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When we wrote this page, this eBay member's feedback was 29; with 100% positive according to eBay.

Sample Listing

Ottoman Hamid 1327 100 Piastres Turkish Gold Coin
I am pleased to offer an outstanding private collection, an ultra rare authentic Ottoman Turkish AH1327 (c.1909) 100 Kurush Gold Coin with Sultan Abdul Hamid II.
condition: lustrous, choice extremely fine, lovely gold toning. almost non-circulated.

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 images of the reverse of a 1909 Turkish 100 Piastres of Abdul Hamid II, he used them to try sell his own coin on eBay, as "ultra rare" and "(from an outstanding private collection".
He did not tell buyers it was not the same coin as he was hawking, but what if he doesn't even own any gold coins?
Any potential buyer is likely to believe they are bidding on a genuine coin (which is not assured), and that it is the actual coin shown. Not every bidder will realise that the coin shown in the photograph is not the same coin as being offered, or that the seller is a crook. Perhaps the seller does own a Gold 100 Piastre coin, and is simply hoping eBay buyers will be stupid and gullible enough to send him good money for a coin which may or may not exist, may or may not be genuine.
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 coin, 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.
Sadly, many eBay buyers are greedy or stupid, and allow themselves to be conned by sellers like this.

Price
The seller was asking a starting price of £0.99 for his coin.
If he gets more than the intrinsic gold value, he will have bamboozled and cheated his buyer, if not he would probably have got more by selling to us when eBay's new 10% selling fees are taken into account, even ignoring PayPal fees, although many eBay buyers do overpay for gold bullion, compared with our own prices for similar or better gold coins.
Similarly, buyers may be better off dealing direct with a proper, well-established, dealer, such as us, and we could offer a better selection!

How Old? Stating the date of this coin as 1327 is also likely to mislead many buyers into thinking they may be looking at a coin almost 700 years old. 1327 is in fact using the Hejira date system, and corresponds almost exactly to 1909 in our modern western dating system. If this were being listed on a purely Islamic website this may be justified, but eBay is not an Islamic website, and most of its users would expect year to to stated in our current, Gregorian, calendar system. Sadly it is typical of private sellers, particularly on eBay to omit important information which would influence potential buyers. Nevertheless it is dishonest and misleading.

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.

Me? What? Providing further evidence that eBay fail to properly advise and inform their vendor members when reported for copyright infringements, we received the following e-mail from Nasir, who we presume to be the same person as dear_nasir, although most eBay copyright thieves don't have the intelligence or courtesy to identify themselves properly, and we are expected to be mind readers.

Dear Sir/Madam,
i (sic) have been informed by ebay that my listing was removed due to violation of unauthorised listing content. would you be more precise about what unauthorised content i have used??
Thanks
Kind Regards
Nasir

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

Copyright Infringements Remedies Our suggested draft remedies for copyright abusers dependent on category - competitors, bloggers, pseudo-expert & advice sites acting as eBay & Google portals, eBay & other auction site sellers.

Other Copyright Abuse

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Buying Gold Coins & Bars on eBay

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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
• 1909 Turkish 100 Piastres of Abdul Hamid II:
  goldsovereigns.co.uk
• 18 Carat Gold Jewellery:
  www.18carat.co.uk
• 9 Carat Gold Jewellery:
  www.9carat.co.uk