Thursday 17 December 2015

Caveat Emptor on ebay photo sale 'repros'



Images marked with the red 'Kopierschutz' are currently being offered as "originals" by ebay.de seller lunalisa1 aka Mike Schwarz. All have appeared on ebay.de before. The same photos were also sold previously by seller contra72 aka Carmen Schwarz, these being photo repros. 'Mike' and 'Carmen' are probably one and the same person since their VAT number is the same: DE 246137382. The seller also appears to have a third account spartiat999  It is doubtful if these images are even 'repros' as their quality is so poor - I doubt that the seller has ever seen the original. It appears to me he may have simply 'processed' a previously displayed and 'copyright-marked' image and reprinted it. Perfectly possible to do, some web sites post 'retouched' pictures all the time, having 'photo-shopped' out the Ebay 'marks' on them. While this 'retouching' is tantamount to creating and 'faking' history, ripping off potential purchasers is out and out fraud..




and, below, the original as previously sold by Darius Werner


below, another Schwarz 'fake' and below that, an 'original' by way of comparison, previously cleaned-up and reposted on the Falcon Hangar site




Bf 109 F-2 "white 9" of IV./ JG 51 from the me109.info site (Falcon Hangar).

Site owner Weiss was quick to point out that these images were not from his site although a number of the images this seller is offering already appear 'cleaned-up' on his site. Just be clear, all I'm accusing Weiss of doing is 'cleaning up' Ebay photos and then posting them 'clean' on his site. Weiss refused to remove from his site some 'cleaned-up' images of JG 300 wilde Sau Bf 109s that were won at great expense by a contributor to this blog. Let's hope that they don't appear for sale again as 'originals'..


on offer here
And the same image as displayed on http://www.me109.info/display.php?a=e&fid=7340