Let me rephrase the question. Let's assume a honest seller wants to sell collectible coins worth $50,000. Would a honest seller send them directly to the buyer after escrow gets paid, knowing he may not receive his payment if the buyer (who's relatively new to the forum) claims to have received an empty box? I didn't follow many trades in Collectibles, but has any honest seller ever taken this risk?
This is a common practice. I have both bought and sold physical coins, and bitcoin miners using escrow. In all cases, everyone involved wanted the shipment to be sent directly to the buyer by the seller. As an escrow agent, I had facilitated the sale of physical goods, and all parties had always wanted the goods to be sent directly from the seller to the buyer.
There are some cases when one party wants the goods to be sent to an escrow agent, for example when one party especially doesn’t trust the other party.