More Crap than Gold Coins on eBay
eBay seems to be getting even worse. Most ‘gold coins’ on eBay are not gold & not coins. eBay do not appear to care, in fact they seem to make most of their fees from crap. We did a little research.
Just when we thought eBay could not possible get worse…
100% Pure Crap on eBay.de
We monitor the coin section of eBay.co.uk and eBay.com on a daily basis for vendors stealing our copyright images. We also check some of their other country sites.
We happened to be checking ebay.de (the German site), as we find quite a large number of German copyright thieves. One day recently, we searched the category “Munzen”, for “Krugerrand”, and found 100% of the first 200 listings were fraudulent and illegal listings for base metal imitations, all or nearly all purporting or pretending to be the real thing. As it still seems to be as bad, we did a little further research, and publish a quick recap of our results here:-
Survey Highlights
- Only 3.7% of “Krugerrand” listings were genuine.
- The majority of “gold” items appeared not be be gold at all.
- One single vendor, “travis.smiley” had 3,881 current listings, about 10% of all “gold” coins.
Simple Search Results
| Site | Category | Search Term | Results | Percentage | Comments |
| eBay.de | Munzen | Krugerrand | 1,171 | 100% | Starting Point |
| eBay.de | Munzen | Krugerrand mini gold coin | 696 | 59% | Not Krugerrands, or gold or coins |
| eBay.de | Munzen | 1978 small South Africa Krugerrand Coin | 407 | 35% | Not South African or Krugerrands, or coins |
| eBay.de | Munzen | (Combination of previous 2 searches) | 1,103 | 94% | Not South African or Krugerrands, or coins |
| eBay.de | Munzen | 2 Gold Krügerrand 1978 Krugerrand Goldmünze Goldmünzen | 1 | 0% | Not Krugerrands, or gold or coins |
| eBay.de | Munzen | Krügerrand Gold Krugerrand 1978 Goldmünze | 4 | 0.5% | Not South African or Krugerrands, or coins |
| eBay.de | Munzen | NP Krugerrand 1978 Goldmünze Krügerrand Bester Preis | 2 | 0.0% | Not South African, Krugerrands coins, or the best price |
| eBay.de | Munzen | NP Krugerrand | 4 | 0.5% | NP means New Striking, actually a euphemism for fake |
| eBay.de | Munzen | Krugerrand (Total Imitations) | 1,124 | 96% | All imitations & fakes |
| eBay.de | Munzen | Krugerrand (Imitations) | 35 | 3% | Apparently genuine Krugerrand listings |
| eBay.de | Munzen | Krugerrand (Filtered) | 35 | 3% | Apparently genuine Krugerrand listings |
| eBay.de | Munzen | Krugerrand (Imitations) | 47 | 4% | Apparently genuine listings including Krugerrands, including the following: |
| eBay.de | Munzen | Krugerrand coin case | 4 | 0.5% | Fair enough! |
| eBay.de | Munzen | Krugerrand Natura | 6 | 0.5% | Not actually Krugerrands |
| eBay.de | Munzen | Krugerrand Protea | 2 | 0.5% | Not actually Krugerrands |
Vendor Search Results
| Vendor | Title | Count |
| cornelius1228 | Maximillian gold coin | 681 |
| cornelius1228 | American Buffalo mini gold coin | 684 |
| cornelius1228 | Krugerrand mini gold coin | 682 |
| cornelius1228 | St. Gauden mini gold coin | 684 |
| cornelius1228 | Gold | 2,735 |
| cornelius1228 | (Total) | 2,735 |
| cornelius1228 | (Total Imitation) | 2,735 |
Vendor Search Results
| Vendor | Title | Count |
| cannonmx6 | 1865 Mexico small Gold coin | 252 |
| cannonmx6 | Buffalo mini gold coin | 47 |
| cannonmx6 | Buffalo small gold coin | 217 |
| cannonmx6 | Buffalo (Total) | 261 |
| cannonmx6 | 1978 Africa Krugerrand small coin | 225 |
| cannonmx6 | St. Gauden mini gold coin | 263 |
| cannonmx6 | 14k Gold Bar | 215 |
| cannonmx6 | Gold | 994 |
| cannonmx6 | (Total) | 1,219 |
| cannonmx6 | (Total Imitation) | 1,219 |
Vendor Search Notes
In the cases of both the vendors quoted above, neither appeared to offer any genuine items at all, yet all were described in their item title as “gold”, some also as “coins”, “Krugerrands”, 14K, “buffalos”, “St Gauden(sic), “Mexico”, “Maximilian”, or “America”. None of these descriptions is accurate.
Some of the items do state in their descriptions (but only in the small print) that they are HGE (Heavy Gold Electroplated), or replica. We very much doubt whether the word “Heavy” is accurate!
One of the items (listed by cornelius1228) under the category Kategorie: Münzen: Edelmetalle: Gold: (Coins Precious Metal Gold) carries the description in German:
Größe: 10 Millimeter im Durchmesser
Gewicht: 0,5 Gramm
Ihr Bieten auf einer Minihge Goldmünze
Versendet Standard-US priorty (sic) Post
Which Google translates as:Size: 10 millimeters in diameter
Weight: 0.5 grams
Your bidding on a gold coin Minihge
Shipped standard U.S. Postal priorty
In other words the vendor states three time that the item is gold, and completely fails to include any warning to the contrary, clearly a fraudster, yet he enjoys a feedback of 154 (98.7% positive). It appear that not only are eBay happy for this crook to list his fraudulently described garbage, but they are also happy to earn fees while aiding and abetting the conman to fool hundreds of innocent, but rather stupid, buyers.
We have assumed that all the apparent genuine listings were non-fraudulent, possibly a dangerous assumption bearing in mind some of our other findings, for example the $1 million fraud.
Our Advice
Avoid all this stuff like the plague, and the people who sell it, and the people who allow them to sell it (eBay).
Corollary or Side Effect
One side effect we have noticed because of the abundance of misleading titles and phony descriptions, is that genuine sellers with a real coin find it necessary to add to their title “Genuine Original, Not Copy” or some similar wording. A sad endictment of eBay!
