Does eBay police Coins categories AT ALL anymore?

[ted_200]

It does not appear so.

Over the last months, a flood of garbage listings for fake bullion products has inundated virtually every category on this site.  A lot of these are easily located by the diagonal goldish colored text added to the listing photos.  Users spending any time in the categories know exactly what I'm talking about.  These listings violate one or more of the following eBay policies:

- Prohibition of added text to listing photos.

- Offering plated bullion products.

- Offering "German Silver" bullion products.

- Use of stock photos.

- Search and Browse manipulation (listing in wrong category).

- Offensive materials policy (plated bullion items glorifying the Third Reich).

- Selling replica items without disclosure.

Of greater importance than eBay's unenforced policies, many of these offerings are outright counterfeits of major brand bullion products, with absolultely no disclosure - a violation of the true manufacturers' intellectual property rights, in addition to a violation of federal law and numerous FTC regulations.  In other cases, replica bullion coins covered by the Hobby Protection Act (HPA) are being sold without the required COPY mark (in addition to a lot of non-bullion coins too). 

Using the Report Item link has gone from mostly useless to totally useless.  Even better, eBay has now got "Product Pages" for these items right in the eBay Catalog!  One could speculate eBay might bear some responsibility for these items/listings as a result.  One need not speculate though that these listings make shopping on eBay difficult and unpleasant.

Does eBay police Coins categories AT ALL anymore?

[n.s.sherlock]

A few weeks ago eBay recommended I buy plated bullion.  1 KILO gold for $106.56!

[ted_200]

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@n.s.sherlock wrote:

A few weeks ago eBay recommended I buy plated bullion.  1 KILO gold for $106.56!

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That's just swell... I'll sell you a 2.2 lb. hunk of lead-zinc for half that much... and throw in a can of gold spray paint for free!

[mcdcoins]

I'm surprised you guys still hang here...

What's the point?

[elheron-grande]

6 Jan 2018:  Hola MCD, elHeron can only speaketh for hisself.  Heron likes to share his joy of collecting woild coins and sharing informacion about recent fun acquisitions.

In addition, this chatting board has been super nice for several years.  No mucho acrimonious or overly aggressive attacks experienced by our fellow collectors.  

In addition, there are still some fellow collectors that share informacion, when asked.  Por ejemplo:  When Heron needed to learn how to 'crack out' coins from  plastic slabs there were several guys helping Heron learn how to perform this action.  Worked super good. 

Perhaps some day we shall see more coin collectors posting here.  If not- so be it!

Regardos.   

[ted_200]

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@mcdcoins wrote:

I'm surprised you guys still hang here...

What's the point?

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It's nice and quiet here?  LOL.

Hola, Amigo!

[ted_200]

Bumped for any folks who might wander by from the Selling Board who have an interest in eBay Coin policy enforcement...

[phono_0490xxxxxx]

maybe.

I don't have the apetite or energy.

It's a question of how effective one can be.

Pick your target.   Know your allies and enemy.

I'm no fan of PCGS, but why don't they act on forgery of their product?

Is it enough to suggest these slab can ve confirmed online at their site?

PCGS need to be reminded that if a buyer seeks return as SNAD the item may be shipped back for another round of sale. And what happens to the 'Doesn't appear to be authentic' ones?

The old by any means nessecary kinda worked.

But difficult and drop in the ocean now.

[ted_200]

@phono_0490xxxxxx

I'm no fan of PCGS, but why don't they act on forgery of their product?

PCGS has chased counterfeit product off of eBay, they probably still do.  They've got their own Forums, I haven't visited in ages and am not a member there, but I think they act on eBay counterfeits that come up there. 

It's a much broader problem for them than just eBay though. 

The TPGs are in something of a bind on this.  They don't really want to talk about it, because it hurts their reputation and marketing if the broad market constantly hears about the widespread fakery.  eBay of course doesn't warn anyone of the potential danger either, they sell the idea of certified coins as "safer", and their primary partner in numismatics is the PNG, and PNG dealers' bread and butter is certified coins.  Last I'd heard PNG was supposed to be helping eBay police the category.

All I know is reporting listings seems to have no effect. 

Is it enough to suggest these slab can ve confirmed online at their site?

Online verification is a requirement to be considered as an acceptable slab co. that can be listed that way, on eBay.   Not everyone checks, and if they get the right cert.# on the right slab, it will come back good, and the seller might well have lousy photos to obscure the fact it's not the one on the site.  And older slabs have no photos to compare to.

I'm out of the loop on all this these days, I don't know how many fake slabs might be on the site now, and I don't really buy them myself.  I know there's a lot of fake raw coins, and fake bullion though.

I can't tell what happened on that other topic.  It looks to me like someone bought some fake coins on purpose so they could neg. the seller, out of frustration with eBay's inaction. 

[mcdon_will]

they just pulled my listing and I don't know why.