High eBay Feedback is No Guarantee of Integrity or Honesty
When we wrote this page, this eBay member's feedback was 4; with 100% positive according to eBay.

Seller ID	Item Number	Date	Description	Price
daddio-2009	280413758048	23rd Oct 2009	900yr WESTMINSTER ABBEY MEDAL	£850 / £1,700
daddio-2009	280413743470	23rd Oct 2009	1oz 1 oz Australian Gold Nugget FINE GOLD, 2009	£520 / £600
daddio-2009	280414828856	25rd Oct 2009	Krugerrand gold coin 1974 with pendant	£500

Sample Listing - 1

900yr WESTMINSTER ABBEY MEDAL
Ultra Rare,
Limited Edition No 307 out of only 900 made.
WESTMINSTER ABBEY 900th ANNIVERSARY COMMEMORATIVE MEDALS.
Bronze, silver & 22ct solid gold!
The heads on the reverse of these medals are those of ten persons who, throughout the 900 years, contributed in their various spheres-as monarchs, churchmen, architects, musicians, schoolmasters-to the making of Westminster Abbey.
The medal commemorates the 900th anniversary of the consecration of the Westminster Abbey which was built by King Edward the Confessor.
The spectacular ultra rare mint condition SOLID 22ct gold medal weighing a huge 127.7 grams, thats in excess of 4oz of 22ct gold!
The sheer quality is magnificent!
The gold medal is hallmarked for London 1965,makers mark JHJ & 22ct..
The medal is stamped 307 which is the limited edition number.
This medal is in 100% mint condition & has rarely been touched.
This is an opportunity to purchase a very rare collector item!
22ct gold medal weighs 127.7 grams
I accept postal or personal cheques my bank account is temporally out of use so i would not receive payments via pay pal sorry for any inconvenience that may cause to anyone. Please email me for anymore information.

Sample Listing - 2

1oz 1 oz Australian Gold Nugget FINE GOLD, 2009
1 oz, 99.99 % Pure GOLD
The Australian Gold Nugget is a gold bullion coin minted by the Perth Mint. The coins have been minted in denominations of 1/20 oz, 1/10 oz, 1/4 oz, 1/2 oz, 1 oz, 2 oz, 10 oz, and 1 kg of 24 carat gold. They have legal tender status in Australia and are one of few legal tender bullion gold coins to change their design every year, This and their limited annual mintage may, unlike for many other bullion coins, raise their numismatic value over the value of gold used.
The Gold Nugget series was introduced in 1986 by the Gold Corporation, a company wholly owned by the government of Western Australia. This issue of coins had two unique features: a "two-tone" frosted design effect, and individual hard plastic encapsulation of each coin. These features were unusual for a standard bullion coin and gave the Nugget a unique market niche. From 1986 to 1989, the reverse of these coins pictured various Australian gold nuggets. With the 1989 proof edition, the design was changed to feature different Kangaroos, a more world-recognized symbol of Australia. The coins are today sometimes referred to as "gold kangaroos".
In 1991, 2 oz, 10 oz, and 1 kilogram sizes were introduced. These were created with the intention of using economies of scale to keep premiums low, and are some of the largest gold coins ever minted. In 1992, the face values on these large coins were lowered to keep them proportional to the 1 oz coin. The reverse of these coins does not change annually like the lower denominations; the same "red kangaroo" design is used every year.
The Australian Gold Nugget coins should not be mistaken for The Australian Lunar Gold Bullion coins. Both coins are minted by Perth Mint and have .9999 purity, but Lunar coins use images of different animals from the Chinese calendar instead of the kangaroo.
I will dispatch with 3 days of recieving (sic) payment i would also prefer postal or personal cheques because of problems with the bank!

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 1965 Westminster Abbey Gold Medal, he used them to try sell his own medal on eBay.
He also stole our 2009 Australian one ounce gold nugget photograph.
He did not tell buyers it was not the same coin or medal as he was hawking, but what if he doesn't even own any gold?
Any potential buyer is likely to believe they are bidding on genuine items the seller actually owns. Not every bidder will realise that the coins and medals are not the same as shown in the photographs.
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.
Sadly, many eBay buyers are greedy or stupid, and allow themselves to be conned by sellers like this.

Price
The seller was asking a starting price of £850 for his medals, with a BIN (Buy It Now) price of £1,700.
For his Australian one ounce gold nugget, the seller was asking a starting price of £520, with a BIN (Buy It Now) price of £600.
He would probably have got more by selling to us when eBay's new 10% selling fees are taken into account, even ignoring PayPal fees, or spending it, although many eBay buyers do overpay for gold bullion, compared with our own prices for similar or better gold bullion bars.
Similarly, buyers may be better off dealing direct with a proper, well-established, dealer, such as us, and we could offer a better selection!

Crook, Stupid, or Both?
Most eBay sellers ask too much, especially when using a BIN (Buy It Now) price, however this seller, daddio-2009, is asking too little.
This always makes us deeply suspicious. We already believe eBay is the world's biggest stolen goods market. We suspect eBay know this also, but don't care, and don't ask any questions!
If daddio-2009 has had the (limited) intelligence to find our pictures, surely he could have also asked us what we would pay for his items. At this BIN prices, we would snatch his hand off, and in fact, we would offer considerably more.
Why then has he failed to do this? Is he so stupid?
We suspect he is not as stupid as that, but that the coins and medals may be stolen, or non-existent, in which case he would have difficulties selling them to us, so eBay is the obvious choice (there's a sucker born every minute).
At this point, we can't absolutely tell, but our guess is crooked rather than stupid, but he may actually be both.
If we were buying them, we would expect him to post or bring them to us, with ID or proof of ownership, and we would pay out immediately, although we would expect him to stand the postage cost.

Our eBay VeRO Report
At the end of our standard report we added:
We also believe these 2 items, and others from the same eBay member, to be fraudulent, for reasons explained here:
(link to this page).

eBay Guilty of Negligence or Complicity
We reported this example of copyright abuse using our standard Statutory Declaration via the eBay VeRO programme, and waited 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.

eBay Response
Received 17.45 Saturday 24th Oct 2009

Thank you for contacting us.
We are pleased to inform you that the following listing(s) you reported have been removed from eBay in response to the Notice of Claimed Infringement you recently sent:
daddio-2009
280413743470
280413758048
We have notified the seller and all participating bidders that the listing(s) has been removed due to your request.
If the Notice of Claimed Infringement contained items that are not listed above you will receive a separate email communication about those items. These notices may arrive at different times (over a period of up to several hours) as items for different sellers are processed separately.
If you should have any questions or concerns regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact us again.
VeRO Program
eBay Trust & Safety

Items Relisted
Both the items we reported were relisted today Saturday 24th Oct 2009, at 14.13 and 14.19.
It is possible that daddio-2009 relisted the items before the two original listings were removed, but it is impossible for us to deduce this as eBay did not state the time of removal.
It is our guess, however, that daddio-2009 relisted them after eBay had removed the first listings. Quite why he should be so stubborn, stupid, or ignorant as to do this, we do not know, and can only guess.
What we can deduce though is that eBay's standard communication with their member / customer is deficient, weak, inadequate, and pathetic. They persistently and consistently fail to spell out to their infringing members that copyright is a serious legal matter, and that most IP rights owners have submitted carefully considered and vetted reports, and are almost always and certainly correct in their claims, and submit their reports as a solemn and sincere Statutory Declaration, under penalty of perjury.
Perhaps this is because eBay do not wish to irritate their customers, even when those customers are completely in the wrong, so they pass the buck to the rights owners, and fail to give their customers proper warning about IP rights infringements.

Fraud Warning Ignored
We note that eBay chose to completely ignore our fraud warning. This is entirely normal. eBay do not, in spite of their public statements to the contrary, take fraud seriously. Time and time again, they chose to ignore it, unless the amounts involved are huge (and we have reported $1+ million frauds), or the newspapers or television get hold of the story, in which case, eBay will eventually act, usually too little too late.

Our Second eBay VeRO Report
24th Oct 2009

Dear Sirs,
We note that daddio-2009 has relisted both items:
280414441892
280414441892
We cannot tell whether this was before or after you ended the first 2 listings, as your e-mails never state removal times, however we guess that they were relisted after you ended the first listings, in which case we believe you fail to communicate the serious nature of copyright abuse properly. We believe this is immoral and negligent of you.
You appear to have also chosen, as ever, to ignore our fraud warning.
Lastly, you also appear to have failed to provide us with the requested contact details for the infringing member. This removes our ability to issue any legal notices against the infringers. May we assume that you therefore take full responsibility for their actions in their place? We may add that you appear to have become very sloppy about providing these details n the past few months. Could you please rectify these past omissions, and ensure that you provide the requested information promptly on all future occasions?

Further Research
For two reasons, we decided to try and carry out a little further research on daddio-2009.
As we have already stated, some of his items were ridiculously cheap which is why we believe these listings constitute attempted fraud. To test out this theory, we tried to contact "nicky ponder" by telephone and e-mail. We told him we would buy some of his items, and pay more than he was asking; surely this would be irresistible if the guy was genuine? We have had no reply despite trying several times over a few days.
We reckoned that if he was a genuine but stupid person, we would be doing him a favour, by giving him a better price for his goods, and we would benefit by buying them in.
If he was a crook, he would either ignore us or give us some cock and bull story about having already sold them.
Following this logic, we have concluded that "nicky ponder" is a crook, and accordingly contacted Blackpool Police to inform them:-

Police Inaction We were not entirely surprised to find that Blackpool Police (Lancashire Constabulary) were not interested, and gave us no crime log number, stating that no crime had been committed at this stage. We guess this came from one of their civilians operators, who is not expert in the law, but we firmly believe that, if our suspicions are correct, that a crime of attempted fraud has already been committed. We also guess it's fairly difficult to prove, but that should not be of prime relevance.
The Police spokesperson also parroted eBay's standard piece of misleading propaganda that "eBay take all reports of fraud seriously", which we firmly believe to be an outright lie. Most experience coppers would probably tell you that most crooks say "It wasn't me guv, honest", when apprehended red-handed. Similarly eBay will not make any admissions unless or until banged to rights.
We intend to try reporting it to police in the North Walsham, Norfolk, as they may recognise the name or address, and "nicky ponder", if it is his real name, may already be known to them. However, we will not hold our breath waiting to hear whether they take any interest or action. If not, then we would thoroughly recommend eBay as a...

Crooks Charter
If eBay won't take any action against crooks until it's too late, and the police won't either, then it is quite obvious that eBay is probably the best place in the world to sell stolen goods. Welcome to eBay, the world's biggest stolen goods market.

eBay Makes Fraud Easier
Until quite recently, perhaps 2008 or 2009, it used to be possible to identify the bidder on most auctions. eBay stopped this for reasons best known to themselves. It used to be possible, when fraud or deception was suspected, of contacting the buyer, or bidders, to ask them if they were aware. We did this with a few buyers in the $1 million fraud we helped to avert. We have grown more and more cynical of eBay with time and exposure, but surely they would not have stopped this facility to deter do-gooders, or to make it easier for the crooks, would they? If we gave eBay the benefit of the doubt, perhaps they were not intelligent enough to realise that this has made fraud easier. We do not, however think the managers of eBay are stupid!

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

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 Scams

Other Web Sites
All comments about copyright also cover content of all our other websites including, but not limited to:-

• Chards
  www.chards.co.uk
• Investment Gold Bars & Coins (This Site)
  taxfreegold.co.uk
• General Coins & Jewellery:
  www.24carat.co.uk
• 1965 Westminster Abbey Gold Medal:
  goldsovereigns.co.uk
• 18 Carat Gold Jewellery:
  www.18carat.co.uk
• 9 Carat Gold Jewellery:
  www.9carat.co.uk