Auctions Vs. Ebay

[Leon]

Originally Posted by theseeker

Thank you all, based on the replies, I do feel better about proceeding with H & S.

As for Ebay's buyer protection, Patrick, I'm sure you heard of the Tiffany Co. law suit filed against Ebay about 5 years ago, where Tiffany bought 200 items claiming to be Tiffany products off Ebay and only 2 turned out to be authentic. Now that's a disgrace. Somehow Ebay managed to win the case but, the negative publicity generated from the law suit forced Ebays hand. From a buyers point of view, I buy a ton more stuff on Ebay based on the buyer protection. I honestly think it benefits all involved.

Without looking at the court case Ebay probably got off because they were not the actual entity selling the fakes. They were only a venue and there are many protections for venues, ala this forum itself. There is a strong federal statute (Section 230) that protects owners of blogs/forums. In a nutshell is says that a "venue" isn't the publisher themselves so they can't be held accountable for what people do on their site, under normal circumstances.

As for Pat's thought on selling through an auction or ebay. The only thing that really should matter is exactly where you net the most money in your pocket. An auctioneer should have a captive audience and will get more collectors bidding, with deep pockets, than ebay does....many times. Many of the folks with deeper pockets just don't have time for ebay and shuffling through all of the crap to try to find a golden nugget.