Is eBay a good place to buy and sell antiquarian books?
In our opinion, this is an easy one – no. eBay is a giant flea market, and it is a good place to buy and sell crap, or fleas. If you want to buy and sell crappy antiquarian books, go to eBay. One of our colleagues has referred to eBay as the “vast confluence where greed meets ignorance” and in our opinion he’s not far wrong. eBay is however a splendid place to start your collection of forged autographs. We’ve seen a number of collectors turn to eBay in recent years, and we can invariably spot the books that they have bought on eBay versus the books they have bought from legitimate antiquarian booksellers, because the books they bought on eBay (or even more problematically, purchased privately after having met the seller on eBay) very often had serious problems which had been hidden from the buyer. eBay has also served as a haven for scam artists who manipulate eBay’s feedback system to appear legitimate. That doesn’t mean there aren’t honest sellers on eBay – of course there are. One g
