're so consistently wrong about that, it has to be deliberate. Several of us started investing in whatever they insulted, and it worked! I did it at first because I thought it was funny, but I actually made money on it, haha. To my knowledge, there has never been a pump-and-dump scam operated in the Western side of the modern Chinese coins (MCC) market. So, every time they mention that phrase, they're basically lying to you.
It's an unhealthy environment over there that makes otherwise decent people do rotten things. They're not rotten people, though, it's just the environment there. Many people are the nicest ones you'll ever meet, until they get power over someone. Then they can't avoid abusing it, and they don't even realize they're doing it. The Stanford prison experiment proved that's exactly what normally happens, every time, even when it involves completely innocent people with no intention to turn into jerks.
barsenault said:
I am the one who first published that concept (and many others), and now it has traveled around the world, but no one knows where it originated. Why? Censorship. No one is permitted to discuss anything I've written at the hostile forum. Interesting fact of the day.
KeepOnTrying! said:
Yeah, see what happens whenever someone mentions the hostile forum? Nobody needs that. All this hate and anger is totally useless, but it tends to dominate the conversation wherever it gets injected. I'm sure barsenault is regretting mentioning the hostile forum now. This is why I don't mention it myself anymore (I'm heeding your advice, KOT), and it is censured (not censored) on the forums I operate. It's a black hole for intelligent conversations.
Silverpv said:
If you have posted a question over there that I have overlooked, please point it out to me. Last I checked, you had never asked a question there, so I think that explains your lack of success in finding whatever hard facts you were looking for. While we're talking about hard facts, maybe you could give us an example of a hard fact you were looking for, but couldn't find, and you didn't ask about?
KeepOnTrying!
Member
If everyone focuses on what he or she is good at then all forums will cumulatively increase the knowledge base of MCC. It is invariable that individuals will have areas or type of coins they are more interested in collecting. That is the great thing about having forums with different areas of specialization so to speak.
I can see why people like bullion coins and those who have acquired relevant knowledge and experience could invest profitably in that area.
I can also see why some people collect and/or invest in gold and/or silver coins of different types. It works for them.
I have enjoyed collecting medals for reasons I have outlined previously and elsewhere too.
The important point is that none of these classes of collectibles are exclusive of each other. The experienced collector or investor sooner or later learns what to buy and at what time. The early months of 2016, for example, was the time to load up on bullion. The last two years provided bargains for gold panda coin numismatic type collectors. The summer spike in gold panda prices has led to a cooling off of buying. Medals have kept a steady beat throughout these times with regular spikes of interest.
Medals could also be bought as investments apart from their appeal as collectibles. Using them as investment vehicles requires that you understand how to do it. Again that comes from experience.
I have not excluded anything from my collection and I believe I am the better for it. I go to all of the forums and nothing will change that.
Again, if individuals stick to their areas of expertise and eschew the politics of distraction everyone will continue to learn and grow. "My way and nothing else" never works.
I can see why people like bullion coins and those who have acquired relevant knowledge and experience could invest profitably in that area.
I can also see why some people collect and/or invest in gold and/or silver coins of different types. It works for them.
I have enjoyed collecting medals for reasons I have outlined previously and elsewhere too.
The important point is that none of these classes of collectibles are exclusive of each other. The experienced collector or investor sooner or later learns what to buy and at what time. The early months of 2016, for example, was the time to load up on bullion. The last two years provided bargains for gold panda coin numismatic type collectors. The summer spike in gold panda prices has led to a cooling off of buying. Medals have kept a steady beat throughout these times with regular spikes of interest.
Medals could also be bought as investments apart from their appeal as collectibles. Using them as investment vehicles requires that you understand how to do it. Again that comes from experience.
I have not excluded anything from my collection and I believe I am the better for it. I go to all of the forums and nothing will change that.
Again, if individuals stick to their areas of expertise and eschew the politics of distraction everyone will continue to learn and grow. "My way and nothing else" never works.
mmissinglink said:
Oh yeah, I forgot about that...and I forgot to fix the embarrassing typo in the first sentence. I should probably formally post it as an article at CCF, since it has some important info everyone should be talking about when they discuss buying or selling coins. Can you share your thoughts and opinions about it, before I go do something with it?
KeepOnTrying! said:
This is why I like non-fiat coins. Firstly, they're not being unduly influenced by too much attention, so they're not prone to spikes and crashes. Secondly, they ARE getting steadily increasing attention, and that is positively affecting their prices. Slow, steady gains are absolutely ideal because it means it's always a good time to buy, and always a good time to take a profit. See also fwang2450's 2014 article where he makes a similar observation:
Why Medals?
Basically, we're looking at an increasingly long track record for good investment performance in the non-fiat coins. This is why I haven't bought any fiat for a while (although I have plenty in my collection).
KeepOnTrying! said:
Hindsight is 20/20. I'm a bit different:
Re: Prediction 2015 September 23 of "sharp reversal" of gold downward trend
Note in that article I was predicting the sharp reversal, that's why I posted it before the unusual reversal happened. I also chose timing that other analysts were likely to disagree with, so it can't be dismissed as getting lucky, nor stating the obvious. I did pretty well with that one.
barsenault said:
That's fine. I just think a healthy market is normal.
Barsenault, I did that to help you guys and promote what you guys were working on. I think a lot of the growth in the medal market is from Numistacker picking it up and running with it and the good works you and Andy did. The marketing that didn't go well in CMF was much better pitched by Numi on YouTube. He is a brand ambassador so to speak legitimizing the space. He's making more ground in the EU/UK and has some influence in the states to break into the more mainstream market. Him and MoreZone who are active in the silverforum are the YT juggernauts. That growth I hope fueled you guys and hopefully grows the market all around. I would just caution the derogatory statements about the others, I don't consider that healthy and its not good business for everyone.
badon, I've read your picks before on the 95 and 92 1oz. Unfortunately, not in my price range. I don't follow the medal market because its too small, but as it grows it could prove lucrative but you will need big players to lead the pack. Numistacker is definitely a good start, but for now everyone is buying but no one is selling which does not a market make. lol.
Either way, I would say here is neutral ground. Here we are contributors. Good luck with your subreddits. I'm also working on building a community so I understand the difficulty involved in doing so. These forums which we are guests already have their guidelines and regulars. Cheers. I look forward to good discussion.
I agree about numistacker. I'm not familiar with the other YouTuber, but numistacker seems to be the most influential "new face" in this market. If we were talking about 5 years ago, that would be me, but I'm just preaching to the choir today, haha. Another way to put it is people who would stumble on this market by accident are already here, and numistacker is informing a new population of people about it for the first time. He reaches mostly metals people, but Forbes has caused some one-time spikes with articles like this one, which was one of the first I posted on Reddit's /r/ChineseCoins:
Gold pandas are hot because of this article in Forbes: If Gold Ever Rallies, This Asset Will Probably Outperform : ChineseCoins
That article flew under everyone's radar who was already in this market, but it brought a lot of people to the gold panda sets, and it probably single-handedly enabled the "master set" marketing frenzy to gain traction.
Gold pandas are hot because of this article in Forbes: If Gold Ever Rallies, This Asset Will Probably Outperform : ChineseCoins
That article flew under everyone's radar who was already in this market, but it brought a lot of people to the gold panda sets, and it probably single-handedly enabled the "master set" marketing frenzy to gain traction.
The last communist army
KeepOnTrying! said:
I have been thinking about this comment during the last week. The "price reveal" links are necessary in order to view the price of sold Best Offer option listings. Normally those prices are secret, and we needed a technological solution to reveal them. AbeLinkin discovered a way to view the sale prices of Best Offer option listings, but it involved a complicated sequence clicking around on various things before ebay would finally show the actual sale price. I researched the mechanism ebay provides to reveal the sale prices, and I engineered a simpler solution that works with just one click on a "price reveal" link, which you mentioned. The "price reveal" link is the only convenient way to view actual sale prices in Best Offer option listings that I could come up with.
Even with the "price reveal" link, it doesn't always work. Also, when I'm cruising ebay for info, I don't bother to find out what the sale price was for all of the Best Offer option listings. It would take too much time if I did. Since it's obvious that the Best Offer option price was lower than the full Buy-It-Now asking price (which is always visible), that's good enough for me most of the time, and I just make the "price reveal" link for anybody that wants to use it, and I move on to the next one.
There are other problems with me manually putting down the actual sale prices. We thought it was a bug at first, but it's not - ebay deliberately shows incorrect prices sometimes on their sold listings. I'm guessing they do this to disrupt people who are using automated tools to gather pricing information. There are ways to find the correct pricing, and verify it is correct, but it requires some cross-checking with other sources. I don't have time to do that myself for every listings, so instead of putting down wrong price info, I leave that task to whoever wants to research it themselves. Since the CC data entry team does that research for EVERY ebay item posted at CCF and LBC, the best way to find out what the sale price was is to check the CC sighting data after the CC team records it.
OK, with all that said, I went back to read through some of my older postings to try to see it from your point of view, on stuff that's too old for me to remember. You are correct, the reading is a lot smoother and more useful when the pricing info is right there, without needing to visit ebay to see it. I don't have time to research prices on everything, but I have decided I should change the way I'm doing this and put the prices in my posts whenever I can.
Thank you very much for the feedback. You always have good advice.