Posted By:
warshawlawI don't see errors as to the item's date of issuance as being a necessary indicator of a fraudulent auction.
First, misdating undated issues is not unusual. How many T206 card dates have you seen? 1909, 1910, 1911, 1909-1911, etc., etc. If you run each date in the ebay search engine, you are almost certain to pull up new and different T206 listings.
Second, I think we've all bought cards that were harmlessly misdescribed, priced as commons when they were rare variations,etc. Anyone for a Piedmont factory 42 card priced as a regular Piedmont common?? I rarely see anyone popping up and correcting sellers when they get the info wrong in the public's favor (now don't all of you snipe at me for saying this; I know each of us has done a good deed or two from time to time to protect the clueless in such situations, but in general that is the exception to the rule).
Also, I don't think it merits bringing a novice seller on ebay to task for not knowing some facts about their cards when major auction houses often sell cards that are misdescribed and P.robably S.incere A.nalysts who grade cards miss fakes and altered cards too from time to time.
Finally, in no way is a ridiculously hefty price tag an indicator of a fraudulent auction. If anything, it is an indicator of an uninformed auctioneer who has stupidly spent good coin on an inflated listing fee that isn't going to go anywhere.
I guess what I'm meandering around here is that I don't always have a problem with a card seller screwing up a technical description in an obvious way or putting an item out there for a price he happens to like, so long as the issue is unrelated to condition or authenticity, which I don't see as being an issue here. Promisedtreasures comes to mind in this regard; she certainly could have done better describing some of the T229's she sold, but the errors were obviously errors of a novice, not malicious efforts to mislead.