Quote:
Originally Posted by mighty bombjack
They certainly won't start paying in-house people to authenticate and take down fakes, as that would cut into profits two ways.
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Now that I certainly agree with. From what I understand, none of the EMR's were ever paid one cent by eBay, nor does eBay pay any of the other watchdogs for counterfeit items (Gucci, Prada, unlicensed KISS merchandise, bootleg Disney DVDs, etc etc). The difference is, those other companies have their own in-house experts who find and report the fakes directly to eBay to protect their own "brands". It's one thing for a company or individual to say, "We didn't produce or authorize that," and something else for a third party to say, "As a concerned citizen, I don't think that was produced by them."
It's hard enough for eBay personnel to figure out whose opinion to listen to in the first place when it comes to autographs. It's not like calling up Louis Vuitton and asking the head of their fraud department who their go-to guy for identifying fake handbags is. By and large, celebrities whose autographs are being sold do not have "authorized representatives" to make those definitive calls (I'm sure there are some that do, but most don't).
Considering what a small sliver of the overall eBay pie is represented by "autographed collectibles," there's absolutely no chance that eBay is going to pay someone in-house to do third-party analysis of signed items.