Sometimes Buyers Really Do Dumb Things!

http://www.ebay.com/itm/nystamps-US...em58b2f805a4;

Here is living proof of the old saying - "you can lead a horse to water, but can't make him drink". This item is, as the seller noted in his title (because I believe I recall reporting this on StampSmarter not too long ago when he had it listed as a stamp, but giving him credit, he cancelled the sale, then relisted it by adding "Proof" to the title)

As a proof, this catalogs exactly $18.00 for a plate proof on india! Yet here is the bidding at over $100! Believe me, I can buy this item, without the fake perfs, all day long for $10. or less, from the major Essay/Proof dealers!

So what do readers believe is going on here - and I do NOT mean to imply anything sinister. No indeed, this simple looks like bidders who really have NO CLUE of what they are actually biddng on. Or could it be that the word "Proof" is "hidden" in the title so doesn't mean much to them?

What do others think is going on when an item that can be freely bought for $10. gets bid on like this?

Oh wow, those perfs are awful. I think they see the $4000 and I think they say, "Well that is less than 10% of cat, I will throw in a bid of $100 just to see if I get it." They might also be thinking, "If it's a proof it's worth even more, right?"

Even if genuine I could not bring myself to pay good money for something that ugly.

Terry

Pretty sad - another reason why my saved searches on ebay have -nystamps in it

"Proof If Stamp Retail $4000" is deceiving and sleezy. I'm sure if my cat was a dog, I'd have to take it for walks

It might appear borderline unethical, but from a seller's perspective, if you are being candid in what you are selling, is it your fault if buyers are idiots?

I see this occasionally with imperf and part perf revenues where the seller knows full well the stamps are bogus trimmed fakes, says so clearly in the listing, and adds "cat $1,500 if real". Never mind that in actuality the stamps are damaged examples of stamps that catalog $0.50, and are therefore worth NOTHING, those listings will still garner $20-100 in bids.

To what extent is a seller obligated to protect buyers from themselves?

If I list a bag of crap on ebay, call it a bag of crap, and show pictures of a bag of crap, and two people bid it up to $100, is it my fault?

There's a certain mindset that is always looking for the "might be" or "could be".

Then again, there are those that, knowing they cannot afford the real thing, are looking for a passable spacefiller, and are buying knowing full well what the item is. If that weren't the case, mjsphilatelics would not have a lucrative cottage industry selling inkjet-printed fakes clearly indicated as such.

That said, in response to Mike 33, I *always* watch nystamps listings, because sometimes amongst the bogus stamps there are genuine examples that often go for a song.

I am reading all of this with amazement. Where does the $4000.00 come from? Do people really not check the catalog value especially when it gets this high? I suppose they got more money then brains?

Peter

Are you allowed to declare a value? In coins you are not.

Bobby asks a very important question. In fact, as a member of the ebay EMR Program I regularly argued that it is 100% wrong to allow a seller to put the value of the genuine item in the TITLE on the selling page. Why? Simply because the item actually being sold is NOT that item, so any reference to THAT item's value is at minimum, deceptive, and at most, badly misleading, so I'm with Bobby 100%. Not in the title. It *IS* OK if it is a part of the description though, nothing wrong with that IMO. And full disclosure, I personally have also used the CV of the genuine in my title since ebay will not agree that there's anything wrong with it, but I use a much clearer title such as "$2.00 State Department Proof With Counterfeit perfs Added ($2,500.00 if a real stamp)." or something like that. I think that just sneaking in one word to sort of hide the correct status is bad policy.

"To what extent is a seller obligated to protect buyers from themselves?"

And I believe the correct answer to that will depend totally on the personal scruples of the seller! In a perfect world we would like to think that ALL sellers would be "obligated" to do right by their buyers (and vice versa too!) but we all know that our world is far from perfect, so there are LOTS of people who don't think twice about pulling whatever deceptive tactic they can think of in order to make money or MORE money. And that includes selling things like FAKE coils knowingly - even after being informed by experts that they are fake - and sleeping just fine at night. I recently saw a member of this board sell a fake #388 coil on ebay for over $500.00 and he can apparently sleep just fine knowing that he "warned" buyers by describing it as a fake -(but not in the title, only in the description part of the listing......). And I bet he will enjoy spending that $500. knowing it was for a worthless stamp!

So bottom-line. We ALL are "obligated" to use the Golden Rule in our transactions or interactions with others. But not everyone sees it that way. We must recognize that people exist who will do deceptive things to you if you are not careful, take time to LEARN about the products you buy. And buy defensively. Know your seller. If you don't know him, do some research. Ask questions on a great venue like this one. Those of us with more experience can help (I've been doing this nearly 50 years!).

Not to hijack this thread, but I thought ebay auctions remained viewable for 90 days, and in fact when you go to the feedback page for this seller, the "View Item" link is there - but on some of the recent auctions the link does not work. Instead, when you click it you get a page, "Items similar to..."

I was looking in particular to see a supposed regummed stamp sold by this guy.

Sold May 14, the item received this feedback, "Obvious regum but said OG Please NYS describe your stamps accurately Im done NYS"

The auction number was 310935842767.

Unfortunately this seller's images often disappear quickly too.

Actually although this seller is often criticized at the stamp chat boards, deservedly I think, there are often bargains among his offerings, and I've bought quite a bit from him. What I bought was US Duck stamps, when the market for them was really depressed after the 2008 crash. My guess is, the duck stamps he was selling were on consignment, not his own merchandise, so the auctions were started at extremely low prices, and perhaps due to buyers' wariness quite a few went really cheap.

Anyway along with the sometimes bizarre value quotes, there can be regums sprinkled among his offerings so I was hoping to see what was recently sold as "nystamps US Stamp # 150 Mint OG $2250".

Anyway, about the Proof stamp being discussed, it's hard to understand why ebay would allow the value estimate of $4000 for an item that is NOT being offered in the auction, especially when as Bill has demonstrated, there is a CORRECT catalog value for the Proof.

I'm just saying...

What are ebay's rules for describing stamps? Do they have any?

I am not a big fan of Bronze Age Morality, but I would note in passing:

"... nor put a stumbling-block before the blind ..."

Q/ Does that apply only to rocks?

An authoritative commentary from ~1000 years ago appends:

"... blind to the matter at hand ..."

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

eBay's rules for selling stamps...

http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies...stamps.html#

This seems simplified compared to earlier rules, so there must be more elsewhere on the ebay site. For example, they forbid sales of stamps from some embargoed countries such as Cuba (although as most sellers and buyers already know, ebay has its own interpretation of just what is forbidden).

In the Coins category I was surprised to see "Replica coins aren't allowed". They are certainly being sold on ebay, some marked "COPY" as required by the Hobby Protection Act (those are legal) and some unmarked, which are illegal.

"All flaws or alterations to the item being sold that can't be seen in the pictures must be specified in the description of the listing."



"Include all information about any alterations that may have been made to the item."

These are the two most abused and ignored rules by those who are ethically challenged. ebay allows sellers to simply put up pictures, with NO word descriptions (even though based on the above two "rules" you would think that WORD descriptions are required? Indeed not, and ebay does not enforce those rules so the ethically challenged are able to put up stuff all day log with difficult-to-detect faults that virtually few buyers would be able to correctly interpret. And the sellers know that, and prosper under these "rules" that are not enforced. So when there were peer review oversight groups, like the SCW and EMR Programs, folks had a fighting chance, but no longer. Now it's BUYER BEWARE.

Bill,

Not to play contrarian, but is it in fact against current ebay rules to list a comparative price, or rather that you believe it SHOULD be against ebay rules? The only reference I can find is the following, which in typical ebay practice, is too BLEEPing vague:




Too many ways to split hairs with that wording.

I have seen enough listings with SMQ values but are not actually expertized to question whether or not ebay actually polices this even if it is actual policy.

I also find it interesting that the guidelines state the following:




Which of the following do they mean (my parentheses added to clarify different ways of reading it)?

1. (Stock photos and images) that are dark, out of focus, edited, or misleading aren't allowed.

2. Stock photos and (images that are dark, out of focus, edited, or misleading) aren't allowed.

VERY poorly written and open to interpretation and enforcement.

Depending on how you parse that sentence, then the USPS ebay store is violating policy as they use stock images, as do most sellers of face postage.

Also, that policy would imply to me that so-called "grab bag" (or "scammer lots" as I like to call them) where you are buying a random 100 stamps, 2 oz on paper out of a ginormous lot but you cannot see what you are actually purchasing prior to purchase, should be prohibited.


Let's face it, ebay isn't and hasn't been policing its own rules for a VERY long time... if they ever did.

Now as these 71-year-old brain cells begin to kick in a bit more, I thought ebay's rules for selling stamps previously required sellers to follow the APS code of ethics.

As far as enforcing their own rules, when the APS was part of the Stamp Watch Committee (or whatever it was called exactly), the APS seemed to be pretty good at keeping ebay honest during that period of time. When that program first began, some of us tracked bad auctions that were reported to see the results, and sadly for a few hundred initial cases, NOTHING happened, but after that the common sense decisions recommended by the Committee showed remarkable success. For my own part, I took the APS and ebay at their word, that their main goal was to weed out the persistent bad sellers, and those were the ones I personally reported, and in the case of the most devious ones, Robert Lamb himself would correspond with me personally to be sure we had the facts straight, and action was usually swift. Those were the good times, for sure.

The "why spend real money on the real thing when you can buy our also-ran product for less" is hardly unknown in other fields; we've all seen it in ads for cubic zirconia, for example, not to mention those toxic button-pushing ads from the RICO-worthy Franklin 'Mint'.

Do you remember Ted Danson's reflective line in "Made In America"? It was along the line of "Lock the customers in until they buy something; I wonder if that would work with trucks?"

I'd guess used car dealers with a sense of humor have, in fact, run ads with a picture of a Ford Pinto, say, and the text: "if this were a Rolls Royce, it would be worth {Hi$}; but you can buy this car today for only {Lo$}".

"WOULD BE WORTH {$} IF REAL" is the copywriter's equivalent of bait'n'switch, and ebay's equivalent of 'click bait', and is dreadfully common. <== double entendre

I don't see ebay chasing-out those ads any more than the cable TV stations or newspapers. More's the pity.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey