NY Times article today about Ebay counterfeiting problem

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Posted By: davidcycleback

1) Enforsement, prosecution and pentalties against fraud.

We on this board know of regular and eternal fraud sellers on eBay. The have existed for years, the will continue for years, eBay knows about them and in fact created their own category (paper stock cutouts category = give me a break, eBay). If these sellers who we at Net54, those at CU chatboard and thost at eBay are allowed to sell daily and eBay accepts the $$ for their sales, all the other other details are irrelevant.


2) Many collectors aren't interested in educating themselves.

For a week, I had a copy of my booklet "Judging the Authenticity of Early Baseball Cards" listed with BIN on eBay in baseball card section. All a newbie baseball card collector has to do is read the title of the booklet to know what the booklet is about-- the title's not written in Latin or haiku or sign language. The booklet went unsold, but, during that week, probably 100 paper stock cutouts, PRO and AAA graded cards and "selling as reprint" T206s and Goudeys sold, each at a price much higher than the cost of the booklet.

There will always be eBayers who are uninterested in learning about what they buy, and these are the folks who buy 95% of the fakes. If you skipped all your classes, never opened a book and took your finals hung over, you would have a lot of gall to blame Harvard for not giving you a bachelors degree. Yet, many eBayers choose not to educate themselves about what they are buying, then blame eBay because they bought what are obvious fakes and scams.

I once wrote a small beginner's booklet to wirephotos and offered it for a few dollars to anyone who was interested in purchasing. The first buyers were not newbies, but people I knew to already be knowledgeable about photographs and wirephotos. At first this suprised me, as I had assumed it would be the newbies not the knowledgeable who would want the guide. It soon dawned on me that the result should have been expected, as it is only natural that the knowldgeable are the ones who purchase and read books about the subject that interests them.

Since then, I have known this is how it works. All collectors have the same access to the information, books, websites and information. Some chose to access the information and some don't. Those who access the information are typically the ones genuinelly interested in what they collect. If you're fascinated by cards or antique baseball bats, you'll naturally be interested in learning about how they were made, their history, leap at the chance to ask the top experts tons of questions, etc. On the other hand, those who don't access information are typically not interested in the material beyond the 'inventment' or 'resale' value. Ironically, it is the latter who are most likley to make big 'investment' blunders, in part because the are ones most likely to fall for scams and fakes.