Is it allowed to engrave famous names on worthless personal objects and sell them as memorabilia?

[odgi]

There is a seller who laser engraves old items with the names of famous people like hockey or football players, WWI and WWII officers and rockstars, and sometimes brandnames like "Zeiss" on cheap binoculars, and then put them up for auction.  The seller has many accounts, and it he changes his usernames often, which is suspicious.

He can take an old broken pocket watch, laser engrave the back and sell it as "Ludwig Hofmeister PLAYER 1905 GERMAN Bayern Munich FOOTBALL CLUB POCKET WATCH"

A cheap old straight razor laser engraved becomes: "GERMAN WW2 LUFTWAFFE Heinkel He 162 Fighter aircraft WALTER GESAU STRAIGHT RAZOR IN BOX"

An old flask gets engraved and becomes: "National football League 1922 Rock island Jimmy Conzelman player/coach flask"

An old alarm clock gets water decals and laser engravings and becomes: "German WW2 Lehrgeschwader 2 Luftwaffe unit wind up brass clock Herbert Ihlefeld"

How about this one? "German WW2 world war two EVA BRAUN Leader wife Ladies silver ring Gift" On that he has laser engraved "Eva Braun - Viel Glück zum Geburtstag!" (Eva Braun - Happy Birthday!).

A bakelite box with a shaving brush became: "1923 Beer Hall Putsch Erich Ludendorff Shaving Set in box Gift as a keepsake"

What could be the reason to laser engrave such items if it wasn't to fool people to believe that the personal items belonged to these famous people? Worthless flea market stuff become sports, war memorabilia. Does eBay really allow this, or is it just "buyers beware"?

[potank0]

True however selling replicas is not prohibited, and if this seller is in fact auctioning these items and people are bidding... It's the same on another platform where people are constantly selling (and apparently buying) automobiles with no title yet the DMV clearly states it is not just a bad idea but in many cases even illegal, doesn't seem to stop the sellers or slow down the buyers much...

All about getting that deal, now the fact is in some cases buyers know it's counterfeit but they still want to buy it because they'd rather have a real-looking counterfeit than to have to pay full price for the real thing, as well the real thing may be NLA.  In some cases these may be movie producers purchasing the items, although in that case one would think the engraving to be silly again, but for props and looks and in some cases just show and tell too.

I do agree however that in cases of replicas it should state so somewhere in the listing and preferably not down in the very last corner where nobody looks but as well if a buyer files a case of "Item Not as Described" it's a clear win every time regardless anyhow...

So there is that option, if the buyer isn't happy they can return it, for pretty much any reason and even no reason.

Not saying that makes it right but I can't save the world from what they do that I think is wrong.

Believe me that, I have tried, doesn't work.

[odgi]

@1tunaI have seen the bulgarian jeweller who solder Momento Mori skulls on all kinds of items. I think it's the same one who either print or paint the dials on watches to make them "rare presentation pieces". He sometimes makes up a story, that the watch was presented by a king or emperor to specific officers or noblemen.  But they all look almost the same and are never seen elsewhere than in this bulgarian's auctions. And he wants thousands of dollars for them. It's a shame that he is allowed to continue.

[dirk12955]

It's about as ethical as the sellers offering Coins or Bullion "Recovered for the Twin towers 9/11"

Who cares?

People are gullible and pay extra for this junk not understanding it adds no real value and how can it be authenticated anyway?

Buyer beware indeed.  

Buy a sack of silver dollars from the 1870s and claim that they are part of Jesse James train robbery loot,  and somebody on ebay will pay too much.  

[luckythewinner]

There used to be a seller here who sold autographed record albums. 

The LP covers themselves were generally well-worn and dog eared, and looked like the sort of stuff that you would pick up at a yard sale or flea market for a buck or two.

But they were "signed" by Elvis, Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendix, The Beatles, Frank Zappa, Cream, Led Zeppelin, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, John Lennon etc. and they were selling for hundreds of dollars. 

At any given time he had about 500 albums listed, and a quick look at his history showed that he had sold at least a dozen signed albums by any of these artists in the past couple months.

Caveat emptor.