High eBay Feedback is No Guarantee of Integrity or Honesty
When we wrote this page, this eBay member's feedback was 433; 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
gold sovereign
1958 Full gold sovereign in exellent (sic) condition
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 1963 Sovereign Obverse, he used it to sell his own coin on eBay. He did not mention to potential buyers that the high quality photographs of a near 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 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.
Repeat Offender
oldalangordon really ought to know better by now. We have reported him to eBay at least twice in the past, one recently for a very similar listing, except that this time the stupid thieving bastard (OK, we don't have proof of this last adjective) has very clumsily altered our white background into a black one, presumably thinking that this will disguise the picture, or perhaps even more stupidly thinking that makes it his own!eBay really should kick dishonest idiots like this off their site for good. (The most likely reason they don't is because they would lose about half of their sellers.
You may wish to see his previous listing:
1958 Gold sovereign oldalangordon's previous eBay copyright theft example.
Price
The seller was asking a starting price of £0.99.He would probably get more by selling to us when eBay's new 10% selling fees are taken into account, even ignoring PayPal fees.
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 1963 Elizabeth II Sovereign Obverse Photograph