Miscategorized Items That Could Offend...

I just looked at your search...it was for "german"....personally, I'm tired of hearing about people being offended and don't want to encourage political correctness.

Yeah...those are rather miscategorized, huh?
Those were never used in the US, thankfully.
I suspect he's marketing through controversy.

European laws regarding Nazi paraphernalia do not apply to a seller in the US so nothing is being evaded. The problem is that the seller is auction spamming in unrelated categories.

JMerrick, that only applies to European listings and it has no bearing on US sellers. Per ebay's Offensive Material Policy, the following are unrestricted(as long as you list them in the proper auction category)-

Stamps, letters, and envelopes displaying Nazi postmarks

Currency issued by the Nazi German government, including military scripts

Items that have a swastika that are not related to Nazi Germany (such as good luck charms, Native American blankets, Buddhist sculptures)

Replica or novelty stamps or currency of Nazi Germany (must comply with the currency and stamp policies) even if they contain images of swastikas or German leaders

http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/offensive.html

Biokemist,

I think we actually agree. If I wanted to sell a Nazi coin on ebay, and I listed it in the appropriate category, I would be doing nothing wrong. That's absolutely true. Many people do so regularly, and I don't have an issue with that.

What I am saying is if I'm a buyer in France or Germany, for instance, I might not see search results which included Nazi material from sellers in the U.S., if those items are posted in the proper category. Those results should be blocked, according to legal settlements ebay and Yahoo made with the governments in question. Now, there are two ways of blocking the auctions in question... By keyword searches, or by category. Key word searching every search result would be a cumbersome task, and would potentially slow ebay's databases to a crawl. Category blocking is far easier, but also quite easy to work around.

As I noted in the edit to my previous post. I spent some time going through the seller in questions other sales. He's actually very good about posting his coins in the proper category, with the exception of Nazi coins. He's obviously avoiding that category for some reason.

I live in the United States... (for the next 83 days, not that I'm counting... :) ) If some guy wants to sell Nazi coins in Wisconsin, go for it. He's not going to sell one to me, and if he, or anyone else were to give me one, I would try not to accept it, and if that failed, I would destroy it. That's me. If anyone wants to collect that stuff, and they enjoy doing so, please, be happy. Personally, I find the idea of blocking auction search results in Europe to be rather offensive, but I don't live there, and it's not my place to dictate their laws.

It's easy. Block the words at the front door, not search for them after the fact. If the listing contains certain words you can't list it. Not intensive at all. They do it already to check for some policy violations and likely do it for this too.

[Why should I have to wade through these coins /]
I use the scroll on my mouse..pretty easy. And if I want to look at Morgan dollars..I type " Morgan dollar"
I see lots of stuff miscatagorized,but it really doesn't cause me any hardship.
And I was paying attention...but noticed you mentioned "offended" and "Nazi" several times even though all the coins were not Nazi. Heck, if I wanted to be offended I could mention that you searched "german" but catagorized everything as Nazi....I'm half German..once again,I just believe people go out of their way to be offended anymore.

Maineman,

I'm certainly not offended that the items are listed for sale. As I said in my first reply, I find Nazi-era items to be repugnant. But that's just me. I don't pretend to speak for anyone else, and if my family history were different, I'm sure I would feel differently.

But, not everyone 'searches'. Some people, myself included, bookmark certain categories. If I'm browsing for Morgan dollars, I'd like to see real Morgan dollars. Not fakes. There is a category for replicas and copies. Not other coins. Now, people make mistakes, myself included. Before I spoke out, I actually looked at about 40 of the seller's auctions, and noticed that with the exception of Nazi period pieces, he was pretty good with putting his items in the appropriate category, though, he is a little heavy handed with the "Weird Stuff" category. The international trading rule, that I posted a link to above clearly says that it is the seller's responsibility to point out in the "Ship to" portion of the listing that they cannot ship specific items to countries were such items are illegal. This seller clearly says that he ships world wide. That is against the rule.

When I joined ebay, I agreed to certain terms and rules. The same thing happened when I joined CCF. If I step beyond my bounds, it's merely by accident, and let me know, so I never do it again. I'm not offended because there are Nazi items on ebay. I just wish other folks at least tried to follow the rules, at least most of the time. Though I can't speak for the OP, I suspect that his umbrage comes from a similar standpoint.