This is the third-part in the series on Proxibid vs. eBay. Our first post covered our initial bidding experience. The second post compared shipping between the two portals. This post discusses search functions and payment options.

Proxibid’s IT team continues to make slow but steady progress in enabling users to navigate the portal in a seamless experience, something eBay has perfected over the years. Until recently, we were not able to access all Proxibid pages using browsers like Firefox, much quicker than the anally programmed Windows Explorer whose developers were more concerned about security than navigation. In online auction bidding, speed is everything. That is why we prefer Firefox.

If Proxibid can continue upholding navigation capabilities, it can rival eBay for bidding ease.

Search functions on Proxibid are better than those on eBay. You can search for PCI holdered coins, for example, on Proxibid. You cannot do that on eBay, because of quality control limitations that essentially ban any description of slabbing companies apart from PCGS, NGC, ANACS amd ICG. PCI-holdered coins often are correctly graded and able to be procured at lower bidding than counterparts by top-tiered companies.

Proxibid’s search functions also give more data about coin sellers, from location to consignment, whereas eBay’s searches keep defaulting to all categories, necessitating the user to continue to narrow searches by eliminating all categories, choosing one, and then searching again by “newly listed,” “ending soonest,” etc.

Years ago Proxiblog sold and bought exclusively on eBay and encountered PayPal, which we hated then and hate more now. PayPal requires access to your banking account after several purchases are made via PayPal to your credit card company. So you don’t get credit card rewards but still pay PayPal fees. Worse than that, PayPal makes mistakes. We paid for one winning lot and paid promptly, with eBay recording that payment; but PayPal’s program wasn’t as quick as eBay’s, so the seller never got paid.

It put us in the situation of paying a second time and monitoring our personal bank account for the double payment. If it shows up, we’ll do a separate post on that.

So we advise Proxibid sellers to lose the PayPal and gain the APN clearance, which is the safest and most secure way to pay for auction purchases.

In the next post we will discuss coin consignments and lot descriptions, with a final post on Thursday tallying results and announcing where we will do more of our numismatic bidding in the future.

Proxiblog is an independent entity with no connection to the auction portal Proxibid. Our intent is to uphold basic numismatic standards as established by the American Numismatic Association and the National Auctioneer Association and to ensure a pleasurable bidding experience not only on Proxibid but also on similar portals such as iCollector and AuctionZip.