High eBay Feedback is No Guarantee of Integrity or Honesty
When we wrote this page, this eBay member's feedback was 401 with 19.4% 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
2006 Canadian Gold Maple Leaf Coin (One Ounce)
Offered For Auction Here:
One 2006 Canadian Gold Maple Leaf Coin. This coin is legal tender in Canada, but is more prized for its gold content by investors. It is nearly (sic) one ounce of PURE GOLD. The coin pictured in the aution (sic) is the actual coin that ou (sic) are bidding on but it has been removed from the plastic hold (sic) for scanning (photographing) into this auction. While gold has intrinsic value and adds diversification to your portfolio, please understand and know what you are bidding on.
I will ship it free DOMESTICALLY only.
Should you have any questions or concerns, please contact me prior to bidding.
Check out my other items!
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 a 2006 Canadian One Ounce Gold Maple Leaf Photographs, he used it to sell his own coin on eBay. He did not mention to potential buyers that the high quality photographs of a mint condition coin was not his own photograph, or that his coin may not have been in mint condition, in fact he states in his listing that "The coin pictured in the aution (sic) is the actual coin that ou (sic) are bidding on but it has been removed from the plastic hold for scanning (photographing) into this auction".
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.
Price
The seller was asking a starting price of $899 U.S.
He would probably get more by selling to us or any Canadian bullion dealer when eBay's new 10% selling fees are taken into account, even ignoring PayPal fees.
Repeat Offender? When we saw the eBay username, we thought "not him again!", but strangely enough, we cannot find any record of reporting this user previously, perhaps he (or she) has slipped through our net. It is possible that records including this vendor are on one of our older computers, and not necessarily transferred to our server, and it could also be before we started to name and shame all copyright thieves as opposed to selected ones.
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 Web Sites All comments about copyright also cover content of all our other websites including, but not limited to:-
Our Images
Our 2006 Canadian One Ounce Gold Maple Leaf Obverse Photograph
Our 2006 Canadian One Ounce Gold Maple Leaf Reverse Photograph