Dave Welsh wrote:

(Snip)
....... and it is also the work of an amoral venue
that is perfectly willing to go on taking the commissions these fraudsters
pay so long as this can be done without any legal liability.


The fact of the matter is that it currently operates within the law.

I am trying to convince RCC readers that it is time that eBay should acquire
legal liability for facilitating all this fraud, as a result of Government
regulatory action. That is the only sort of "persuasion" I can imagine eBay
responding to.


Ebay is present in what...some 55 countries now (?), all with diverse
legal systems. One of these countries is China...a land where you can
find all the rare coins you could possibly imagine.....and at
ridiculously low prices too (if only....). It is going to be immensly
difficult to get any catch all legislation on the move. Now maybe if
George Bush were a coin collector and he had been sold a lemon from the
so called Toronto forger we could at least expect a Marine Batallion or
two and perhaps a few F16 squadrons to be dedicated to `persuading' ebay
as well as destroying the evil axis of international die cast
forgers...... :-)

(snip)

It's tough being a month-old calf trying to cross the Zambezi, with all
those crocodiles hungrily awaiting you. That's much like being a neophyte
candidate-collector who wants to get into the hobby by buying coins on eBay.

They used to say the same things about mail bid auctions. ...and in many
cases rightly so. Before ebay I used to have to rely on live / mail bid
auctions for my coins. I was sold a number of lemons in the process from
quite `reputable' auction houses too. Sadly for me, while some were
quite obvious to this neophyte (at that time), some were not so obvious
(they sure are now though!) and i'm stuck with them.


On the other hand, modern society does have laws and police forces to
provide a more orderly system than the "law of the jungle," and to protect
the ignorant and unwary.

More orderly....perhaps, but with regards to protecting the ignorant and
unwary....your confidence is apparently greater than mine.

I've often preached that one doesn't need to put one's hand into a fire
to realise that fire burns. Unfortunately there are people who simply
won't take that in and who will insist on sticking their hand in to see
for themselves. For my sins, I've done it myself in buying a coin I knew
to be a forgery from the `Toronto' forger. I came out on top with
regards to my prime objectives but the secondary objective in testing
the Ebay `compensation' scheme showed that it was designed to discourage
people from making claims at every step of the way. Not impossible, but
at low amounts (ie under $100, you are going to be involved in more
expense than the amount you are going to recover. In other words, it is
not a viable proposition. My experience of dealing with the morons at
ebay was not a pleasant one.

Let's face it. It does not require `intelligence' to use ebay. It does
however require intelligence to navigate it safely. The crocs are
sometimes cunningly disguised as ebay pro forma's and `customer support'.

Perhaps people should be made to pass an IQ test before being allowed to
bid on ebay. That coupled with an elementary education concerning human
nature and the fact that there ARE crocodiles out there waiting for six
month old calfs to go try their hand at swimming would probably solve
the perceived problem overnight.

When a venue such as eBay reaches the point of
being a significant factor in the lives of a large proportion of the
population, it is appropriate that it should be subject to regulation to
prevent criminals from using it to defraud the public.


If you can make people savvy by getting them into communication with
other collectors via coin clubs and coin sites such as coinpeople.com or
cointalk.org, r.c.c. and other entities like the coinforgery email group
you mention, then you would be making a lot of progress in the right
direction. Education is the key. Not legislation, although if it could
be used to help remove a few crocs from the water, i'd not be agin it.