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Ebay autograph account being shut down due to rights?

So I had bought from EZgraphs many different times as they offered some great pieces for even better prices.

However, I went to their store today and noticed everything was taken down(over 3k items). This account had 100% positive feedback with over 19,000 reviews. He was very well established and seemed to be providing exceptional customer service.

I just emailed the paypal address of the guy asking about what happened and if he will be opening a new account and got this for a response:

"I don't think I can- too many celebs and athletes are having verified rights owners sign up on ebay- which means they are exclussive agents and having memorabilia pulled that isn't from them- in the mean time http://www.amazon.com/gp/aag/main?ie=UTF8&asin=&isAmazonFul...

We will be using amazon

Sent from my iPhone"

Has anybody else heard of this before? Does this mean the in person autograph sellers on ebay with a bunch for sale such as skylinesignatures who I buy from will eventually be taken down? Sure this could take down some forgers, but usually forging accounts are smaller accounts which ebay would not care about.

Thanks,

Kevin

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That may be possible too but if Celebrities and/or their representatives file the VeRO paperwork with eBay they can have any item pulled down at will without warning. This has been the case as of late with many celebrities and athletes. If a player and/or celebrity has an exclusive contract with a company then that company can request the athlete or celebrity as part of the contract to make them a VeRO member at which time the agent or whomever is requesting to be the VeRO contact person will print the forms out and have them filled out by the athlete or celebrity and submit them to eBay at which time they will be a VeRO member. The downside of this for sellers is that eBay does not update the VeRO list therefore not every member is listed.   

I'm not denying your story but if this was the case we wouldn't be seeing any Michael Jordan or lebron James forgeries because Upper Deck would have vero rights and everything would get pulled thy isn't upper deck. Same for all the Yankees with Steiner etc etc.

Would be a much more easier and quicker system for eBay to run but its clearly not happening.

It's up to Upper Deck to come on here and pull the items. If they don't pull them they wont get pulled. I made a post last week about the Horrible Peyton Manning signatures with the Steiner stickers and once I contacted my contact at Steiner they were removed and the sellers account was shut down in about 30 minutes..

If the VeRO member is not policing the items then eBay isn't going to do anything and that is half the problem with these bigger companies they either don't want to be bothered or they don't have the staff in place to do the work.

Upper Deck, Steiner, Mounted Memories all the big companies are VeRO members.

So Dane what you're saying is those Peyton Manning signatures were removed based on the fact that there might have been fake stickers on the items and nothing to do with the signatures being fake?

Signatures can be removed by a VeRO member if they are authentic or not if a rights owner wants the items removed because they have their name associated with them then they will be removed. If you call eBay and ask them how that policy works then it would be much clearer.

Steve is right. I once had 30 of my items pulled from eBay for vero rights. I was very confused as a Kobe Bryant PSA photo was pulled but a Kobe Bryant signed jersey with no authentication wasn't pulled.

eBay didn't explain this to my buyers very well and they thought eBay pulled items because they were fake "nobody knew what vero was"

In saying that I'm pretty sure I had signed LP's and magazines that were pulled also.

eBay told me never to list the items again. I did but they didn't say anything.

My items have never been pulled again. I guess it just takes someone with a vandetta to report a lot of your items.

When eBay removes an item due to a VeRO issue then they will send you an email stating that it was a VeRO issue and who to contact in order to have these items reinstated. If the items were removed and the only thing stated was " You items were removed do to them being reported by a member of the community" Then that is different than VeRO. If an item is removed due to VeRO eBay has to tell you that. At which time you have to contact the Rep for that athlete or Celebrity and fight it out with them as to the reasoning and if they agree with you they will contact eBay and your items will be reinstated. The VeRO member has 7 days to get back to you after you contact them if they don't then you need to contact eBay and they will reach out to them if at that time the VeRO member does not respond then ebay will remove them from the VeRO program.

For the Record, Authentication has nothing to do with VeRO. It can be PSA/DNA, JSA if the VeRO member wants it pulled it gets pulled.

My emails clearly stated the items had been removed because of violating vero rights. Do not list these items again. If you think this is an error contact eBay etc etc.
It took me weeks to figure out what vero rights were even after reading all the links they sent me. They never mentioned anything about contacting the persons reps.

Maybe because I'm in Australia? Maybe because it was 2 years ago? I don't know. But that's all the message said.
My buyers got the same message. Plus the "do not buy the item off the seller in other ways other then eBay etc etc

I'm not sure how it was 2 years ago but I do know now they have to give you the VeRO members contact info, Name, Phone number, Email address and company address and it will all be in the message that eBay sends you.

Well that would be much better way of actually knowing what to do about the problem.

When it happened to me it was such a wide variety of people all at the same time which I found so odd also. From Kobe Bryant to Andrew Bogut. George Lucas to Kim Kardashian. Around 30 items in 10 minutes. At the time was selling around 100 items, so 70 didn't get pulled. And like I said earlier I was selling 2 Kobes and only 1 got pulled?

I have also seen that seller sell some stinkers so I am not too sure how reliable they are. 

I had a Heidi Klum 8x10 pulled from ebay that I got in person because it wasnt an 'official' photo of hers.  Apparentlyt she has people who work for her scanning to see what signed (or unsigned) photos are out there.  I still have it if anyone is interested.

Was it Heidi Klum who had it pulled or was it Getty Images? I have heard of Getty having photo's pulled too but that might be for unsigned photos.

The VeRO policy is not a clear cut policy because when it really comes down to it every celebrity or athlete can become a VeRO member and have every item with their name on it removed unless it is licensed and this includes autographs. Many people are under the impression that an authentic item bearing an athletes or celebrities signature can not be removed and that is NOT the case. If an item has the signature or the name in the listing title states their name and they do not wish to have anything with their Name or Likeness listed for sale then they can have it removed Authenticity has nothing to do with it. When I went through this with eBay and told them that I owned the item before it was signed and the item was signed for me meaning the athlete gave it to me to do with it what I wish, I then had it authenticated by PSA/DNA and it was VeRO'd by the athletes company stating I did not have the right or permission to sell the item. I asked eBay why I needed permission to sell an item that's was basically given to me by the athlete and eBay then told me they are the rights owner they own the rights to the name and unless I had written permission to sell the items then I could not sell them.

It's a long and frustrating battle but it is what it is and there is nothing we can do about it.

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