Apparently Fraudulent Dealer

I was close to pulling the trigger on a grilled banknote (US) from abigaisteel3 on ebay but did a little googling and found that this person has sold fake grilled stamps on hipstamp (https://www.hipstamp.com/forums/dis...t-but-verify)

This seller has way too many nice looking commonly faked coils and grilled banknotes and now I'm guessing they are all fraudulent. The perfs on the coils look damn good, so that's quite a bad thing. Someone is a little too good at fakes.

As a seller on ebay myself I'm especially concerned about the coils. I have lots of coils cross my desk and I eliminate 95% of them as probable fakes. But now I am questioning myself. Some of the coils this person is selling I would probably have taken as legit. Frustrating. I can't cert every coil, but maybe I need to do that for the more high priced ones at least.

All private listings when you check the feedback and not a cert to be found which is always a red flag or should be. I have never begun to understand how people drop hundreds and even thousands of dollars on a stamp without a cert that obviously should have already had a cert if it was genuine. Sort this sellers listings by high price first and the top 30 results are all coils and grills. All of these sellers high catalog stamps are priced at roughly 20% of cv and people see a "bargain". Many of the buyers have thousands of feedbacks. I hate think about what they think they have in their collection vs reality. I do not completely blame the buyer for this unscrupulous seller but come on people, use your noggin.

It is the perfect storm...catalogs which list inaccurate values combined with moronic seller rating systems supported by user searches filtered by 'lowest first'. The result is more than forums like this bearing the brunt of 'the have found 4 rarities' posts...it is the sad fact that once reality slaps hobbyists upside the head they walk away from a great hobby (and likely then also bad mouth philately).

I think many folks invest in learning about what they are buying but a greater number do not extend that discovery to who they are buying from.
Don

I've been watching this sellers Washington/Franklin's pretty much ever since he started appearing on ebay and have yet to see a coil I'm fully convinced is a good coil. I was thinking a few days ago about posting here to see if anyone else had any suspension about this seller.