Many sellers of forged autographs have moved from eBay to auction houses where greedy and lazy auctioneers are more than happy to pass the buck to unsuspecting consumers so they can line their pockets with commissions.

I recently participated in an online auction and noticed many items up for bid authenticated from rareandsigned.com who have been banned from eBay for selling fakes

http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/autographs.html

I sent the auctioneer the following email:

Please note that you are selling many autographed items authenticated by rareandsigned.com. This firm has been banned from eBay for selling fakes. http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/autographs.html

And just look at the response I received:

I have no use for Ebay......Ebay is just another marketplace.  We are an auction house.  We do not sell on Ebay.....We are an auction house selling items consigned to us by hundreds of different consignors, and we have nothing to do with authentication, or that process at all.  We simply sell items that our consignors send to us to sell for them.

What can be done in cases such as this? Too many people are buying these items and the auction houses couldn't seem to care less. If they refuse to do something as simple as a Google search to spot a troublesome authenticator, then what chance does the average enthusiast have?