Stopping a Crook on Ebay

[sports-rings]

I am a ring collector and I am having a difficult time getting eBay to stop a seller from placing fake rings on eBay. I am hoping the collectors reading this post can help.
There are fake championship rings available on eBay, usually priced way under $1,000 and it's very easy to tell they are fakes. Besides quality issues, none of the fakes have the manufacturer’s markings inside the ring.

A well known seller who has sold rings for years has within the last couple of years started to produce fakes and has priced them as the same price as "real salesman sample rings" and worse, they have the "Jostens" and "Balfour" markings inside the rings. These rings have been made to pass along as "real salesman samples" even having serial numbers inside the rings and sometimes "Not for resale" markings.

The more educated ring collectors know that the seller is having these rings made, with counterfeit manufacture markings and trying to pass them off as real. salesman samples are rare, yet this seller continues to sell the same ones over and over again. He has fooled a lot of buyers and ripped them off.

To stop this, I tried to put up auctions showing real rings alongside his but somehow he or his associates keep getting my auctions taken down. I don't want to have my account suspended so I am not sure what I can do.

By clicking on "report an item" on the eBay auction, I have asked eBay to call me so I can send them pictures. I reported the auctions as containing counterfeits. No one has contacted me from eBay and they have not taken the auction down.

I have attached some samples of real rings (always on the left) and the ebay seller's rings on the right. I also provided a link where you can see the seller’s auctions on eBay. (note he is selling a REAL broncos ring).

I have contacted: Balfour, Jostens, Major League Baseball, the Yankees and The NFL. I believe they are investigating him but to this day he continues to sell these rings on eBay.

I even have and have sent to the organizations mentioned above a pdf of his newsletter, where he clearly states he will make any Yankee ring for a ring buyer, so this proves that he is involved in making or selling fake rings.

Any advice or help would be appreciated!

To see the ebay auctions click this link:

http://shop.ebay.com/rings*things/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1
&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p4340

[jerseygary]

Nothing to add except, man, those are bad fakes!

[khkco4bls]

just posted my complaint. there a joke

[richieb315]

Terrible fakes...Real ones are beautiful.

[sports-rings]

It's hard to tell a fake from a real ring unless you have a real ring side-by-side. Irv Learner (rings*things) has sold a lot of these at shows, at auction and on ebay.

any help with alerting ebay would be apprecaited. Thanks again!

[steve B]

The people to contact are Balfour and or Jostens. And possibly the teams too. All of them have enough clout to get Ebays atention very quickly. There may be repercussions from Ebay overall. They sometimes get paniced about stuff, but with the manufacturers and teams complaining the immediate problem will stop for awhile. Maybe longer depending on just how upset Balfour or Jostens gets. I'm betting one or the other makes some sort of class ring for the FBI.

Steve B

[Fuddjcal]

That is sickening. We all know that E-bay seriously doesn't care about forgeries. Hell, they support them. Obviously the crook has done the same thing as the Nascar guy with Global GAI or whatever there name is/was today. They get on the security team, (which I suggest you try to do, but Eddie the Forger must have beat you to it), make a cozy relationship with them and then pull all their competition down once they are deemed an "expert" in their field.

The Nascar clown also puts up all his fakes (I'm told, but have no proof because I could give a rats ass about NASCAR) and then advertises that he is Globals representative and he will cert them with a Global certification, which E-bay buyers love because they are on E-bay's approved list despite nearly ALL (99.9%) of their Mantles, DiMaggio's and Williams being stone cold FORGERIES. Then he pulls down all his competition, which is happening to you.

I asked the nimrod to look at the Mantles and to find me a real one and he said "He didn't care about the Fake Global Mantles or care about Mantle in general, despite the fact that Mantle has 5 times the listings than all of NASCAR. I can't believe the arrogance of the guy that he is an "authenticator" for Global Nascar and he doesn't care about Mantle when nascar crap autos are mostly less than $10.00. You are dealing with Buffoons and they are ahead 61-0 in a boat race. Good luck. You think he'd want to learn at least from the most forged autograph in History, but Global/GAI is just about teaming with E-bay to rip off the 'Stupidest, dopiest buyers in the world"