Perhaps some of you have seen this one:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/333964676222Here is a typical image from the listing:
Bids are over $4k now. Probably any stamps in this lot with a CV much above the minimum have been printed by inkjet or other means.
I don't know if I am more annoyed by the idea of someone cheating people out of their money, or the idea that some are dumb enough to fall for it.
How to tell this is a scam? Well to start,
1. Images are blurry, this helps hide poor quality of printing.
2. Colors are off for the "rare" stamps, to the extent you can tell.
3. In this case, the perforations are not too bad, but more often, the perfs are also wrong.
4. Seller is new and from a foreign country. Once you send money, the seller likely disappears into another
ebay ID.
5. It fails correlation. By this I mean that the fake rare stamps are in a mediocre collection of common stamps. Generally, valuable stamps are found in collections of valuable stamps. A collection with thousands of stamps some people throw away will not have a great rarity in it. There should be some correlation of the condition and quality of the stamps in a collection.
6. Lot contains some extremely rare items, like a color invert. The odds of that being fake are extraordinary without any of the above considerations. If that one is a fake, then by correlation, the other valuable ones probably are to.
It is painful to see these things go off on
ebay, and not be able to do anything about it.
Posted 04/22/2021 11:27 am
