Bonsai_Tree_Ent
Jedi Master
- Joined
- Jun 26, 2012
- Messages
- 985
I think the collecting community has done brilliantly to mostly remove / ban the sale of repro from forums and facebook groups and respect to all those who have adopted the 'no repro' stance.
However the problem of ebay remains, and on that front the repro mostly definitely appears to be winning. This past year or so has seen repro production markedly become more accurate, with floating repro, better molding, and even repro figures. At the same time, Orme's cardboard boxed fakes appears to be flourishing - and from originally producing just a couple of items he now floods ebay with an enormous range. I fear repro products becoming indistinguishable from genuine vintage would result in the collapse of the collector market and a lot of people quitting the hobby.
So I wondered what to do about ebay... and one idea was for groups of collectors to conduct some 'bombing runs'. Target a specific repro listing on ebay and simultaneously hit it with Report Item. If a dozen or so people were to tag an item as counterfeit on the same day, would that lead to eBay's algorithms to end the listing? Does anyone have any experience of this?
You might think, "what's the point, closing down one listing out of hundreds". Well, if you want to put a dent in drugs trafficking you don't need to tackle every street corner seller, you need to tackle the few key people who are dealing the big shipments. And on ebay there are a few repro power sellers - if you can cause them headaches and close down their listings then that would be the place to start. Beats doing nothing, and letting them rake in the £££ only encourages them to further fund more repro crap like Orme has done.
With good facebook group members and forum members it would be easy to coordinate. A bit like a 'discussion of the day' you could do a 'Report Repro' of the day.
However this idea is worthless if EBay's Report Item doesn't result in the listing getting shut down... and so as an experiment please can you take 30 seconds of your time to follow this link and report this listing. This listing for a repro AT-ST top gun has 24 days to run... a little experiment, let's see if we can make a difference to it?
Please report this listing and make a comment in the thread below that you've done so...
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/STAR-WARS-REPRO-PARTS-AT-ST-TOP-GUN-/292258792250?hash=item440bfb433a:g:FEEAAOSwozRZvsK6
However the problem of ebay remains, and on that front the repro mostly definitely appears to be winning. This past year or so has seen repro production markedly become more accurate, with floating repro, better molding, and even repro figures. At the same time, Orme's cardboard boxed fakes appears to be flourishing - and from originally producing just a couple of items he now floods ebay with an enormous range. I fear repro products becoming indistinguishable from genuine vintage would result in the collapse of the collector market and a lot of people quitting the hobby.
So I wondered what to do about ebay... and one idea was for groups of collectors to conduct some 'bombing runs'. Target a specific repro listing on ebay and simultaneously hit it with Report Item. If a dozen or so people were to tag an item as counterfeit on the same day, would that lead to eBay's algorithms to end the listing? Does anyone have any experience of this?
You might think, "what's the point, closing down one listing out of hundreds". Well, if you want to put a dent in drugs trafficking you don't need to tackle every street corner seller, you need to tackle the few key people who are dealing the big shipments. And on ebay there are a few repro power sellers - if you can cause them headaches and close down their listings then that would be the place to start. Beats doing nothing, and letting them rake in the £££ only encourages them to further fund more repro crap like Orme has done.
With good facebook group members and forum members it would be easy to coordinate. A bit like a 'discussion of the day' you could do a 'Report Repro' of the day.
However this idea is worthless if EBay's Report Item doesn't result in the listing getting shut down... and so as an experiment please can you take 30 seconds of your time to follow this link and report this listing. This listing for a repro AT-ST top gun has 24 days to run... a little experiment, let's see if we can make a difference to it?
Please report this listing and make a comment in the thread below that you've done so...
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/STAR-WARS-REPRO-PARTS-AT-ST-TOP-GUN-/292258792250?hash=item440bfb433a:g:FEEAAOSwozRZvsK6