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Counterfeit U.S. coins from China

China is producing U.S. coins of various denominations and listing them as made in the U.S. using the appropriate mint marking. Some list the seller in China and others will show a U.S. city and state, then add China or Hong Kong behind it. No where in the listing do they indicate they are replica's. Now they are making some of the coins look like they have been circulated. Most sophisticated buyers will recognized this, but it's buyer be ware. Ebay says there is nothing wrong with is, but it's muddling up the coin market and you now have filter out these fake coins.

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Re: Counterfeit U.S. coins from China

It is not that eBay thinks there is nothing wrong with counterfeit items; far from it. Counterfeit items are not allowed to be listed on eBay at all.

 

The problem is that unscrupulous sellers can list genuine items and then deliver counterfeit items.

 

It is not always possible to look at a listing and know in advance exactly what, if anything, the seller intends to deliver. For one thing, a scammer can simply copy a listing from a genuine seller, using a genuine photo of a genuine item.

 

Except for a few specific categories of items that go through authentication, eBay never sees what the seller ships or the what the buyer receives, so there is nothing for eBay to check unless someone complains about what was received by invoking eBay's money back guarantee.

 

Sellers are responsible for the descriptions they provide, and buyers should not assume that eBay screens the listings in advance.

 

As long as counterfeits exist and there are folks trying to sell them, buyers will still have to be on the lookout for them, and avoid deals that are obviously too-good-to-be-true, whether they are being sold by accounts registered overseas or by domestic sellers wittingly or unwittingly buying counterfeits from overseas to sell here.

 

Buyers that doubt their ability to distinguish a genuine article from a counterfeit one should only consider purchasing from trustworthy sellers that have an established reputation for delivering exactly what was described, and should avoid deals that are too-good-to-be-true, or deals that are offered by inexperienced sellers that might disappear soon after the transaction is made.

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