{"id":191266,"date":"2009-09-08T15:08:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-08T20:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/09\/08\/i-may-have-been-an-optimist-on-ebay\/"},"modified":"2009-09-08T15:08:00","modified_gmt":"2009-09-08T20:08:00","slug":"i-may-have-been-an-optimist-on-ebay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/09\/08\/i-may-have-been-an-optimist-on-ebay\/","title":{"rendered":"I May Have Been an Optimist on eBay"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>4 Months ago, I posted a rather waggishly titled, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/40yrs.blogspot.com\/2009\/05\/ebay-discovered-to-have-socially.html\">Ebay Discovered to Have Socially Redeeming Value<\/a>,&#8221; citing an investigation in Archeology magazine that suggested that the explosion in counterfeits was actually driving real (stolen) antiquities  from the market, because manufacturing frauds was more profitable.<\/p>\n<p>Well, a collector of such objects, and a frequent purchaser on eBay, one Bill Stelzer, disputes this in the letters section (scroll down to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.miller-mccune.com\/health\/racism-the-stressor-1383\">Cheaper by the Millions<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>He says that eBay aggressively monitors and vets such sales, and as a result, there is very little, if any fraud in this area.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/img198.imageshack.us\/img198\/2572\/bullshitmeter6867244.jpg\" style=\"margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;\" \/>Personally, I have no clue as to where the truth is, but when someone says that, &#8220;<span>The eBay sites that auction antiquities are among the most vetted sites on the Internet,&#8221; my bullsh%$ meter spikes to 11.<\/p>\n<p>I have had good luck on eBay, but what I tend to purchase are things like toner cartridges from stores with addresses and phone numbers, and I verify both before purchases.<\/p>\n<p>The output of pot hunters being &#8220;vetted&#8221; sounds a bit strange, but I am speaking from a position of <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">profound<\/span> ignorance here, so YMMV.<br \/><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>4 Months ago, I posted a rather waggishly titled, &#8220;Ebay Discovered to Have Socially Redeeming Value,&#8221; citing an investigation in Archeology magazine that suggested that the explosion in counterfeits was actually driving real (stolen) antiquities from the market, because manufacturing frauds was more profitable. Well, a collector of such objects, and a frequent purchaser on &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[962,1212,997,1025],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-40yrs","category-archaeology","category-internet","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191266"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191266\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}