Sigh. Where Do These Wacky Ebay Sellers Keep Coming From?

I've often suspected that many of these way overpriced "deals" are nothing more than money laundering schemes. A criminal with lots of dirty cash buys a high priced, low value item from someone, perhaps himself, and suddenly the cash is clean. The ebay fee is probably less than the crook would pay to launder his cash through a dodgy bank.

*chuckle*

This is in no way accurate. Depending on the countries or specialization, Hipstamp and *especially* Delcampe can be ten times worse than ebay. The U.S. revenue section on Delcampe is rife with fake overpriced garbage.

No online venue where anyone can sell is immune from these laughable listings. ebay just *appears* to have more of them because (1) ebay has that many more listings to be able to find examples like these in, and (2) so many more people are actively browsing and scrutinizing ebay than these other platforms to actually see them. Additionally, ebay has more brand recognition than the other platforms, so it attracts more novice sellers than the other platforms.

Chuckle

For the present discussion, I believe it is giving these sellers too much credit to call them money launderers or novices.

From the crappy, unbelievably priced lots one sees proliferating on ebay, and such as the original posting shows, these are are just unsophisticated, wannabe scammers.

Anghus,
You make an interesting point about the money laundering issues, and I would agree IF we were seeing these lots sell, but we don't.
Guarantee it... you put a "watch" on these items and in 30 days they will all disappear, none of them sold, and you'll never see/hear form this guy again.

some clowns will disappear, others keep popping back

Not the ones with 0 feedback, and nothing but overpriced common stamps. No one is falling for this.
Pick of my stock if you can find a legitimate example of common stamp (not altered) being sold for 100+ x CV. Regardless if they are back or not.
Are they destroying the credibility of ebay and lowering the value of legitimate stamps? Yes. They are. And people are turning away, and more and more skeptical of items sold there. We've all (likely) been bit at some point from an ebay sale. It's making it worse and worse as a selling place. And ebay continues to drive the value of stamps down, below the "correction" that has been occurring in the market for the past decade.

Here is one from Hipstamp. I looked at the seller's other auctions; they are overpriced, but not quite so bad. Am I missing something on this one? Is that max CV for everything added up? Still seems high.

https://www.hipstamp.com/listing/us...ion/25778161

Hi

When I was working in my friend's store, a person came in to sell some "rare" US stamps. He took a tissue out of his pocket and unwrapped some modern stamps that were off center. The other worker went to the stockbooks and showed the person rows of the same kind of stamp. The person stated that he was told that off center stamps were rare and he bought them for a fair amount. He folded up the tissue and stormed out of the store.

So, it is not just ebay buyers that are gullible.

Jerry B

It's called the "Opiod Crisis." People need $$$$ for their daily fix.

The ebay sellers with the nutty prices for cheap defective stamps remind me of the folks I come across at antique stores/antique malls all the time. 99% of the time it's laughable, but there were those 1% occasions where I would find something really nice for just a few buck like a bag full of China PRC cultural revolution stamps postally used on piece.