Copyright Theft
Perhaps we should be flattered by the number of people including dealers who continually infringe our IP (Intellectual Property) rights by using our copyright images, but we do not find it amusing, and will take legal action against any copyright thieves.
Coin Quest
Coin Quest, of Stat-Matics, are just one of the many coin dealers bloggers & websites worldwide who commit copyright theft by using our copyright images without our permission.
On one page of their website, which we reproduce here, they are clearly using 8 of our high quality copyright gold sovereign photographs.
Coin Quest "About Us" Page
About CoinQuest
Our Single Focus: Your Coin's Value
Appraisal Service. There are many excellent web sites for coin collecting on the Internet, but CoinQuest is not about coin collecting, it is about coin appraisal. Here you find the needed tools to understand the value of your rare and valuable coins, even if you are not a coin collector. The subject is quite complicated, and there are many scam artists in the world of coin dealers. Honest coin dealers pay honest prices for coins they buy from the general public, but the scam artists steal coins from unsuspecting sellers. Your best bet for finding honest dealers is to know what your coins are worth before you meet with any dealer. Use CoinQuest for this purpose.
Privacy Policy. We intentionally do not collect personal information from visitors to CoinQuest. We obtain e-mail addresses and other information only if you initiate a conversation with CoinQuest via our Contact Us link. Our site does use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our website. These companies often use computer-based information (e.g., cookies) about your visits to provide advertisements about goods and services that may be of interest to you.
Paul Richards is our chief numismatist. He ran a successful coin dealership between 1996 and 2004 exclusively on the Internet, and part of his job was answering What is my coin worth? inquiries using his Stat-Matics web site, upon which CoinQuest is built. Paul has over 50 years experience in numismatics, and has examined thousands of coins over the years. He has written several significant articles published in Coin World and by Krause Publications. Now retired, Paul enjoys talking about coins and will gladly give you his educated opinion about the value of your coins.
CoinQuest.com is a service of Stat-Matics, Inc., a Florida corporation. None of our material on this site is copyrighted, and you may use any of it for any purpose. Proper attribution and a link to the CoinQuest main page will be appreciated.
Coin Quest Contact Page
This contains a one-way contact form. plus a postal address, (shown as a image!):
Post
Stat-Matics, Inc
CoinQuest Department
P. O. Box 1911
Melbourne, FL 32902 USA
E-mail
coinquest21@statmatics.com
Coin Quest Selling Your Coins Page
Selling Your Coins
Important information you should know before sellling (sic) rare coins
Coin Dealers. People acting as brokers between coin collectors and the general public are known as coin dealers. There are about 10,000 coin dealers in the United States. All but a few of them run small Mom and Pop dealerships serving local communities. Large national and international dealerships handle high-end collectibles for serious investors and collectors who easily spend $10,000 US dollars on a single coin, and often top $1 million for a significant rarity.
Coin dealers operate without regulation. Most are honest. Most are skilled professionals who enjoy numismatics and contribute to coin collecting as the King of Hobbies. There are some dealers (my guess is 10 percent) who are dishonest and buy coins for much less than they are worth, or sell coins for much more than they are worth, or both. These dishonest dealers exploit people's lack of knowlege (sic) about buying and selling coins.
CoinQuest Referrals. Paul Richards, chief numismatist at CoinQuest, has dealt in rare coins for 20 years and collected them for 50 years. He operates a small Internet dealership known as Stat-Matics Rare Coin Company in Melbourne, Florida. He can refer you to reputable coin dealers on the Internet, and can also buy coins directly from you, if you like. Use the Contact Us link to send an e-mail message to Paul.
Pricing. For typical, problem-free coins Stat-Matics and most other dealers pay about one-half of retail price for coins they buy from collectors or from the general public. This markup allows the dealers to keep their businesses afloat. High-demand coins with good dates, good grade, and good eye appeal are easier to sell than most coins, so dealers often require less markup for these rarities. On the other end, coins with scratches, stains, spots, and similar damage, or coins that have been cleaned or polished, are almost impossible to sell to collectors, so coin dealers do not buy them at any price.
eBay Consignment. Some people prefer consigning their rare coins for auction, rather than selling them to a dealer directly. Generally you make more money at auction than direct sale, although the transaction takes longer. EBay has a large collector following and rare coins almost always achieve fair market value when sold on this popular web site.
Stat-Matics provides eBay seller services for numismatic items. We charge a 30 percent commission, which covers eBay and PayPal fees as well as our expenses. Seventy percent of the final auction price goes to the coin owner. If you are interested in our eBay consignment program, use the Contact Us link on the left.
Domain Name Lookup
Registrant:
Domain Discreet
ATTN: coinquest.com
Rua Dr. Brito Camara, n 20, 1
Funchal, Madeira 9000-039
PT
Phone: 1-902-7495331
Email: 5d99e5e10a1411520049f9c06b7d0150@domainsdiscreet.com
Registrar Name....: Register.com
Registrar Whois...: whois.register.com
Registrar Homepage: www.register.com
Domain Name: coinquest.com
Created on..............: 1999-06-30
Expires on..............: 2012-06-30
Administrative Contact:
Domain Discreet
ATTN: coinquest.com
Rua Dr. Brito Camara, n 20, 1
Funchal, Madeira 9000-039
PT
Phone: 1-902-7495331
Email:
Technical Contact:
Domain Discreet
ATTN: coinquest.com
Rua Dr. Brito Camara, n 20, 1b
Funchal, Madeira 9000-039
PT
Phone: 1-902-7495331
Email:
DNS Servers:
ns19b.nameservers.net
ns19a.nameservers.net
Domain Discreet?
Who or what is Who Is Guard?, you may well ask:
What is Domain Discreet?
Everyday domain owner's information is harvested by spammers from publicly available whois to send spam. Domain Discreet avoids this issues by placing our information in whois and provides an option to redirect email and regular mail to the customer's real address. During the process of transferring the email, we try to avoid obvious junk email and regular mail, thus relieving the customer from junk.
Rather like Domains by Proxy, its yet another registration site which allows anybody, from ordinary citizens through to muggers, rapists, terrorists, copyright thieves, and other assorted criminals and undesirables, to register a domain name without revealing their identity.
What's Wrong?
It is dishonest and unethical to pirate and steal other people's work by using high quality copyright photographs without the owner's consent. To do so in competition with them is doubly devious. We can partially understand why they do it; it is quick and easy (but then so is robbing people).
Ad Farms
Coin Quest has used a significant number of our high quality gold sovereign photographs on its coinquest.com website, creating an impression of expertise and professionalism by using the fruits of our hard work.
It hosts adverts.
Our Conclusions & Advice
The Coin Quest site itself does appear to be mainly an advice site, of which we approve, although it does contain adverts, of which we are sceptical.
It also acts as a feeder site for Stat-Matics, which operates a coin dealership, so in a sense, it acts in competition with us, using some of our material, of which we disapprove.
Partial Credits
To be fair to CoinQuest, the site does contain links to our Gold Sovereigns website, and does say it is reliable, however our licensing terms for our images state that an easily readable credit and indexable link must be placed close to each and any of our images used. Also site owners should contact us for permission, and we do not normally license our photographs to commercial sites. In the case of CoinQuest, we may be prepared to make an exception, but the credits and links should be respected.
We also note that CoinQuest state "None of our material on this site is copyrighted, and you may use any of it for any purpose. Proper attribution and a link to the CoinQuest main page will be appreciated." To protect our rights, we would also need a copyright notice place with each image / credit, and the above statement to be modified (for example by inclusion of "except where © is shown".
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
Other Copyright Abuse
Other Web Sites
All comments about copyright also cover content of all our other websites including, but not limited to:-
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Coin Quest - Victoria Gold Sovereigns Page
Our Images
Obverse of 1874 Melbourne Mint Victoria Young Head St. George & Dragon Gold Sovereign
Reverse of 1874 Melbourne Mint Victoria Young Head St. George & Dragon Gold Sovereign
Obverse of 1832 William IV Gold Sovereign
Reverse of 1832 William IV Gold Sovereign
Obverse of Victoria Jubilee Head Gold Sovereign
Reverse of 1892 Sydney Mint Victoria Jubilee Head Gold Sovereign
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