Ebay's New Ban: Stamps Of Cuba, Sudan, Syria, North Korea...

Hello All,
I've been reading some of the posts on the ebay Stamp Discussion Board. Some of the sellers have been reporting warning messages from ebay that because of the U.S. embargoes on certain countries, ebay will ban the sale of items from those countries on April 9th. These countries include Cuba, Sudan, North Korea, Syria, Iran, Burma and Libya. This includes stamps, coins, etc etc. This only affects sellers within the United States. You'll see listings of stamp and covers on ebay from the prohibited countries, but the vast majority are from countries other than the U.S. or were listed before April 9th. You would think ebay will be somewhat reasonable and allow stamps and covers from those countries BEFORE the embargo was put into place, but it seems ebay is going with a blanket policy to ban anything with the name of the country in the listing.

I found out when I tried to relist some old items on ebay tonight. I had two items I could not list through TurboLister. It refused to list the items until I altered them. The two offending items:
1. A U.S. stamp on piece with a U.S.S. Seattle ship postmark from Guantanamo Bay, CUBA dated to 1927.
2. A 1950's era U.S. postal card with a postmark from SOUDAN, Minnesota.

I had to remove the names in order to list them. I feel sorry for anyone who wants to list any U.S. postal history from anyplace that has a name of the prohibited countries as the town's name. There's 41 towns in the U.S. that have the name Cuba, 4 with Syria, 1 with Sudan, 4 with Soudan, 2 with Burma but at least none are named Iran.

Apparently, the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the U.S. Treasury Department has been "cracking" down on Paypal/Ebay thus ebay's response has been to eliminate the sales of ALL items from those particular countries. As I've found out innocent items that have nothing to do with those countries have been dragged down by ebay's stupidity. There's nothing on ebay's help pages about the new and unimproved crackdown. Even by OFAC's rules, used stamps and covers of all time periods should be allowed and certainly all items that have existed before the embargoes were put into place should be allowed. But this is ebay were talking about who likes to cut off the nose to spite the face.

I just sold a good lot of Cuba a little over a week ago. Timing is everything. Pretty sad that Politics affects collecting Postage stamps from 1903...

What a joke..is ebay going patriotic now ? I know several people that collect Persia/Iran..ebay will probably get flack on this,,but I doubt they care.

Hi to all

ebay is once again indulging in selective censorship, will they next promote book burning.
Horamakhet

Probably has more to do with liability and lost/stolen/missing mailings than patriotism. Could be a possible intelligence route for them as well? I really don't give a hoot, nor do I pollute but just thought I'd put in my 2¢.

So what happens with a bulk lot of Asia stamps that even inadvertently have North Korea stamps included but not named? What if not named but shown in a photo of a lot? And what if a North Korean lot is sold on our forum but paid by PayPal?? Questions, questions.

I didn't think ebay's latest move has anything to do with lost mail. ebay doesn't really care about that as much having the feds crack down on them.

As for bulk, box and collection lots, I guess if you speak no "axis of evil" ebay will see no "axis of evil". ebay seems to be simply using keyword filter programs to determine if an item can be listed or not. I doubt anyone would report you if you had a North Korean stamp in a larger collection.

I would think the same go for any item by via Paypal from any other venue aside from ebay. If the keywords aren't there then there's no way for it to be detected.

I just wish ebay would come forward with en updated policy announcement and be reasonable. The U.S. govt. isn't trying to ban used stamps or covers from prohibited countries nor ban anything prior to the embargoes, but ebay is taking the cheapest and quickest way out of the situation. A lot of innocent items will be unlistable. I wonder if you can list an autograph of Cuba Gooding Jr., the actor? What about a book written about the Cuban Missile Crisis that was written and published in the U.S.? ebay needs to have a more selective policy otherwise it leads to the nonsense I posted in my first post.

Its David vs. Goliath ! The poor stamp collector who just wants to harm no one and do his thing..and the ebay machine rears its ugly side again !!

I just talked with my friend who runs a website selling stamps. His invoices for payment are processed through Paypal if the buyer chooses to use Paypal. Recently, he had to contact PayPal to get them to process payments for pre-Castro era Cuban stamps. Paypal had prevented the completion of the transaction until my friend was able to convince PayPal that the stamps were not prohibited by the embargo. So basically, the problem is also with PayPal too and can affect transaction with other venues.

Well, I guess I will have a decent Cuba postcard and cover collection..its not a total loss

Well, at least it is good that the USPS still delivers and sends mail to those countries. I guess the government isn't as critical as ebay.

I think the solution is to do a Ricky Ricardo and offer stamps from "Cooba"

Last I had heard was that stamps from Cuba that was used are permitted .
Unused stamps US citizens were not allowed to have.

Since when did Sudan join the parade? Never heard of a blockade for them.

this sounds so strange...we are philatelists, not politicians or CIA members. Can we spare the hobby from those stupidities?

I just tried to list an 1878 Cuban stamp, and was warned if I did I ran the risk of being banned from using Ebays services. And this was on ebay.C A (Canada)!
(I write .ca, and this site replaces it with .com. What's up with that?)
Hey, ebay! The stamp is 135 years old. And Fidel and Raoul will not benefit in its sale.
Get over it!