High eBay Feedback is No Guarantee of Integrity or Honesty
When we wrote this page, this eBay member's feedback was 206, with 100% positive, according to eBay.

eBay Copyright Thieves
Many eBay vendors use our coin photographs to sell inferior quality coins on eBay. These eBay members are dishonest and should be avoided.
We believe eBay profits from IP rights infringements (copyright theft), and does so knowingly, only removing infringing items reluctantly, if at all.

Sample Listing

WESTERN SAMOA 1976 - 1/2 oz. 22CT.GOLD COIN - PROOF
WESTERN SAMOA 1976 (1/2OZ) GOLD PROOF
COMMEMORATIVE COIN - 22CT.
BICENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE 1776-1778
Technical Data:
Composition:................. .900% Gold
Diameter:......................28.0mm
Weight....................1/2oz
Mintage:........................2000
Denomination:...............$100
Grade..............................Proof
This coin was struck by the Royal Australian Mint and comes with a Certificate of Authenticity - No. 1374. Date of issue was MARCH 1976. This beautiful gold coin and presentation case are in pristine condition. The coin is housed and beautifully presented in a blue VELVET jewelery (sic) box.
BID NOW and make this beautiful and RARE coin a part of your collection
THANKS FOR LOOKING AND HAPPY E-BAYING

What's Wrong?
We invest a great deal of time, effort, and cost into creating some of the best photographic coin images on the internet. We strongly object when lazy and dishonest people decide to use them without a by your leave or thanks, doing so in competition with us.
Copyright theft is dishonest. We recommend you avoid doing business with dishonest dealers.
This particular eBay seller not only stole our high quality images of our Our 1976 Western Samoa $100 Gold Proof Photographs, he used it to sell his own coin on eBay. He did not mention to potential buyers that the high quality photograph of a mint condition coin was not his own photograph.
It's possible he is ignorant of such fine points, or just plain ignorant.

It is always possible, even likely, that sellers who steal photographs do not own a similar item, and have the intention to totally defraud potential buyers.
The vendor is not only cheating us by stealing our copyright images, he is fraudulently or ignorantly misleading and deceiving all potential buyers. Gaining pecuniary advantage by deception is the definition of fraud.

Price
The seller was asking a starting price of AUD $0.99.

Stupid or Crooked?
If awesomepossibilities52 had posted his gold coin to us, we would have been happy to buy it.
Selling it through eBay, he will have had to pay eBay a selling fee which is a commission of 10%. If the buyer paid him through PayPal, he will also have had PayPal commission to pay (between 2.9% and 4.9%), so he would receive less than selling direct to us.
eBay is full of sellers stupid enough to think that they will get the best price selling by auction on eBay, often they are wrong because they have not checked market prices (perhaps awesomepossibilities52 tried to sell them to a local gold buyer and was only offered scrap gold. If he managed to find the photos on our websites, it would have been simple for him to pick up the telephone and ask what we were paying. The only downside for his is that we would expect his to pay the postage to us. The advantage to his would be getting more than using eBay, not having to create the listing, and getting paid more quickly.

eBay Guilty of Negligence or Complicity
We will be reporting this example of copyright abuse using our standard Statutory Declaration via the eBay VeRO programme, and wait to see if they chose to action or ignore our report. We look forward to taking legal action against eBay for their negligence and / or complicity if they fail to take down the offending material promptly.

Copyright Notice Please see our "Copyright" page for further information.

Buying Gold Coins & Bars on eBay

Selling Gold Coins & Bars on eBay

Copyright Thieves on eBay We already have a page naming and shaming dealers using our images without permission. It's time we did the same for eBay, although if we include them all, this could be a very long page.

Alphabetical Listing of Other Copyright Theft Sites

Other Scams

Other Web Sites All comments about copyright also cover content of all our other websites including, but not limited to:-

• Chards
  www.chards.co.uk
• Investment Gold Bars & Coins (This Site)
  taxfreegold.co.uk
• General Coins & Jewellery:
  www.24carat.co.uk
• Gold Sovereigns:
  goldsovereigns.co.uk
• 18 Carat Gold Jewellery:
  www.18carat.co.uk
• 9 Carat Gold Jewellery:
  www.9carat.co.uk