Does It Ever End - Selling Fakes On Ebay?

When was the last time a genuine 519 without a certificate was sold on ebay? Apparently efforts, however well intentioned, to educate buyers seem to be having little or no impact:

http://item.ebay.com/311681861840

Fake/forged stamps have been around 100+ years before ebay, so it's not exactly a new problem. But education is the way forward - for those who want to be educated. The Internet is a great tool, and we have come a long way in the last couple of years.

On the other hand, then there are people who seems to want to be fooled. They will continue to buy crappy material online, or pieces of wood from the cross of Jesus - or whatever. You can't force the horse to drink...

I see the seller was none other than nystamps.

Wise is the buyer who first checks the seller's record on Stampsmarter.com before bidding with a previously unknown seller. Could save you a lot of headaches later. From the home page, select "Listing Reviews" and then "Display by Seller".

For what it's worth, nystamps is NOT one of the British Cartel seller names.

Or how about this one...another faked 519. Just look at those bottom perfs and the massive crease....

http://www.ebay.com/itm/US-Stamp-51...311675712049

Interesting too, the low feedback buyer only seems to bid with NY

I do not think that greed ever ends.

Along with the outright mis-described listings there is an entire other class of listings which can fool the buyer. The standard example is the long-running NY Stamps infamous "Some stamps could be expertly restored, regum, or repaired" listings. These other listings I would term 'misleading but accurate'; they skirt the rules and fall within the gray area of ethical practices. Examples include sellers who listing shows a large stack of plate blocks as the primary image but the listing later shows the actual number of individual plate blocks as being only a handful.

Another listing type that seems to be showing up more is this kind…



If the description is read closely the buyer will note it clearly states, "All With Slight Faults To A Greater Or Lesser Degree". Indeed, then why tout, "Scott Value $10,000.00" in the title? If this was a onetime listing of a dealer cleaning out some faulty stamps I might understand but this particular dealer is now assembling and selling these types of lots every week of two.

These types of listing clearly fall within the realm of buyer education. If the listings are carefully read and understood by the buyer chances are good they would not fall for them. After the sale, I think a large number of buyers simply get embarrassed, see they might be in for a fight for a 'not as described' return, and just suck it up as lesson learned.

But I doubt that anyone would argue that these practices are good for the hobby or for other sellers and dealers who do not use these kinds of selling tactics. And while some hobbyists might have enough experience/knowledge to pick and choose the better offerings from some of these sellers I often wonder about the wisdom of supporting them.

So if we support them, if the buyers do not push back and return these types lots, they will continue to be rewarded for these kinds of practices.
Don

The lot of unused US from Anthonys sold for $421 or about 4% which seems like a fair result to me.

This Anthony spam me every week, the more he spam the less I will purchase for sure.

This seller often has questionable listings, they have sold at least a dozen fake #315 in the last year or so. Typical example

Just like the assembled lot of "$10,000" faulty stamps shown above; not good for the hobby.
Don

AGAIN, it pays to check Stampsmarter.com before buying from a new-to-you seller.

Funny how often these questions come up with the seller being NY Stamps? Hmmmm,,, seems too be a pattern. Cavaet Emptor.

That's no surprise - look at who has the most "reviews" on Stampsmarter (3X the quantity for #2), and don't overlook the other main contributors, especially #2 (2X the next closest seller but 1/3rd of NYStamps).

Once again, Stampsmarter alerts the observer to those sellers with the most reviews and equally important, their percentage of adjusting their listings in response.

Caveat: the more active the seller, the greater the number of opportunities for questionable reviews. Still, it should raise a red flag to a potential buyer.

YMMV.