Beware of buying 'gold' coins on eBay which are not gold, just gold-plated, particularly German coins from German dealers.
We sell a limited range of items on eBay, less than 4% of our turnover,
but many of the items we offer are gold. As a result, we happen to
notice a lot of the other gold coins listed by other people on eBay. We
have been astounded at the high percentage of items falsely,
misleadingly and fraudulently described as gold, which are clearly only
gold plated.
Fools GoldA few months ago, every time we searched the
"Coins" category for "Gold", it seemed as though half the listings were
for cold-plated coins being fraudulently passed off as gold. Over a
period of a few week, we sent a number of reports to eBay "Safety
Center", we also placed a few of the items on "Watch This Item".
Nothing seemed to happen. We got the distinct impression that eBay
never took any action, as none of the listings we reported ever got
removed, and we noticed the same sellers week in week out, offering the
same crap.
When we looked today, we had mixed feelings. We were quite pleased to
see that the percentage of false listings appeared to b much lower than
previously, and we did not recognise any of the eBay user IDs. It is
likely that eBay have had enough complaints about these people, and
have eventually stopped them or closed their accounts, or perhaps this
was done by the equivalent of our Trading Standards in the relevant
country. On the other hand, there were still quite a few active dealers
offering the same stuff. Perhaps these are "wannabees", who have seen
the original listings, and decided that they would like to join in,
perhaps they are some of the previous dealers trading under a changed
or new identity. We reported a couple more today to see what happens,
if anything.
Gold One Mark, Two Marks, Five Marks, 1, 2, 3, 10 ReichspfennigMany of the "fools gold" items are one or more or the above coins, all of which are only base metal.
Gold One Euro, Two EurosThe other type of "fools gold" coins are 2 and 1 coins which have been gold plated.
German Dealers
Of the eBay members currently offering similar items, we noticed at least German dealers.
One of these had 141 items listed, a feedback of 307 (99.4% positive).Another
had 197 current listings, a feedback of 2,977 (99.9% positive), with
all sold item numbers shown as "Private", so not available for viewing.
There are a number of reasons this can be done, one is so that
crusaders cannot easily contact the buyer to advise him he has been
conned.
Yet another one of these had 116 items out of 159 listed, a feedback of 2,543 (99.7% positive).The
day after we wrote this guide, we noticed another dealer, in the UK
this time, with 26 similar items, described as gold in the title, and
only saying gold plated in the listing description, feedback 444 (98.9%
positive)
Canadian Dealer
We found one Canadian dealer, offering just 12 out of 459 items, with a
feedback of 3,124 (98.9% positive). We did not check any of his other
items.
OthersWe did notice a few other offerings of similar items,
but in many cases, the seller had only one "gold" item listed, so we
have ignored them.
Quality?It
is extremely likely that the gold plating on these items is very thin,
and of poor quality, so that it will easily wear off. We do not notice
any of the sellers offering any kind of quality guarantee.
Gold Plated in Small PrintSome but by no means all of these
listings have the description gold-plated (or similar in German), shown
somewhere in the small print of the listing. None of them stated so
clearly in the item title. We firmly believe this is misleading, and
therefore is intended to defraud any potential customer. Many also had
the word "Gold" in the heading surrounded by an asterisk at each side.
We guess that this is an attempt at a dodgy legal get-out, and they
would argue that the asterisks indicate that the word is not intended
to be taken literally. This is a typical Barnum and Bailey move.
Prices
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