CONTROVERSIAL ITEMS

[anotherman_87]

Are you allowed to sell items from WW 2 that are stamps from 1940 NAZI GERMANY ...with portrait of ADOLF HITLER on the stamps.

[fab_finds4u]

Nazi stamps are allowed.

[varebelrose]

They are allowed, although not worth much as they are very common.

[maxine*j]

Yes, stamps are among the items that are allowed to be sold.  If you look here, you will see which kinds of Nazi-related items may and may not be listed on eBay:

https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/prohibited-restricted-items/offensive-materials-policy?id=4324

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[sonomabarn67]

I can think of 6 million reasons why they shouldn't be allowed but not one that says they should. A sticky wicket as they say.

[melda58]

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@sonomabarn67 wrote:

I can think of 6 million reasons why they shouldn't be allowed but not one that says they should. A sticky wicket as they say.

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Yup.

Rita

[powell-memorabilia]

Plenty of collectors want nazi-era stamps because they are completists.  It isn’t different  than a civil war buff collecting anything and everything, from both sides of the war. 

Me, I don’t own anything from Nazi Germany, but I don’t think that there is anything wrong with serious collectors buying items of historical interest.

[munchner_kindl]

Nope.

The policy clearly states that, but the bots behind eBay or the robots in human form that work for them have no concept of what their own policy means. I have had stamps from 1933-45 removed under the "hateful item" policy, with no recourse. That's it, they're gone.

As a result I have hundreds of Dienstmarken from this historical period that are essentially unsellable due to this unworkable and poorly thought out policy.

[munchner_kindl]

Exactly.

Despite eBay's allowing stamps from the Nazi era to be listed, one particular series always catches the eye of the bots - or the pseudo-humans that respond to reports from busybodies. These are items that are part of the wider collection of German empire stamps from 1872-1945. As a result, sellers are left with items that simply cannot be listed, and collectors are left with album spaces they cannot fill.

[maxine*j]

And I'll say the same thing here I said on the related thread:

This happens in every category that has restrictions -- firearms, knives, cosmetics, coupons, food, plants, and all the others.

Polices are vague, often ambiguous, sometimes downright contradictory, and always with plenty of eraser language such as "including but not limited to."

Enforcement by badly-programmed bots, the most primitive sort of AI, means that some perfectly legitimate listings are pulled while others which are in egregious violation of policy are never touched.

With 1.5B listings on any given day, there's no way for humans to vet them, so this is what we get. I cannot think of any way around it, but it is a shame and a great loss to good sellers (and, in some categories, such as yours, to conscientious collectors.)

I do not know what the answer is, or if there is one, so i can only sympathize when sellers get caught up in this.

[kh-taylarie]

Due to the age of this thread, it will be locked in order to keep discussions current. If you have the same or a similar question/issue we invite you to start a new thread on the topic.