High eBay Feedback is No Guarantee of Integrity or Honesty
When we wrote this page, this eBay member's feedback was 7; 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
1974 krugerrand gold coin (1oz)
This is a 1974 Krugerrand 1oz and it is in a very good condition.
There is not one mark on this beautiful coin.
We will send it to you by Registered Post requiring a signature from yourself.
We would appreciate beeing (sic) paid with a cheque to avoid the high charges given by pay pal (sic) .
I also have a paypal account and will send you the coin once the money has been transfered (sic) .
If you have any more questions, please just contact me.
Happy bidding
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 image of the reverse of a 1974 Krugerrand, he used it to sell his own coin on eBay. He did mention to potential buyers that the high quality photographs of a near mint condition coin was not his own photograph, wrongly stating it to be a "library photograph". We wonder which library he is a member of, or whether he pays any fees or subscriptions for his membership.
Most buyers will see the photo of a mint condition coin, and assume that this is the coin on offer, and not read all the description.
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 £500 for her coin,
She 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 1974 Krugerrand Reverse Photograph
Our 1974 Krugerrand Obverse Photograph