So there was this fake Trade Dollar...

I've found that a lot of the fake Trade Dollars in the UK are not even Silver and feel what I call soapy when rubbed between thumb and finger

 

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The people participating in this thread had already mastered that lesson, in spades.

This is not a lesson in collecting Trade dollars. It's a lesson in eBay's current approach to dealing with counterfeit coin traffic. Specifically, the lesson is that eBay is treating counterfeit coins as simple "items not as described" -- they do not penalize the seller in any other way, and they make no provision to avoid returning the fake to the seller.

 

Some have, some have not. Just report the fake to Ebay, and keep your knickers on.

 

I don't know a lot about this stuff but what puzzles me is the seller has a 99.9% rating and has been selling since 2004. Did they just start selling fakes or as someone said trying to recoup his loss when they bought it.

 

"Keep your knickers on"? Really?

If you'll read the rest of the thread, you'll see that the latest buyer of this coin has been reporting the fake to eBay; so have others. Unlike previous episodes, eBay is asking the buyer to return the fake to the seller, so he can try once again to sell it. This is a major change from their previous policy, and affects much more than just trade dollars.

 

Once they say that, since they're not a common carrier, they've opened themselves up to both a civil suit under Section 3 (to recover damages and court costs) and enforcement by the FTC under Section 4.

I could see that ending poorly.

 

Maybe this is the only fake he's ever sold. But there are other sellers who are moving nothing BUT fakes, and seem to be preserving their feedback ratings. There are a lot of naive buyers out there. Before they got shut down, aboncom's feedback score was over 200,000, "100% positive", even though they were selling dreck.

I've watched as a seller accumulated several "counterfeit coin" negatives, and dropped off the map -- then reappeared a month or so later, with the negatives gone, and new counterfeits for sale.

I wouldn't be a bit surprised to see things unfold this way:

1. @Dougmeister, having reported the fake multiple times, gives up and sends it back.
2. The seller receives the fake and issues a refund.
3. @Dougmeister leaves negative feedback to warn other buyers.
4. The seller goes to eBay, saying "I issued a full refund and the buyer still left me negative feedback! No fair!"
5. eBay, wanting to placate a relatively high-volume seller, removes the feedback.

I'm not liking this one bit. No, sir.

 

I read the entire thread, for your information. Obviously, Ebay has no desire to "keep it honest." Just returning the merchandise to be resold to some other unsuspecting victim is obviously, without conscience. I will reiterate that folks should only buy from people they know and trust (this includes sellers they know on Ebay), and buy slabbed merchandise if they're not expert in the series in question. Buying anything on Ebay poses risks, as we all know. Ebay should refuse to promote spurious merchandise. I have never had a bad purchase on Ebay, as I know the coins that I am buying, and have numerous friends as sellers.

 

Slabbed merchandise is no guarantee either, remember. See: http://fakes.numismetrica.com/tpg-check/

Sadly, the game of cat and mouse only gets worse over time.

 

Nothing is a guarantee. Buy slabbed, and buy from trustworthy, known dealers.

 

Let me rephrase: In a few years -- unless something fundamentally changes -- slabs will not be worth the plastic they're made of anymore as counterfeiters are putting genuine cert numbers on identical fake slabs.

The only recourse is trustworthy, known dealers and rigorous personal education.

 

To clarify:

@Dougmeister is not acting "without conscience" if he refuses to take a $600 loss in order to keep this fake off the market. If he decides to return the coin (at the risk that the seller will find a later unwitting buyer), I believe his moral and ethical position is exactly the same as that of someone who sees an obvious fake for sale and chooses not to buy it. In other words, he's displaying no less "conscience" than you and I are.

 

I think any selling of fakes is lacking in scruples.

 

Report it to eBay , they know there selling counterfeit s

 

I don't think anyone here is arguing otherwise. Are you trying to say that, if @Dougmeister returns the coin for a refund, that's tantamount to "selling a fake"?

 

Nope, am not saying that.

 

Cool, I'll stop nagging.

 

Update: I *finally* got through to an eBay representative from the Appeals Department *in the United States* (that was the 2nd key). They emailed me a form. I get an expert to sign off that it is indeed a counterfeit, possibly get it notarized, and I think I'll be okay without returning it to the seller.

(1st key was to file a SNAD but not do anything for 3 days, then escalate it without communicating anything to the seller, in this case at least, since we already knew it was fake and knew that *they* knew it)

 

Doing your "part" does not mean taking it upon yourself and going out of your way to be judge, jury, and executioner. While this may, without a doubt, be a fake, do you recall how close you came to keeping an almost certainly genuine trade dollar in the past, and based solely upon a few opinions given here? Just as you had no right to (consider) keeping the other seller's genuine coin, you've no right here to pretend to purchase something while knowing full well you were going to try to get eBay to let you keep it, regardless of noble intentions. This one fake being removed from the market isn't going to make the slightest difference in the long run, in the real world or on ebay, especially if the latter is going to turn a blind eye to such sales, so if they told you to return for a refund, just do it and move on. If you injected yourself into every questionable transaction in this hobby, you would have time for nothing else and still never come close to making a dent.

 

Once againI am going to enter at this point and say this buying raw coins off of ebay, is like sleeping with a prostitute without a condom you're bound to catch a problem