High eBay Feedback is No Guarantee of Integrity or Honesty
When we wrote this page, this eBay member's feedback was 247 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
Austria 1915 one Ducat gold UNCIRCULATED
Austria 1915
one Ducat gold
UNCIRCULATED
very beautiful
WE ONLY ACCEPT PAYPAL
shipping is just 3 dollars
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 1915 Austrian Gold One Ducat , 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.
Restrike!
Most people selling Austrian Gold 1 Ducats
fail to tell potential buyers that these coins are official restrikes. We believe this is deception, but then what else can you expect on eBay?
Genuine originals do exist, but they look slightly different, and they are all dated before 1915.
Price
The seller was asking a starting price of $49.99He 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 1915 Austrian Gold One Ducat Obverse Photograph
Our 1915 Austrian Gold One Ducat Reverse Photograph