Watch Out for Crooked Ebay Seller or the laments of a novice collector

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Posted By: Adam J. Baxter

Greetings All,
Just wanted to give everyone a heads up about an Ebay Seller who's selling phony stuff. The sellers ID is TALLSKINNYALIEN. When I first dealt with Allen Pyne (his real name), last year he was using the ID name PYNETAR and then MOSTLYMOAB. He specializes in obviously fraudulent N172 Old Judges. Back in 2002 I bought several of them from him on Ebay, which he was listing as the real deal. He sent them to me and they were obvious fakes, really well done too, the forger has some talent. They were poor out of focus copies of pictures of N172's cut to size, glued to stained cardboard and coated with a rought feeling brownish coating that had a caramel/wood glue like smell. (Yes, I smelled them!). A lot of effort was put into making them seem "aged". He sent them to me prior to purchase for viewing and realizing they were fake, I sent them back with a polite letter explaining to him that I could not purchase them as they were not at all authentic. Of course he contiued to sell them as such for some time, not disclosing to Ebay bidders the information I had given him. He now sells them in different catergories, such as ANTIQUES:OTHER, although he now SOMETIMES states that they may be reprints. I came across him again while purchasing a 3.00 Old Judge reprint under his new TALLSKINNYALIEN ID, not realizing that he he was in fact the same person that I had dealt with before. I received the "Cap Anson Item" today, Item # 2162703108. It is printed on blank backed printer parchment paper, with a sloppy coat of what appears (and smells)to be glue, giving it it's brown tone. I had to complete the transaction to protect the sanctity of the buyer's contract. I'm not gonna cry over 3.00. At least I know what his new ID is. Most advanced collectors out there will probably know right away that these are fakes when they see the scans on an Ebay auction. I thought this might be most helpful to any novice 19th century collectors out there or any one getting started on a N172 collection. Hope I've been a help. Ebay's new policy on authenticated items should make it a little more difficult for sellers to pull this crap. But it will probably only work to an extant.

Thanks,
Adam