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What's going on with some autograph "stores" and sellers on eBay?

I'm often browsing on eBay and looking around for classic Hollywood autographed material. Signed photos, album pages, ephemera...I really enjoy "window shopping" as a pastime (and learning more about autographs along the way).

Lately I've been noticing what quite an uptick of sellers on eBay that look to be dealing exclusively in outright forgeries...and tons of them at any given time. Many of them also offer their own certificates of authenticity. What is really odd is that some of these sellers have high positive feedback profiles...like 100%.... with hundreds or some even thousands of sales. Looking at images from their past sales tells the same story of dealing in bad stuff.

I know eBay officially has a strong policy against selling fake autographs. In fact, oftentimes if you are uploading an autograph, you will get a reminder of that policy before proceeding with the listing.

So how does this happen when "stores" and sellers are dealing in this stuff? I'm not trying to be obtuse....I really would honestly like to understand how this is possible and sellers get away with it....with apparent great success in some cases.

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Permalink Reply by crazyrabbits23 on June 18, 2021 at 8:54pm

Could be a sign (no pun intended) of the times -- I've noticed in all fields I search for on there, it comes with the caveat that there will at least be a handful of fakes, regardless of what (or who) I'm looking for.

Just the nature of the beast, particularly in context of a massive surge in disposable income (stimulus cheques/CRB up here) that's flowed into the collectible sector.

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Permalink Reply by Eddy on June 18, 2021 at 9:41pm

Sure, that's certainly understood and you are definitely right.

What still gets me is sellers who seem to deal pretty exclusively in fakes...and have lots of sales and great feedback. Surely some buyers would end up submitting their purchases from them to one of the TPAs and it would come back on those sellers.