eBay At Its Worst

Being, thanks to Lauren and the pool table,proud owners of one of those rare undated 20p coins that there's been all the fuss about in the press recently we have, quite naturally, been taking an interest in what it's worth by monitoring the sales on eBay. The photo above was taken from a listing by someone called shoes.shoes and it is for sale for £50.Perhaps shoe.shoes is just ignorant and thinks that the rare coins should have no date on the tails side but a coin that has 2008 on the heads side is not, in my opinion, undated, and if anyone is daft enough to pay £50 to shoes.shoes, they will lose £49.80 (plus p&p).Perhaps it is unfair of me to single out shoes.shoes because, as I write there are at least three hundred other sellers who are selling perfectly ordinary 20p coins with starting prices of 99p or more and scores have been sold at above face value. I have found a number sold at over £50 with these sorts of descriptions.

"I am not sure of their exact value so am starting the bidding at just £2" - You know damned well that the exact value is 20p

"This coin is undated on the queens head side of the cion (sic). They seem to be very collectable at the moment." There is no photo of the tails side which is almost certainly a bog standard 2008 20p coin.

"Face value of the coin is 20p." just covering themselves

"Coin is sold as seen with no refunds offered" - If you're mug enough to bid I'm not giving you my ill gotten gains back

"UNDATED ON THE back but dated on the front (2008) is this what is rare" - and sold for £52!

"Here I have for sale 1 x 20p coin. This does not have a date on the Queens Head side" -none had a date on the Queens head side until last year.

" 20p coin dated 2008 on face of coin but no date on reverse . royal mint mistake very rare" - actually most people will have one in their change. - sold for £60

"There will be absolutely no refunds available as the face value of the coin is 20p" - sold for £90.99

"i understand they may be worth more to collectors, but they are still just a 20p coin! worth 20p in the shops!!" and £95 to you, you cheat.

I'm sure that I could find more but there are so many it would take forever to trawl through all the listings.We had 1350 20p coins in the pool table. Had we been dishonest we could perhaps have cleared a few grand. eBay should be ashamed for allowing this to go on and should be booting these unscrupulous sellers off straight away.Lets hope that they all get the worst feedback possible.



Don't forget our competition that will run until Friday or earlier if won. We have had a customer who has given us the correct solution but they have not yet placed an order so the £50 prize is still available.See last Friday's blog for details.



I see that they had to evacuate Chester zoo yesterday when thirty chimpanzees escaped and raided the keepers' food store. It seems that it was some sort of industrial action by the apes when they heard that the zoo refused permission for a new Instanta boiler to make their PG Tips.

I'll finish with a kid who should be entering next year's BGT or maybe Japan's Got Talent.

Thunder Lightning - I Tell You It's Frightening

What a storm we had here in the early hours of the morning. We've already heard from a supplier whose factory has been flooded and our order for packaging materials is likely to be delayed. Apologies if your boiler arrives in a non standard box in the next few weeks - blame it on God. A house a few hundred yards from Peter Brindle was hit by a thunderbolt and the roof was completely destroyed. Peter was wishing it had come his way as he would have liked a new roof on the insurance but the latest news is that they are going to have to knock the place down so I'm not sure he would have been wishing for that.



Here's Rebekah Dowell who has joined us to replace young mum Natalie Drummond. Rebekah,17, who hails from Litherland is a keen Liverpool fan.She enjoys computers and, like all Liverpool girls, she loves shopping.So welcome Rebekah. We hope that you enjoy working with us.



We got one. With no orders to process yesterday we looked for alternative ways of earning a few quid and Lauren emptied all the twenty pence pieces from the pool table in the canteen and searched for the elusive and rare undated ones. After checking through 1350 coins she managed to find just one.Now we have to decide what to do with it. The radio reported one going on eBay for £7,000 but I am highly suspicious of that as plenty more seem to have exchanged hands for between £40 and £250. Perhaps we can use it to fund the staff Christmas party.

Our month of special offers is over now so I think we'll have a couple of competitions this month. The first one will be announced on Friday and will run until the end of next week.



After giving Orange Wednesday a miss last week we are going to give Public Enemies a go tonight. It has excellent reviews both here and in the USA and Johnny Depp is already being touted for an Oscar. We'll see if we agree.I'll leave you wth the trailer.