Gold Sovereigns

UK Bullion Dealer of the Year 2016

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Beware Buying Gold Sovereigns on eBay
Day after day, we see misleading, fraudulent, or counterfeit items offered for sale on eBay. We report some, and eBay do nothing leading us to conclude that eBay are content to makes profits from fakes, fraud, deception, and copyright theft.

Our Experience
We have over 40 years experience in the numismatic and bullion business, so we are quite good by now at spotting fake coins. What's more, we also have a "feel" for fake people and fake offers.
We only started this website at Christmas 1999, and it took us until 2001 to get round to registering on eBay, and even longer before we started using it. When we did, we started to notice how many eBay members were selling their sovereigns, krugerrands and other coins using our photographs.
We have invested a great amount of money, time, and effort into camera equipment and the skill needed to capture a good quality photograph of a coin, and process it into an attractive, faithful, and useful image for use on our websites. Naturally, we are quite protective about this. For those who do not know, copyright exists in any original artwork including photographs, and its rights rest with the owner of the film or disc which was used to capture the image. Even though the design of most coins include copyright owned by the countries, mints, or monetary authority that issues them, photographs of those coins constitute a different and original piece of "art", and the copyright of the photograph belongs to its "author".
eBay like most website operators have a "takedown" system in place, whereby they accept notices from copyright owners, and remove reported offending listings within a shortish period of time. eBay call their system VERO, Verified Rights Owners. The reason most operators do so is to protect themselves from expensive legal action for copyright infringement.
On an almost daily basis, we notice other eBay members using our images without our permission, and on an almost daily basis, we report these copyright infringements to eBay, who remove them more or less promptly. About half of those we report get nasty, and e-mail or telephone to demand why we have reported them. Often they claim that the images were their own, that they were not ours, they were "library photographs" which is incorrect, that they found them on Google, and that in any case, we had not disabled the "right-click" facility, as though this limits our rights.

If You Can't Beat Them, Join Them
Eventually, we started offering some of our coins for sale via eBay, partly because it became clear that a number of our newer customers were simply buying from us, then reselling on eBay, usually inflating the grades of the coins at the same time, we we would sell a fellow dealer a 1910-C sovereign one week, as almost EF, and find him listing it on eBay the next week as good EF!. We believe that there are numerous problems with eBay, which we will not discuss in detail here, but we still list perhaps a few hundred "Shop Inventory" items on eBay, and offer a few items by auction most of the time. We do this more as a form of advertising than for the direct revenue from it, and eBay counts for less than 2% of our sales turnover, thankfully! We note there seem to be a number of people who cannot find coins using Google and websites, and for whom only eBay seems to exist.

Fakes, Cons, Scams, Stolen Goods, Non-Existent Goods, Fraud & More
Because we now monitor both out own eBay offerings, and also pirated use of our coin images, we regularly see eBay auctions which strike us as highly suspicious.
We will attempt to classify and describe these:

  • Stolen Images
    • In some cases, members with a coin can't take a decent photograph or can't be bothered, so they just use somebody else's instead. This is not just lazy, it is dishonest. Even if they acknowledge the fact and credit the source, which few do, they hardly ever ask or obtain permission before going ahead. At least if they state that the photographs are not of their own coin, buyers are not mislead.
    • If sellers using stolen or "borrowed" images do not state this fact clearly in their listing, then they are misleading all potential buyers about the condition of the coin on offer, and almost certainly doing so deliberately. In our opinion, this is fraudulent. If a British trader worked in this manner they would be prosecuted by our Trading Standards Office.
      Most of our own coin photographs are of specially selected coins, often the best out of thousands of sovereigns which have passed through our hands. For vendors to imply that their coin is as good is almost certainly misleading. We have occasionally seen eBay vendors state that their coin was better than shown in our photograph! We regard this as an insult to our coins, and our photographic skills. We try not to get too upset about it, as it appears to be quite normal for eBay vendors to exaggerate (lie) about their items for sale.
    • Quite often it seems almost certain to us that the vendor has not got the item or items they claim to own and are offering for sale. We can often guess this from the rarity of the piece, and the quantity of high value items being offered. Sometimes these vendors state or imply that the photographs shown are the actual item being offered, and of course we are in a unique position to know that this is incorrect. Whenever another eBay vendor uses our copyright images, they are stealing the results of our hard work to sell items in direct competition with us. We think this is totally unfair, and resent it strongly. Of course, it is not only our images that get stolen, we see the same images time after time on eBay, so obviously other people get their images stolen also.
  • Restrikes
    We often see fake sovereigns, and other coins, being offered for sale as "restrikes". A restrike is a retrospectively dated coins, officially produced or sanctioned or issued by the original mint or government, and as such is genuine if not absolutely original. The Austrian Mint have issued a number of restrike coins including the famous 1780 Maria Theresia thaler, and various gold coins, many dated 1915.
    One example of an official restrike is the 1925 London Mint sovereign. Until 1948, these were quite scarce, but in 1949 to 1951, the British Royal Mint issued sovereigns bearing the 1925 date, with a design identical to the original George V sovereigns. Because these are impossible to distinguish from the originals, they are not normally described as restrikes.
    Any "collector", dealer, or other vendor offering fakes described euphemistically as "restrikes" should be hung drawn and quartered!
  • Patterns
    The word "pattern" has come into everyday misuse on eBay in recent years.
    Official patterns do exist, and are mainly quite rare and valuable.
    Other patterns were originally unofficial, but circumstances and time has bestowed some authenticity upon them. Boulton and Watt, for example, issued many different pattern coins to wealthy collectors in the late 1800s, and these are generally accepted as patterns, although at the time, they were not "official" issues, although some became patterns of later circulation issues.
    Most "pattern" coins being offered on eBay would be better described as unofficial "fantasy" pieces, with no legal tender or other official status.
  • Edward VIII Proof Sovereigns & Half Sovereigns
    Although a very small quantity of official pattern coins of Edward VII are known, these are all extremely rare. Every day, there is a stream of Edward VII proof or pattern sovereigns offered on eBay. Some of these are made of gold, some are gold-plated silver. None of them are real official patterns or proofs. Most of the listing conveniently, misleadingly and fraudulently omit to state this simple fact.
  • Nazi Gold That's Only Fool's Gold
    Last year, there were numerous vendors offering gold-plated base metal German Third Reich coins as gold. In some listings, the description did state that they were gold plated, but most failed to do so. The item titles described them as gold. There were also gold-plated euro coins described as gold. At the time we reported a number of them as either fraudulent or having misleading titles (an eBay listing offence). To the best of our knowledge, eBay never took any action on our reports, or against the vendors.
  • Misleading Titles
    There are many dubious listings where the title of the item and its full description are significantly different, and usually because the vendor chooses to omit an important word such as fantasy, fake, imitation, replica, copy, or unofficial. Sometimes the full description will clarify this, but not always.
    Here is but one example:
    Title: 1937 Edward VIII 8th Gold Half Sovereign BU Proof
    Subtitle: GREAT BRITAIN C & T - ENGLISH RARE COIN COLLECTION
    Description: EXACT SIZE stunning proof replica of one of the rarest English coins ever minted. THE 1937 EDWARD VIII HALF SOVEREIGN Layered In Beautiful 24-Karat Gold.
    Why not state in the title that it is a replica?
    At best these listings just waste people's time, but also surely lead potential buyers to discount and ignore many listed items which might just be genuine and as described. We once saw a listing for a rare sovereign which said "not replica" at the end of the title. We thought this was quite sad that tit should be necessary to make this statement.
  • Exaggeration & Hype
    Even where there is no absolute fraud, it seems pretty standard for most eBay sellers to wildly exaggerate and overstate both the rarity of condition of their items. A coin with a mintage of 2,750 is described as "of the utmost rarity". Most honest dealers would reserve this for coins where there were only a handful or less in existence, so the extent of the exaggeration is about 55,000 percent. Rather an insult to the intelligence of any prospective buyer, we would think, but perhaps eBay buyers expect lies and deception as the norm.
  • More to Follow

Fraud Reports
eBay take fraud seriously, at least according to them, if we choose to believe what they say on their site, and what one of their press spokespersons say whenever a major eBay scam gets featured in the media.
eBay provides ways to report suspected fraud, and other problems with listings on its sites. Occasionally in the past, we have taken the time and trouble to report some of the more obvious ones, and got the impression that, apart from sending an autoresponse e-mail stating how seriously eBay take fraud and also informing the reporter that "We are very concerned about this type of activity".
Example

Item number: 280176056008
Listed in category: Coins Coins British Edward VIII (1936)
EDWARD VIII PATTERN PROOF GOLD SOVEREIGN - TRUE FDC
IMMACULATE GOLD COIN OF THE KING WHO ABDICATED
On offer is a pattern proof gold sovereign of Edward VIII, the King who came to the throne in January 1936 and abdicated in December of the same year. The coin is in true FDC condition, never touched except for the purposes of this photograph. You will receive it in an airtight capsule. The coin measures 2.3cm in diameter and weighs 6.1g. This truly is a wonderful coin. In the past I have sold similar specimens for £300.
11broadland26 Feedback Score: 3142 Positive Feedback: 100%

Our Comments
The item is not a sovereign or even a coin.
As an experiment, we have today 21st November 2007, reported this item to eBay as fraudulent, using the wording above. We would be willing to bet, from our experience, that eBay will not cancel this listing, and that they will do nothing as usual.
eBay's bog standard auto-response reply:

Subject: Thank you for your report to eBay Trust & Safety (KMM19094751V67061L0KM) Received: 21-Nov-07
From: eBay Customer Support Expires: 21-Dec-07
Thank you for writing eBay's SafeHarbour Department about a listing or seller you would like us to investigate for fraudulent activity. We are very concerned about this type of activity and we will review your report as soon as possible, usually within 24 hours.
Due to privacy concerns, we cannot keep you informed about the status of our investigation. While you will only receive this acknowledgement of the receipt of your report, please be assured that we will thoroughly review the situation.
IMPORTANT:
The subject line you chose on the webform is reserved for reporting current items that may be listed for the purpose of committing fraud.
In order for us to dedicate resources to preventing this type of situation in a timely manner, reports directed to this area that do not relate to current listings that may be fraudulent (including reports of listing policy breaches and reports about items that may be prohibited) will not be forwarded to another department or answered. If you have any other questions or concerns, please contact us from the page below:
http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/contact_us/_base/index.php
We appreciate the time you took to contact us. To promote a safe trading environment for the eBay community, we prohibit users from engaging in any type of unlawful activity on the eBay web site and are dedicated to investigating such situations.
**Please do not respond to this email as your reply will not be received.
Regards,
eBay Trust & Safety
____________________
Learn more about buying and selling safely on eBay. Visit the eBay "Safety Centre" by clicking on the link at the bottom of the eBay homepage.
Why we believe this listing is fraudulent:
The vendor twice states this item to be a gold sovereign. Four times he describes it as a coin. Nowhere does he state that it is unofficial, not a real coin, has no legal tender value, was privately issued, or does not have the same specifications as a sovereign.
He does actually describe it twice as a "pattern", and presumably this is his "get out of jail free card", his legal defence in case he is challenged, or accused of fraud or using a misleading description.
The real thing, an authentic 1937 proof Edward VIII sovereign is listed in the 2007 Spink Catalogue at £150,000!
The vendor has a feedback of 3,142 so is obviously experienced. He has 41 items for sale, all "coins", including a James I hammered sixpence, an attractive 1745 George II halfcrown, and a gold guinea. These genuine looking, real, official issue coins may help to fool some "punter" or sucker into believing that the Edward VII pattern enjoys the same status. His 100% positive feedback astounds us. The vendor claims to have sold similar patterns for up to £300, and we remember seeing at least one previous dodgy listing. In fact, his previous 1937 Edward VIII "pattern" sovereign sold for £95.
This suggests none of his buyers have been unhappy with their purchases, perhaps they are too embarrassed to complain.
Edward VIII Sovereigns
You may wish to refer to our Edward VIII sovereigns page.

The Real Villains -The Big Time Crooks
You may think we have been harsh in naming this last vendor, or at least giving his eBay ID. We do not know the person, but do deprecate his business ethics as instanced by this example. We have identified his listing and given his eBay Id to make it easy for interested parties to follow our story, although we have avoided including a direct hyperlink as eBay do not like links from their site, so we do not believe in giving them free links either.
However the money this fraudster is making from selling one of these "patterns" every 10 days is small beer compared with the really big money being made by some. At £95, he can't be making more than about £20 or £30 profit at most, although if he occasionally gets £300 it's not a bad bonus!
Correction, according to another eBay seller " THIS COIN IS VERY COLLECTABLE AND IS MINTED IN 24-CARAT GOLD ON A 9-CARAT GOLD BASE ,AND IS 22MM. IN DIAMETER ,AND WEIGHS 6.06G. I AM LED TO BELEIVE VERY FEW OF THESE COINS ARE AROUND ,THIS IS AN IMMACULATE PATTERN PROOF QUALITY SOVEREIGN OF EDWARD V111 THE KING WHO ABDICATED 11 MONTHS AFTER BEING CROWNED KING. THIS COIN HAS HARDLY BEEN HANDLED AND THERE FOR IS IN EXCELLENT CONDITION."
This makes only about £25 worth of gold content, and a much bigger profit.
At £95, eBay charge £0.30 for the listing fee including a "gallery picture". Their final value selling fee works out at £3.85, making their total take £4,15.
Who are the big crooks?

Survey & Arithmetic - Billion Dollar Scam
We do not know, and do not have the resources to conduct a large scale or exhaustive survey into eBay listings, but our best estimate, call it a guess if you like, is that 10% of all eBay listings or sales include at least one element tinted by illegality or deception of some kind.
From eBay's 2007 third Quarter Financial Statement, we note that their total net revenues are approximately 1.9 billion dollars, growing at 30% per annum. That makes almost 8 billion dollars per year, and over $10 billion forecast for 2008.
10% of 10 billion dollars equals 1 billion dollars.
If our assumptions and calculations are correct, and they may even be somewhat conservative, then eBay are making ONE BILLION US DOLLARS each year from hosting, permitting, and facilitating fraud and deception!
No wonder they are happy to take no action against the perpetrators.
We find it difficult to imagine any other explanation for eBay's behaviour, and would welcome a full explanation from them.
If or when, eBay see this, they will probably not be happy with it, and we may receive legal threats for defamation. We publish the results of our limited research, along with our opinions in the public interest.
If our 10% figure is too high, any exaggerative effect would be insignificant compared with the amount of hyperbole by many eBay sellers, and also of eBay's claimed activity level when receiving fraud reports compared with the actual figure.
In fact, it is entirely possible and quite probable, that our 10% estimate is far too conservative. We do not know what proportion of goods offered on eBay are stolen, and probably have no way of finding this out. Bearing this in mind, perhaps the real figure is double our estimate.

Ignorance and Anonymity
eBay seems to work by keeping its buyers and sellers from getting to know much about each other. Anonymity for both sellers and buyers is easy on eBay, in fact it is the norm. Although this probably helps keep eBay fees rolling in, it does not do much to promote openness, and healthy access to information. eBay claim that their feedback system helps buyers and to sellers to judge who they are dealing with. We think it is deeply flawed, there are many obviously unethical traders with huge feedbacks, and near 100% positives, and numerous very respectable buyers and sellers who suffer from unfair, sometimes retaliatory negatives.
In the traditional business world, traders build up a reputation over a long period, often by word of mouth. In the somewhat egalitarian world of eBay, much of this counts for nothing. For example, when we submit a suspected fraud warning to eBay, there is no provision on their online forms for us to state who we are, and what expertise we have. It looks to us as if eBay do not care who makes fraud report, and ignoramus or an expert, and we think this is wrong. The fact that we have over 40 years of experience and expertise counts for nothing when we submit a fraud report, it would seem.

Doubtful
When we think hard and look at the level of deception and dishonesty on eBay, we often wonder whether we are risking our own hard-earned reputation by using it ourselves. Mind you, boycotting eBay would be like ordinary decent citizens surrendering the streets to gangs of yobs, so perhaps we should continue to use it with reservations.

Back to Information


Obverse of Genuine 1912 London Mint Sovereign - But Used Without our Permission
Obverse of Genuine 1912 London Mint Sovereign - But Used Without our Permission

Reverse of Genuine 1919 Canada Mint Sovereign - But Used Without our Permission
Reverse of Genuine 1919 Canada Mint Sovereign - But Used Without our Permission

Obverse of 1936 Edward VIII Unofficial Pattern Sovereign
Obverse of 1936 Edward VIII Unofficial "Pattern" Sovereign
Offered on eBay Without any Warning That it is Not the Real Thing

Reverse of 1936 Edward VIII Unofficial Pattern Sovereign
Reverse of 1936 Edward VIII Unofficial "Pattern" Sovereign


The Chard "Gold Sovereigns" website is owned and operated by Chard (1964) Limited
32 - 36 Harrowside, Blackpool, Lancashire, FY4 1RJ, England. Telephone (44) - (0) 1253 - 343081; Fax 408058
E-mail: Contact Us The URL for our main page is: https://goldsovereigns.co.uk
<a href="ebaybilliondollarscam.html">eBay's Billion Dollar Scam</a>