Seeking by sincere advice I’ll tell only the facts to this community:
1. the seller’s listing showed among other pics, a pic of the coin completely unattached from the bolo tie made of elk horn, so it suggested that the coin was only attached with prongs as it looked in the other pictures. The listing title reads” Mexican Gold Centenario 50 Pesos Elk Horn Bolo Tie”
2. contrary to my expectations, the coin arrived tightly glued to the bolo tie bone. It took me weeks to carefully remove the glue and clean the coin only to find out that the supposedly pure gold coin had silverish big spots on the reverse.
3. After contacting the seller, she agreed to replace the coin but I had to wait for a month after she was back from vacation. (there was not an eBay option “item not as described” as there usually is), so I contacted the seller directly.
4. I decided to explain my concerns to the eBay community about such a long waiting time of a month for the replacement of the coin.
5.- The eBay community unanimously suggested asking for a refund since the long waiting time proposed by the seller looked more like a stalling strategy.
6. When I asked the seller for a refund, she insisted to replace the coin for a similar one without problems since she had more coins like that, but the exchange couldn’t happen immediately but until she was back from vacation; the seller also suggested that in the meantime I looked for a jeweler to check for the authenticity of the coin, in order for her to prove that she was acting in good faith but didn’t know that the coin was defective, and after believing in her good faith I accepted to have a replacement instead of a refund.
7. I checked the coin with a jeweler who agreed that the coin was authentic but defective since it had such silver spots.
8. I communicated with the seller about the jeweler’s opinion and she ( the seller) made a sudden move by calling the eBay representative to close the case. ( I am positive that the eBay representative didn’t read all the texts that we both had exchanged about her accepting to replace the coin. The case was closed in seller’s favor.
My problem now is that when I try to sell that defective coin, I’ll have to disclose such defects to the prospective buyer and the price is going to go very low.
As an honest seller myself, I’m not going to cover up such defects as she did by gluing the coin to the elk bone again in order to sell it.
After she got the case closed, I told her that I was going to share the whole experience with the eBay community. The seller sent me the last message and closed her arguments by saying that my wife ( when I Pass away) is not going to have a problem when she tries to sell the defective coin since she ( the seller) didn’t have any problem when she sold it to me. Also, she recommended I tell the eBay community the facts as she conceives them, or none of the eBay gold sellers were going ever to sell gold to me. This was really insensitive, cynical, and preposterous because I trusted her about giving this coin to my wife as an inheritance when I pass away.
Thank you very much to you all.
