selling the same serial number item

Question

a victorinox 125th anniversary knife-rare-serial numbered (all the same-even the pictures) is being sold onebay.jp the buyers are the same-yukiman-qsp-japan sapporo-shipping japan! why is this allowed?

eburtonlab · Answer

@eyeonit2

Typically such listings -- particularly for expensive, unique items very often found in Japan -- are put up by professional brokers that do not actually possess the item in question. If the item is purchased through such a listing, the broker will then attempt to purchase the original and arrange to ship overseas to the eBay buyer.

Scammers also use the same basic technique, except the scammers do not actual buy or ship anything.

You can usually tell if the seller is a broker or scammer by examining feedback. Brokers tend to have a lot of feedback for selling such items, with possibly a few negatives or neutrals for cancelled orders (when the broker was unable to obtain the item and it was sold elsewhere). Scammers have little or no feedback for major sales at all -- or possibly feedback for sales of keychains or trinkets to build a false history -- at least until the negatives start rolling in once the scam item delivery dates begin to slip.

While it is against eBay policy for a seller to list an item not in the seller's possession (or under contract to the seller in the case of a drop shipper), eBay does little or nothing to seek out such listings in advance or to prevent them unless there are problems reported by buyers.