Ebay Policy on Selling German Swastika Items
Hello Dear Ebay visitors, can someone explain to me how the Ebay policy regarding goods with Nazi symbols works? why thousands of items with a swastika hang on the site for years, and the Nazi symbols are not painted over and they are quietly sold in violation of the sales rule, and when I exhibit a German item with a painted over swastika and it does not violate the rules, it is immediately removed from sales, where is the justice? Managers in a conversation justify themselves by the fact that they physically do not have time to monitor all the advertisements, and for some reason I shoot my advertisements within an hour, I have been very disappointed with this site lately.
10 comments
worldcoinauctions
·2 years agoYou know I've never had a problem with banknotes or coins. Never tried stamps since most are too low value to mess with .
munchner_kindl
·3 years agoI find this rule infuriating, and it is typical of myopic blanket policy which is clearly administered by a bot.
I am a professional philatelist, and seller of German philatelic items which will naturally include those from the sensitive time period 1933-1945. I have no political axe to grind, and have intended to sell every legitimate item listed in the Michel catalogue for German stamps. The ones we cannot appear to sell, on account of the very obvious symbol, are the Dienstmarken from 1933-1945 - stamp collectors will know which ones I mean.
I think the bots have become more sophisticated, in that I listed some of these items year ago without any issue and sold most of them. However more recently I wanted to add more stock to already listed bulk items, and within a day these updated items (which had been there for well over 10 years) were zapped unceremoniously by eBay. It was like nudging a hornet's nest - had I not wanted to edit the existing items to add new stock, it is likely they would have remained there until sold.
The problem is that the rules clearly contradict each other. eBay clearly states no swastikas - fine, in the context of propaganda items and so on. However stamps are supposedly excluded as they are legitimate items - not so, as the Dienstmarken will always attract the zapper bot.
As a result I have hundreds of these items that are essentially unsellable, and collectors looking to fill gaps in their albums will never be able to find the items they need once the bot has removed every last item it doesn't like. These are official stamps, issued during a particular time in history. They are not propaganda items.
fab_finds4u
·3 years agoYeah well I find it infuriating I can't buy certain civil war items and a school I attended had to change their name year before last. Trying to erase history upsets me.
maxine*j
·3 years ago@fab_finds4u
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.â€
From 1984, by George Orwell.
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stephenmorgan
·3 years agoI am a person with a birth place that no longer exists.
maxine*j
·3 years agoThis 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 with you.
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1786davycrockett
·3 years ago@komrad.fondark
Items which depict a Nazi swastika are not permitted for sale in France, Germany, Italy or Austria, and must be de-listed on eBay for those items.
This also includes historical studies of World War II, even though these items do not promote Nazi policies (for example, book and magazine covers which depict a Nazi swastika, such as THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH by William L. Shirer; MILITARY HISTORY MAGAZINE; BALLANTINE'S ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF WORLD WAR II ; TIME MAGAZINE; etc.
sonomabarn67
·3 years agoSell them in Germany, or in some of the sites that specialize in the horrible actions of W2. So tired, so tired. Stop dividing.
maxine*j
·3 years agoOP is in Poland. According to this article from Deutsche Welle, from 2008:
"Poland is Europe's biggest producer and exporter of Nazi memorabilia. Most of the items are sold to neo-Nazis in Germany or Scandinavia... Buying Nazi symbols is illegal in those countries, but allowed in Poland. SS emblems and swastika armbands can be purchased at markets in Poland's larger cities...."
It was later made illegal to produce and sell some of the stuff but, from everything that can be seen, there has been little change, despite that.
DW in English:
https://www.dw.com/en/polish-firm-investigated-for-producing-nazi-memorabilia/a-3615907
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maxine*j
·3 years agoYou already have a thread on this, with detailed and thoughtful replies, on the Selling Forum. I doubt you will receive different responses here.
Duplicate thread:
https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Ebay-Selling-Policy/m-p/33892613#M2250514
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