Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Letter about eBay from an ATG reader

Antique Trades Gazette, 15 May 2010

The Antique Trade Gazette has recently printed an interesting letter from one of its readers;

'SIR- I'd like to add a further tale of caution to the recent 'buying on eBay' letters.

Some time ago I spotted a piece listed on eBay which was of potential interest to me. I readied myself for a last-minute bidding frenzy but then I noticed the self-same piece coming up at a provincial English auction room. The eBay listing photograph was the same one as presented on the auction house site and the piece was unique enough to make this more than a coincidence.

I contacted the eBay seller and he was quite open about the face that he didn't actually own the object he was trying to sell. He had downloaded the auction house image and put it on eBay. If he got a good eBay price he would bid at the auction up to a level giving him profit. If he couldn't achieve a profit the eBay listing would be cancelled because the piece had been 'damaged' or 'stolen'. . . Is this legal? - if not it's certainly immoral.

Bob Mills'

ATG

1 comment:

  1. Hi, the seller is acting illegally - unless he has permision to reproduce the auction house items image in his advert on Ebay.The auction house would hold the copyright to that image

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