Here was my thinking. I'm not particularly keen to sell right now, but I thought, anything must be better than Whatnot, so why not go there, have this little group in hand and try to feel them out for whether they are a good business or not.

I get there and the guard lets me in. I have my little group in a manilla shipping envelope. Just 12 coins. The guy in charge is already packing up show cases for the afternoon. He sees me and asks me why I'm there. I tell him, "Well, I've got a few items and I'd like to sit down and see if we can come to a price."

He says, "yeah, sure, you can just look around if you like and sit down over here when you're ready."

So, I don't really care about his inventory that much because I haven't decided whether this is a person that I could do business with yet. So I just sit down. He comes over after a couple of minutes. But before we get started he takes a weird phone call.

The phone call is weird because he takes it right in front of me. He is discussing selling a coin for $7,500 to a customer. That's pretty expensive for a coin, but whatever. There's some back and forth and it's like "tell the customer that the price is $7,500 based off of Graysheet bid (ie wholesale) but that the coin is worth $9,500 all day long and remind him that we have a retention policy and will buy back when it comes time to upgrade)." Now, this was strange because: (1) I heard the whole conversation, and I assume that was on purpose (guy's phone was on speaker, he was sitting down right in front of me, and he was going back and forth; (2) it felt like they were trying to run a charade so I thought that they got really good deals for their customers; and (3), this was the weirdest thing, but during the appraisal he reaches in the desk and actually produces this alleged $9,500 coin and allows me to hold it and take a look.

Then the numbers come out. The guy basically offered me what I felt was about 60% of a fair wholesale offer. He passed on my lowest price coin, and he also passed on the highest priced item as well. His reasoning for the small priced one was that there "wasn't any margin there" and for the larger priced item, he passed because he said that he needed a second pair of eyes to evaluate it. For the rest of the stuff, he did give a price, but it was way low. At one point he tried to explain to me why he was so low, and said something about how he couldn't offer wholesale bid prices if he believed that auction prices were too close to bid because then you have to account for marketing and auction prices. So he was consistently at about 85% of bid on everything.

On my gold, he said he was willing to pay 94% of spot price. I guess that's not terrible, but that's kind of what pawn shops do.

Anyway, I left realizing that all of this stuff about coins is crazy. They basically just hoard coins and create artificial scarcity. Then they use opaque methods (like whatnot) to move coins in dribs and drabs. It's basically a massive Fraud Con Job.

Then i thought about it more broadly and it seems like many markets are like this. They have their inefficiencies and that's how people manipulate them to make a living. Look at real estate. Real estate is mostly a worthless asset, but it's artificially valued, artificially made scarce, and people go around pretending like it's necessary.

It's all the same thing. The world is full of evil scammers that just want to ruin your life. That's what's wrong with Amerikkka today.

I cannot believe that this has happened to me. I cannot believe that I was fooled into buying a house for my family, buying a coin off of Whatnot, and of course, by going to a doctor when I started suffering from debilitating inflammation that was only caused by the evil Frankenstein Amerikkkan food that I am absolutely ADDICTED to.

There is no end in sight. There's no end to the fraud. It goes on and on like a massive ocean of fraud.

But I do know this now about coins. Nothing is scarce or rare. Some things may be condition rarities for this reason or that reason and rich people may like to get into bidding wars over them, but these items are all hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. And they are continuously hawked by a cabal of evil shadowy figures that smile and pretend like they're being your friend while they've got their hand in your side.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5602498&forum_id=2/#48139048)

You are a disreputable seller grossly mispricing assets you are attempting to divest.

I find your assumption of a perpetual state of victimhood rather interesting. I can't tell if it's merely a defense mechanism, or if it's something deeper and more complex; and, if the latter, how to explore it further.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5602498&forum_id=2/#48139240)

Assuming the latter, what are you going to accomplish tomorrow to improve your choice-making?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5602498&forum_id=2/#48139273)

I am also mad at myself, and I don’t want to do anything except hang myself from the oak tree out back. Part of my brain tells me that that too would be a terrible choice.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5602498&forum_id=2/#48139281)

The simple solution is to stop.

Then find activities to engage in that calm you.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5602498&forum_id=2/#48139295)

"The world is full of evil scammers that just want to ruin your life."

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5602498&forum_id=2/#48139149)

The reason this stuff seems foreign to you is that you're not involved in real buyer/seller markets. You're on a webapp that sells pogs & tennis shoes. You also have no a priori knowledge, and seem vehemently against paying a few dozen dollars for basic books from which to learn what you're getting into.

The stuff you're buying isn't rare. That's part of the reason you're getting ripped off. Nobody on a used shoe website marketapp is selling rare coins.

In truth, I'm just bitter that I wasn't one of the people able to take advantage of your willful ignorance :(

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5602498&forum_id=2/#48139182)

I don’t even want the crap I’ve bought so far. I may just ship it all back.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5602498&forum_id=2/#48139199)

The typical case is that an intelligently purchased coin should behave like a long-term bond over a 10-year-plus horizon. Such a timeframe is necessary to cover transaction costs and bid/ask spreads.

The ideal case, of course, is to find the elusive perpetually-victim-minded-and-driven-by-emotion individuals to whom you can unload crap at 200% of retail.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5602498&forum_id=2/#48139224)

Obviously there was reason. You put in physical effort to complete the transaction.

So... what was the reason?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5602498&forum_id=2/#48139244)

Kinda sounds similar to how people become "addicted" to gambling.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5602498&forum_id=2/#48139283)

https://imgur.com/a/YKivxAX

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5602498&forum_id=2/#48139230)

"Look at real estate. Real estate is mostly a worthless asset, but it's artificially valued, artificially made scarce, and people go around pretending like it's necessary."

Fucking weirdos pretending like shelter is necessary!

"Then they use opaque methods (like whatnot) to move coins in dribs and drabs."

They try to buy coins for a low price and sell them for a higher price. This is the purpose of stores.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5602498&forum_id=2/#48139205)

Every amerikkkan is poorer for having bought their house. Every last one of them.”!

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5602498&forum_id=2/#48139315)