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Posted 12/27/2014 6:43 pm
More bluster and posturing for a foolish amendment to a bad law. The HPA has never been enforced and never will be enforced against the Chinese, Russians, Romanians, Spanish or any of the many other overseas countries that harbor forgers selling with impunity on ebay.
The Chinese and some of the others make these Numismatic Forgeries (not counterfeits because they are not intended for circulation) legally in each of their countries. The violation of the HPA law is the importation into the US so if a buyer complains - he is the party that imported the item. Once in the US - the law makes the item illegal to sell - even a sale to a collector of forgeries who studies them to educate others. That is stupid.
Typical politics - punish the convenient while protecting the criminals who make this crap.
To correct the problem each country would have to take action first by making this kind of activity illegal at the source. Then they would have to be willing to prosecute and punish offenders. To the chances of this happening I give the following as an appropriate salute:
I could not find a Bronx Cheer.
This law complicates and confuses the issue by giving collectors a belief that "something" is actually being done to combat the problem of forgery.
To rely on a venue like ebay to do the job of policing this problem is just plain STUPID - I was involved with that effort and as an insider I can say that it can not be done until the laws overseas have teeth.
It would be far more productive to enforce US laws against FRAUD before we enforce HPA.
All HPA violations are FRAUD but not all fraud violates HPA.
We need to rid ebay of Fraud of all types.
And by the way, push ebay too hard and they will shut down the coin section as not being profitable. That discussion is happening and has been happening for years.
Personally I love ebay because it allows all items to be sold and I collect legal counterfeits. This stupid law makes no distinction between a counterfeit made 200 years ago and a piece of crap made last week.
The Chinese and some of the others make these Numismatic Forgeries (not counterfeits because they are not intended for circulation) legally in each of their countries. The violation of the HPA law is the importation into the US so if a buyer complains - he is the party that imported the item. Once in the US - the law makes the item illegal to sell - even a sale to a collector of forgeries who studies them to educate others. That is stupid.
Typical politics - punish the convenient while protecting the criminals who make this crap.
To correct the problem each country would have to take action first by making this kind of activity illegal at the source. Then they would have to be willing to prosecute and punish offenders. To the chances of this happening I give the following as an appropriate salute:
I could not find a Bronx Cheer. This law complicates and confuses the issue by giving collectors a belief that "something" is actually being done to combat the problem of forgery.
To rely on a venue like ebay to do the job of policing this problem is just plain STUPID - I was involved with that effort and as an insider I can say that it can not be done until the laws overseas have teeth.
It would be far more productive to enforce US laws against FRAUD before we enforce HPA.
All HPA violations are FRAUD but not all fraud violates HPA.
We need to rid ebay of Fraud of all types.
And by the way, push ebay too hard and they will shut down the coin section as not being profitable. That discussion is happening and has been happening for years.
Personally I love ebay because it allows all items to be sold and I collect legal counterfeits. This stupid law makes no distinction between a counterfeit made 200 years ago and a piece of crap made last week.
