This morning's lucky eBay heir...

By the way, here's a link to the seller on the bogus auction, which has now disappeared.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

Why am I not surprised the concept of personal responsibility is lost upon you? No, it's okay... no one should ever have to think for themselves, and should be able to walk through life knowing that someone else will mop up after them. Let me guess... you're a big fan of the growing nanny state too? The fact is that laws meant to protect the stupid from themselves don't always work in the real world, and is why, at least for the time being, people still need to think and do for themselves, and if that means suffering the consequences for walking into an obvious scam, especially if they can learn something from it, perhaps that is for the best in the long run; 'tis better to lose a hundred or a few hundred than many, many thousands. Believe it or not, a greater good can come from an unfortunate and regretable wrong. When momma told little boy not to touch the hot stove and he did it anyway, it would've hurt like hell (consequences) but he wouldn't likely do it again and a valueable lesson would have been learned. Arresting mommy for child endangerment, or passing a few new laws wouldn't solve the problem, now would it?

It is not that I'm saying fraud is okay, and you know that. I hate seeing this crap as much as the next guy, but it's about time to place blame where blame is due. The seller's of such crap to not make the market; the buyers do, and if they would start accepting their own limitations and/or stop chasing after that almighty "deal", there wouldn't be a reason to knowingly sell them, at least to the level we see today. If someone was knowingly offering such coins even remotely close to their if-genuine value, hang the SOAB, but that's not the case here. This is common sense obvious. There's an old saying along the lines of "if you eff with the bull, you get the horns", and it is high time people started both realizing and accepting this, not because of the schmucks selling this junk, but right or wrong, for their own benefit.

 

My impression wasn't of a "GOOD and highly deceptive" fake, especially for an issue that is fairly easy to identify, but perhaps so for one less than familiar with the date/mint. With that said though, the idea that the "primary" buyers of such material, on ebay, are "resellers" is highly questionable, unless in that category you include wannabe dealers, ebay flippers, fools dreaming of a quick and easy profit, etc. I can promise you, from personal witnessed experience and not assumption, that there are plenty of collectors and would-be collectors who have bought directly into this kind of crap, and have done so on the very same venue.

If the buyers, in fact, "knew EXACTLY what they were buying" and were still willing to pay the seller's asking price, they're even bigger fools than the collector dreamers who chase after such things. On par counterfeits can be had, without extreme effort, for a fraction of the price.

 

Seriously? Instead of arguing the point, you're going straight to a personal attack and dragging in politics? You can do better.

Now, see? Was that so hard?

I agree that a good counterfeit sold at something close to the market value of a genuine coin is a different class of threat, and probably a more dangerous one. But I disagree that offering a fake at an unrealistically low price automatically shifts the preponderance of guilt onto the buyer.

I've bought quite a few legitimate coins on eBay well below their market value. Sometimes, the seller made a mistake when listing; if they ask to cancel, I agree, and don't leave negative or neutral feedback. (If they're especially polite, I leave positive.) Sometimes they come through. And sometimes I get a fake, or something that doesn't match the description, or nothing at all; in each case, Buyer Protection covers me. But I don't take that to mean that eBay should give up enforcing their counterfeit policy, as they appear to have done.