Bitcoin Forum

Several years ago I bought different currencies off eBay while Bit coin was hot. Then  it tanked. Here we are several years later and it is huge.  I bought off eBay and got paper coins. Are these worth any thing most of them are litcoin. I also have ripple? I downloaded digital wallets several years ago on an old laptop that has since crashed. Are these coins lost forever?

let's start with the "paper coins". I assume you mean a paper wallet. If that is the case, do you still have the paper wallet?
If the answer is yes then you will likely see a "payment address", sometimes called a "receiving address" or a "public key". This key can be entered at a site like blockchain.info to check the balance. With most paper wallets the "private key" is hidden inside. NEVER NEVER EVER show that key to ANYONE!!!!! If you do your money could be taken in a moment.


Buying a paper wallet off ebay is a VERY risky thing to do. If the seller who made the wallet wanted he/she could keep a copy of the private key and claw back the money at any time. I would move that BTC or LTC to a wallet under your exclusive control, ASAP.

As far as the coins on the laptop... It may be worth your time to have some forensics done on the Hard Drive. Do not format the drive. Instead you may be able to hook it up to another computer and search for the Wallet.dat file(in BTC), or the wallet file for other coins/wallets you may have. That file contains the private keys and without private keys there is absolutely no hope of recovery.

Wow! Thanks for all the information and a place to start.

You probably shouldn't buy paper wallets off of ebay.  People could scam you and steal your coins by keeping track of your keys...

Bitcoin is hot every couple years when mainstream media catch this topic again.
Buying crypto on ebay is not good idea at all. You should use localbitcoins or just exchanges that let you exchange your local currency (FIAT) to crypto currencies.

Go this road, not ebay road.

If you didn't know how to retrieve your coins in your old laptop, have a technician or IT fix that for you, don't reformat your hard drive because
it will wipe out all your current data including your coins, it will become difficult to retrieve that, also make it sure that the person is authentic and trusted one

You could look into a harddrive adapter, if there is life in the harddrive - you could possible just use the adapter. Plug it into usb and then see the drive and find what you need.

Try to contact a friend of yours who knows hardware. It is usually not that hard to recover the data from hard drive  ;)