Swap gone wrong

Hi Guys,

fairly new to Numista and so far I've loved being a part of this community and have done several successful swaps.

What can be done when you have clearly been cheated in a swap.

The swap was agreed and when my coins arrived there were 5 coins missing.

To add to this a number of coins were clearly not the coin we agreed on. Amongst other things I like to collect my birth year coins (1957) and obviously for us coin collectors detail is very important.

One coin was not a 1957 at all, 2 others were the very common variant of a 1957 coin which was not as agreed in the swap.

I communicated politely with the person, sending them photos from my digital scope clearly showing the errors.

On top of this many of the coins were rated higher than their actual condition, I know rating is very subjective but a couple were listed as UNC and clearly weren't, or XF and had numerous bits of rim damage.

At first the member seemed receptive but on trying to communicate further they have now blocked me.

This is very unfair, I swap quality coins and am meticulous about them, I tend to rate them low to make sure nobody is disappointed with their swap.

I've given them a low rating but is there anything else I can do.

This has left a very bad taste in my mouth and makes me reluctant about future swaps.

Unfortunately you were entangled with a bad swapper.  There was a forum discussion in December 2022 on this same person warning that they may not be trustworthy.  The sad part is that due to forum rules, nobody is allowed to personally call out another person, so we can't protect each other, and that discussion was deleted from the forum.  I do not make the rules, and wish this rule were different.  But to use the site, we have to play by the owner's rules.

The best thing you can do is report them here:

This might get a warning tagged to their profile that can only be seen when viewing their swap list, but they have other radiant reviews, so they may not.  This is the only method we have to deter future scammers within the rules of the site, along with a truthful rating.

One thing I always do is get photos or scans of all the coins together, that way I can see egregious grading errors and/or get proof that the individual even owns the coins.  The “I can't take pictures” excuse is a hard pass for me personally.

Thanks for your reply and I’ve reported the actions of the member as suggested.

When I swap I try to balance the value of the coins so the over grading is also a big problem, as you know a UNC coin will value quite a bit higher than if it were VF for instance. So I feel doubly cheated. The postage costs and delivery time to and from Australia make it even more frustrating.

This is a great community and I‘ve had plenty of good swaps, even if there has been an issue I’ve been able to resolve it, sometimes genuine mistakes are mad.

Members that have a history and/or show no willingness to address the issue should be banned and prevented from creating a new profile.

Further development from this post regarding a member from Netherlands that ripped me off.

Another member that I am swapping with at the moment and a person a trust, having had previous swaps with them, has told me overnight that the same member has them blocked too for similar reasons.

This person needs to be banned.

A previous swapper of his also graded him low for similar reasons.

If you look at my profile you can see who it is from the feedback.

Not much use to you, but thanks to your feedback, and that from another user, I refrained from initiating a swap with that user. I already felt all his gradings looked rather high.

So thank you for your alert.

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