has anyone done anything to have this stopped or slowed?? I mean has anyone made contact with the attorney general, serect service, federal trade comm. etc. about this problem and what can be done? I have called ebay but they are not willing to accept any liability for this even though they are the middle man allowing this to happen. I even warned them of a seller who was from china and selling fake coins and they are not willing to do anything unless enough buyers leave negativie feedback , which means many will not know or will not take the time to complain. Many will just learn their lesson and not buy on ebay again or not to get involved in the coin hobby which is bad for all of us!!! any ideas would be helpful, secret service was of no help and said to call the attorney general.
Aside from reporting every one you find? BTW, please be sure that what you report REALLY is fake. If you start reporting coins that turn out not to be fakes, eBay will become gun shy, and then do nothing. If you have enough money, buy all the fakes you can find using PayPal - then return them. eBay then loses their fees, may lose their credit card fees, looses the time it takes to handle each case, etc. Plus, if enough get returned by enough people, maybe someone will bring a case against them like occurred in Europe.
The problem is not in the actual selling of replica coins by our Chinese friends... it's the failure to stamp the coins with the required "copy" stamp. The importation of thousands of unmarked replicas into the U.S. every week guarantees that some will be resold as genuine. And whether they are offered by an unscrupulous seller or an unwary dealer is immaterial.. these forgeries are becoming harder to detect, as the planchets being used are close to the actual alloys, and laser cut dies are near perfect. Since collectible coins are generally considered non-circulating, the secret service has very little interest in this matter. They are worried about the near perfect one-hundred dollar notes coming out of North Korea, not a bunch of replica coins that are missing the "copy" stamp. So unless the replica is resold as genuine, there is little one can do except complain... and there are plenty of deaf ears out there.
