beauanderos wrote:This whole episode raises another ugly question. Is there any sanctity in purchasing from online dealers? Even those with the best reputations? When they purchase large bulk lots from the public... do they have professional grade comparitors to scrutinize the coins, or are they merely running them thru coin counters like an LCS would??? Are we going to be forced to buy individual coins now, that one can instantly examine... preventing future sales of BIG lots that no one has sufficient time to evaluate individually? And yeah, not forcing China to shut down (as if that were possible) is merely part of a larger problem. You'll know how bad it is when you learn that JPMorgan has capitalized them (not beyond the scope of their duplicity, in my book). Of course... they do the same thing on a much grander scale... suckering people to buy worthless, non-metals back SLV and GLD ETF's
BINGO!!! excellent points....re: our last private conversation?.....do you now see why i 'glass' EVERY single coin in every single roll i buy?...or why i never went for face value bags, and stayed exclusively with a handful of sellers on Ebay.
i can say with 98% confidence i dont have one fugazi in the lot, but rest assured, the next time i do a hard count inventory, which i had planned soon, i'm defintely going to "fill" in that last 1.99% of implicit uncertainty.
Reading this VALUABLE thread, personally i'm brimming with a cold blue anger, because this is all way deeper than JUST PM coinage counterfeiting , the amount of intellectual property theft the Peoples Republic of China has engaged in, runs into the billions, and it has most definitely affected me personally.
The Chinese culture on the whole, the long historical view, i have nothing but admiration for, on an intellectual basis. But this 'pie-in-the sky' intellectual admiration collides with the cold realities of business, and i say "F### them". We have allowed the PRC, which is really the PLA, INC (Peoples Liberation Army) to grab most of our consumer manufacturing base from us. We all remember a day, when that toaster was "Made in the U.S."...and owning a Zenith TV was a big deal...right? i remember a day when as a child, driving with my family down the Eisenhower Expressway (the I-290) in Chicago, and for 15-20 miles into the city, you could see dozens upon dozens of consumer manufacturing plants., it was a sight to behold, even as a kid. i thought to myself, "we are one powerful nation", because one knew the GOOD jobs within those plants, which meant a vibrant middle class, people who owned houses, worked 5 days a week, supported families. Now you drive the Ike, the 290...all those plants are gone.....a way of life, and a vast middle class IS GONE.
i'm not trying to veer from the OP, or topic. To me, its all part and parcel, and relates TO the topic; why do we all stack? Because we're the sons and grandsons of that generation, and we feel it neccesary to do a 'work-around" in a day and age, when we DONT know how long the FRN is going to hold up, retain value. How long the banking "system" is going to hold up, or God forbid, we go into some globalist nightmare.....and these Chinese?...one of the few industries we still maintain a trade surplus with the rest of the world, is entertainment content. (agriculture being the other) and i can tell you the chinese have no respect for intellectual property rights, and have stole untold billions of dollars, because in the end, they REALLY CANNOT come up with an original concept. They got to steal, reverse engineer, find the absolute minimum bottom line to manufacture, they cant even think smart enough to install stack scrubbers to filter out pollutants from burning coal, so that in many districts in China, the air is SO bad, there's no such thing as a "clear day"....and people die, from the respitory effects.
Now i understand, our foreign policy, which is "contain China", which is why we're in Afghanistan, and why we maintain discrete ties to all the "Stans, why we're in Iraq, why Libya "fell", why the French suddenly got rough and tough in Mali and Chad, why the Syrian "opposition" is intent on Assad's head, why Iran is on the plate...its all to contain China, and China, as a whole is not a "walk over". If it wasnt for China's dribble drabble support, North Korea would have imploded in the 90's...oh yeh.
Please excuse the diatribe, but good golly, we got enough to worry about, with a President, who MIGHT have a "kill list", and all that unconstitutional wickedness, and now we got to deal with Chinese PM counterfeiter's?!?
so, back to the topic, we CAN start barking at Ebay. As individuals?...not so much, but a concerted effort, yes. What policy change?...for starters, no more coin sellers from China. Letters. to Ebay, to the ANA, any grading services...start making connections, because it DOES effect their business as well. You got a congressmen, he's got staff, start with them. I know they're nigh useless as teets on a boar hog, but once you start the ball rolling...........but then again,maybe we just lay low. i'm not certain the course, but Nate sure is doing something good here...valuable.
ok, i'll go take my medicine now,. (lol) yours, neil
ps...here's the story of the ONLY American general that knew how to handle the Chinese, Matt Ridgway, one of my heroes, he was a great man:
http://news.investors.com/management-leaders-in-success/120412-635614-matthew-ridgway-turned-the-tide-in-the-korean-war.htm?p=full