Monday 12 March 2012

I never wanted a business

I have - once again - fallen foul of the eBay police by trying to sell this charming little opium pipe, the design of which I have not come across before.

Attempting to sell 'drugs paraphernalia' is a capital offence on eBay it seems, even if the item is well over 100 years old and if I re-listed it, they would strike me off their customer base and force me to adopt a false name if I wanted to carry on selling or buying.

I know what they are trying to achieve, and in many respects I admire them for it, but their policies are draconian in their enforcement, simply because the average eBay employee cannot be expected to tell the difference between an antique and a modern crack pipe. They do, however, allow the sale of modern Hookahs or Hubble-Bubbles, but only because some people actually use them for tobacco occasionally. I once had an antique tobacco pipe removed by eBay because I mentioned that the bowl contained a small amount of ancient (and unsmokable) tobacco in it. It is illegal to sell tobacco on eBay too...

Recently, one third of a herd of elephants - about 200 from a family of 600 - were shot and killed by poachers in Africa, simply for the ivory. Despite the fact that teams of rangers go out in the bush looking for poachers to shoot on sight, this ghastly carnage goes on still and most of the ivory - like Bengal Tiger bones - is destined for China. Rhino horn is usually sent to the Yemen, where it fetches high prices as dagger-handles.

eBay has a blanket policy of not allowing the sale of ivory at all, and quite rightly. So what happens is that the code word for antique ivory on sale is 'Ox Bone' and the Chinese carry on buying it. Two ivory candlesticks sold yesterday as 'ox bone' for about £250 each.

I once tried to sell a set of antique, bone-handled French fruit knives and forks on eBay, and they had silver ferrules which dated them at 1890 and coming from Paris. Ebay took them down saying that they might be ivory, and I said that they were bone, and even so, the hallmark dated them as 'antique'.

They said that - in that case - they could be bone from an endangered species, such as tiger, etc.

I asked them if they could imagine a situation whereby a 19th century Parisian cutler would seek out bones from endangered species to make handles from, when the city produced thousands of tons of cattle bone every year? They replied that if I provided a covering letter from an antique dealer certifying that they were not ivory and were pre-20th century, they would let me re-list them. Since they had already forced me to become a business seller, I said that I might as well write my own letter, but they said that would not be good enough...

At that point, I gave up.

18 comments:

  1. sounds like e-bay have you on their No-Buy list Tom...the only thing you are going to get out of them is the pleasure of a good argument.

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    1. They are not capable (or informed enough) for a good argument, Jacqueline.

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  2. Looks like you may need a new sobriquet, passport, birth certificate, and bank account. They must have it in for a certain Mr Tom Stephenson.

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    1. I really don't thinks so. They are very happy with the 30-50 pounds a month I give them, and are keen not to upset me.

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  3. I read the first sentence of every other paragraph of your post and it still made sense!I didn't miss a thing.

    Battling Windmills!

    Start you own Ebay thing....

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    1. Someone in this town has already done just that, and have a customer-base of about 20 after two years trading. Mighty eBay, mighty Google...

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  4. Don't you just love being a 'suspicious character'?

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    1. True, I have a cavalier and irresponsible attitude toward drug abuse, but that's only from the outside. With my grand-children, I have the life-saving advantage of EXPERIENCE. I can tell them what to do and what not, because I have done it all - unlike most pill-popping eBayers.

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  5. You are right...the pipe is charming and since you can't sell it on Ebay you might as well pack it up and mail to me in Illinois. I have an antique miter box on my most recent post I will trade for the pipe. I am sure they are equal value.

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    1. Oh, too late. I have just sold the pipe to a real opium addict for what I paid for it. I have plenty of other antiques though - why not email me with your photos, and we can do swapsies?

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  6. Looks very similar to a very rare Patagonian ear-trumpet. :)
    And not unlike that wee 'musical' instrument that Portugese sailors used a hundred years ago, to 'welcome' their Captain aboard. :)
    There must be a way round your problem.
    Just avoid the words they 'search' for.
    After all they are only checked by computers?

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    1. There are PLENTY of ways around it, Bernard, but I am trying to be honest with eBay. Like calling ivory 'ox bone', I could have called it a 'tobacco pipe', and no alarm-bells would have gone off.

      It is not in my nature to be devious (as you probably realised when I called you an 'old cunt' - welcome back, btw), and if eBay utilised my expertise, it would be better for everyone, including the elephants.

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  7. Whatever it is it is very beautiful Tom.

    Am I the only person left in the world who has never even looked at EBay let alone bought or sold anything on it?

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    1. No he's not.
      I have looked at it many times but never fancied trusting them with my debit card details.
      (And if I'm an old c**t, why aren't you standing to attention?)
      Cheers.....B.

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    2. She's not.

      You can get a lot of old organs on eBay if you give them your card details, Bernard. Some of them might even work.

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  8. Bloody ebay. Mind you I do like reading your battles with them. xx

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    1. The trouble is there are thousands of them and only one of me. I'm losing the will to fight...

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