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So how is it that a seller has so many celebrity autographs and for so cheap?
One autographed photo sells and another one (same picture) is put up for sale in its place. The problem is that the signature from the first photo that sold does not match the signature on the second. Also, how can this seller have signatures from celebs who are known to not sign autographs?
17 comments
kh-stanley1
·2 years agoHi everyone,
Due to the age of this thread, it has been closed to further replies. Please feel free to start a new thread HERE if you wish to continue to discuss this topic.
Thank you for understanding.
robotic_contestant
·2 years agoYou can get sealed autographs that are certified by PSA/DNA and then check the number on the certification site to make sure the autograph is legit.
robotic_contestant
·2 years agoI would never buy an autograph online that isn't sealed and certified with a grading service.
mn467462
·3 years agoA signature isn't the same every time.
megafo_8472
·3 years agoThey tend to be similar enough though that you can tell they were signed by the same person
megafo_8472
·3 years agoThat should be obvious - the seller is counterfeiting the autographs.
Unfortunately, so long as the seller pays his/her fees, fleabay is only too happy to ignore such fraud.
lz69_42
OP3 years agoIsn't that amazing! You can sell fake stuff on fleabagbay and as long as they get their cut they are OK with it.
bonjourami
·3 years agoTheres a report button on every listing.As a newbie,perhaps you didnt notice that.
lux-libri
·3 years agoI've used the report button on items that were blatant and obvious fakes. Nothing happens.
maxine*j
·3 years agoI think it would take multiple reports on any given item to have any effect, if then.
The problem is, again, that there's not enough staff, expertise, or time to investigate every report, and eBay cannot merely accept anything they were told by anyone and start pulling listings. What if the report is from a rival seller trying to kill the competition, or from someone unqualified to make a determination, or from someone with a personal grudge? The list of spurious reasons for reporting is long. As a seller, how you would react if you had listings pulled by eBay based on nothing more than a report by an anonymous person, whose knowledge or motives remain unknown to eBay and to you?
Fakes in the marketplace are just part of the marketplace, alas, and always have been. I imagine Oog the Caveman sold Moog the Caveman phony rocks for his collection. 🙂
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bonjourami
·3 years agoIf you are selling the same type of items you are reporting, Ebay just looks at that as a seller trying to get rid of the competition. And it takes more than one report to get a listing pulled.
maxine*j
·3 years agoAnd as a bookseller, you know, too that sometimes people who know nothing about books but just try to sell what they find here and there will list as "signed" books that have facsimile signatures. How many copies of Grant's memoirs have we seen that were listed as "signed" -- although the books were published after his death? And, really, most of the sellers do not recognize the signature as a facsimile and do think it is real.
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lux-libri
·3 years agoAll valid points about eBay lacking the expertise and manpower to act on reported listings. It doesn't help that the report function doesn't allow for comments on why an item is fraudulent.
The seller I had in mind has duped hundreds of buyers with "signed" books that are comically bad and so amateurish that even eBay should have caught on by now. Among other dead giveaways, he buys the books on eBay, leaves feedback for his purchases, then signs and relists them in short order. He doesn't even bother waiting until his purchases have aged out of search. All of his listings claim that he was present when the books were signed -- which, I suppose, is technically true.
megafo_8472
·3 years agoWhen I used to use the button, I noticed that shortly afterwards that much of the scammer's negative feedback would mysteriously disappear
megafo_8472
·3 years agoThe report button is for show, as fleabay NEVER acts on reports.
If they did, there wouldn't be so many scammers ripping off buyers.
Even feedback these days is fairly useless, as many times fleabay will actually go in and delete it in order to keep the fees rolling in from these scammers.
maxine*j
·3 years agoIt's not that they are okay with it. It's that with 1,500,000,000 listings on any given day, there is not enough personnel, time, expertise, or resource to check each listing. And even experts with lots of time to study them can be unsure about the authenticity of autographs.
And they do shut down some of the autograph fraudsters, but it's like whack-a-mole: Hammer down one and up pops another.
So, it's definitely caveat emptor. About all you can do is stick to authenticated autographs, and pay the price for them. (Although there are some pretty dodgy so-called authenticators out there, too.)
Many, many "signed" books are junk, also. The late Joe Maraglino, a dealer in fine and antiquarian books, said this, in his wickedly humorous way:
""Personally, I wouldn't buy a signed book on eBay unless the listing included a video of the author actually signing the book, accompanied by a Private Investigator's report stating that the video was genuine, plus the Social Security Numbers of the seller, the author, the Private Investigator and all their parents, and the author's telephone number for verification. Even then I'd be skeptical, and wouldn't pay more than a dollar for any signed book here, inclusive of shipping."
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soh.maryl
·3 years agoHowever, eBay won't be "happy to ignore such fraud" if/when every single buyer opens an item not as described case, will they?