With the holidays coming up we should be seeing a lot more listings for good pieces on Ebay although with the soft prices, it may affect the number of listings.
This has been a very frustrating month for Doug and I trying to stay on top of the fake listings - more information is posted on the site regarding the latest barrage of listings. Take note, we have several sellers out of KY that continue to list very suspicious pieces - currently there is an "alleged" vintage gold trim Smiley water pitcher that miraculously also has a bug on it's
forehead - very similar to the creamer a while back by ANOTHER SELLER ALSO in the same vicinity of KY. Take note - the eyelids have no line decoration on this pieces - the toe nails are gold and the air brushing and cheeks are not right. Yet this particular seller has excellent feedback and also has a lot of vintage pieces in other cookie jars and a lot of black memorabilia - unfortunately I am not an expert on that so cannot detect if any of them are repros or fakes. Also suddenly there are several Jo clown fakes being listed - note the multi colored ball on the nose of the seal on one and missing telltale number 12 etched in the mold of the base. Also a Puss N Boots cookie jar that is scary for a novice collector and could fool others as well. Hope
Doug can insert some of the pictures here but do check his web site to stay current.
I am enclosing a letter in response to another complaint to Bill Cobb at Ebay - they continue to suggest they care but in fact with no copyright infringement violation, we are up a creek - mind you, this excludes all antique pottery from any defunct company from being authenticated in their eyes - they are not willing to work with cookie jar collectors or put together any group to overseeany of the fraud. it is too profitable for them to pull the auctions. Please, for those of you who feel strongly about this, continue to protest to Ebay...............................................
"Hello,
Thank you for contacting Bill. My name is Marley and Bill has asked that I respond and address your concerns.
I would like to assure you that eBay is also very concerned with the listing of counterfeit Shawnee on the site. We take these matters seriously and we work closely with our buyers, sellers and members of independent third party organizations to address this issue.
As you know, eBay does not inspected items you may have listed. Nor do we have enough information about certain items to make any judgment as to whether it is authorized. In addition, eBay is not an expert in the rights of any third parties. As a result, we are not in a position to
make a judgment as to whether the items listed are authorized or legal.
We are also not in a position to tell members how to describe any item for listing.
Please remember that, although we are commonly referred to as an online auction web site, we are not a traditional auction house. Instead, our site acts as a venue to allow anyone to offer, sell, and buy just about anything, at anytime, from anywhere, in a variety of formats, including a fixed price format and an auction-style format commonly referred to as an "online auction."
However, we have taken necessary steps to ensure we have experts of certain items searching the site.
We developed our VeRO program (Verified Rights Owner) for situations like this. When Rights Owners join this program, they have access to report any items they feel may infringe on there Copyright or Trademark.When we receive these request from the Verified Rights Owner we remove the alleged infringing items off eBay.
At this time the best way to remove items you feel are counterfeit or fake, is to contact the rights owner of the alleged infringing items. If the rights owner is not a member of our VeRO program we encourage you to have them contact us.
For more information about infringing items and eBay's VeRO Program, please visit:
I hope this message helps with any concerns your have regarding any illegal items being sold on eBay. Please feel free to reply to this email with any further questions.
Best Regards,
Marley
VeRO Team
eBay Trust & Safety"
Original Message Follows:
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For those of you in the Florida area or nearby states with plans to travel to Florida - here is a link to the Renningers show upcoming - thanks David for sharing
Another collector was able to match up the gold clover bud sets recently - found parts of them on Ebay and the others at a local flea market - always fun to match up a pair - inserted is a picture of the beautiful sets of shakers.
The larger set especially is EXTREMELY RARE - what a treasure to have!!!!
There was a raspberry jar listed last week on Ebay - the apple decoration over the raised clover bud mold - it was listed as a clover bud so many people didn't realize the rarity of it but still it sold for over $500 - a bargain in my opinion. When the price started to climb I had several emails inquiring as to why - I wrote a column back in 2004 about the clover bud vs apple vs
raspberry.
A Link to that column is below for those of you that aren't sure about the
"All of these private listings as Shawnee are fakes - how can you supportthese sellers and give them Power Seller status - you are allowing the market to be destroyed by permitting all these reproductions to be falsely listed.
I write a newsletter online and am constantly hearing from buyers who havebeen cheated by these unethical sellers and yet you continue to permit these fraudulent auctions. Maybe collectors need to seriously consider a class action suit to recoup monies lost at Ebay's continued support of these sellers.
Click here: eBay Seller: ole mill creek: Pottery China, Housewares Kitchenware items on eBay.com"
Another interesting couple of listings worth looking at - one by a Shawnee collector and another by someone who got stung on a fake LRRH - wonder how long before Ebay pulls these listings!!! It is giving shoppers a lot of information and referring them to Doug's web site - getting a lot of responses from it.
With everything happening on Ebay with the frauds we have learned that purchases through Ebay when Pay Pal is used are able to be disputed and several collectors have collected refunds when the seller does not honor the condition or authenticity of the item - this may be the only way we can hold Ebay accountable for the fake auctions - if we hit their bank account, they may
actually take action to prevent these auctions!
Be observant to details - there is an auction listing right now that is very suspicious - take note that it appears to be a plain Smiley water pitcher doctored to be gold and has a fly on the forehead - seller has not responded to requests and is in the same vicinity as other sellers who are coming up with way too much unusual and rare pieces - and buyers are jumping in and paying
way too much!!!! BUYER BEWARE!!!!!
GOLD SMILEY WATER PITCHER WITH BUG - Do the word search as we cannot list specific sellers on select items - it isn't the same as the sellers of hoards of repros and fakes.