A customer of mine bought a bunch of Spessartite garnet on eBay, thinking he won the lottery, he brought them to my office today to show me how great the prices are that he gets!
2ct+ Bright Fanta Orange Spessartite, $15-$30ct!!! WOW! AMAZING!
Except… they are all full of a foreign substance, and, to be honest, not a very good substance was chosen, it almost looks like elmers glue!
Be careful out there, just when you think you have seen it all, someone comes up with a new way to be stupid.
yes they are also selling Mozambique rubies as natural, but are flame fusion synthetic
It really kills me because eBay has ZERO interest in cleaning things up.
I have sold on eBay since 1999, I could sell people $5k emeralds with no certificate, they got a great deal and I got to make okay money.
Now, nobody will buy a stone for more than $500 on eBay without a GIA/IGI!
EBay for me does so much damage to the genuine gem trade. I was messing around (buying a car part actually) and noticed an ad saying 3 carat GIA certified emerald $10… yeah believe that! As a matter of curiosity I bought it along with a ruby and a sapphire all with a GIA cerificate all which came up online and all which were glass! I contacted EBay and complained… yes my money was returned… but I requested they stop allowing these people to sell fraudulent goods… they are still selling on the site exactly the same. Some poor sucker is going to be convinced they have a bargain and have a piece of beer bottle. Even the trade wants certificates now and who can blame them. Whatever I advertise I always give a guarantee and am always happy to have anything certified at cost for a client. Sadlythere are a lot of fake stones out there which is why I have my own rough cut or use only one dealer to buy from if I need something different than I have. Oh I should have said they are advertised as natural and I contacted the seller who told me yes they were genuine natural gemstones!!!
Chris
I brought this to ebays attention in about 1999/2000 also, sending a few letters indicating that their site really needed some policing. I was seeing 5+ct clean Zambian Emeralds, large purple Tourmalines, Paraiba Tourmaline of exception size/clarity, all starting at like 99 cents with postage of $9.99. There were many other things that I mentioned to ebay and I did write a few times. I think I finally got a response that they would let customers police the website by putting out feedback… Many times I watched these businesses (outside of the U.S.) to see what would happen. Many of these items that I described above could easily fetch tens of thousands of dollars if real. Most sold on the first and only bid at times, so essentially the customer got the item for $11 - such a deal for a real rare gemstone that should sell for tens of thousands! Eventually, some people tested the gems and found out they were glasss or synthetics of some type, and that was what the reviews would say. In time, the dealer closed up his ebay account, opened another one, used the same photos and descriptions are before, and started the whole scam over with a new fresh ebay account… (I’ve also written some articles on the deception found on ebay, from that mentioned above, to colors that are so modified that those gems don’t even come in those colors (!), to those who say the gem is flawless yet the photo obviously shows cracks/inclusions, yet the scams continue. I discussed one example where I showed the image of the gem being sold and what was actually received - heavily photoshopped where one could see the color but the gemstone was essentially black under most lights.)
Caveat Emptor as they say.
I had someone stealing my pics of certs and posting those items for sale for crazy cheap prices, including a $20k Alexandrite that they were charging $500 for!
I have made several approaches to EBay on this subject and they didn’t even respond. Sadly they seem more interested in boosting their profits than being honest! These people are actually supplying the “cert” as well. The problem is it is reflecting on those of us that are honest. I also have jewellery made and now in most cases have to have a jewellery certificate done before being able to sell it! As for gems most people in the trade have become very nervous of anthing that doesn’t have a cert… the problem is that soon if things continue evena cert will be worthless. I am fairly fortunate in that the people I deal with in the trade know my stuff is genuine so they will still buy from me.
The thing is… IT IS MORE PROFITABLE TO BE HONEST!!!
My goal with every customer is to work with them for 50+ years!
Maybe I make a little less money today, but, longer term, it pays off.
If you want a visual illustration, just look at the difference in eBay’s stock vs Amazon’s stock over the past twenty years!
wow, that’s really interesting as this is the first time I’m hearing of spessartites being treated in any way, you sure tho that they weren’t just spessartites natural shredded like feather liquid inclusions? but then again it came from eBay so anything could have happened to it since eBay isn’t based around gems they can get away with a lot of stuff which is pretty bad and annoying, that’s why I now always use a certain gem auction site that I’m sure you’re familiar with to buy gems at ridiculously low prices as for me it has been one of the best places to buy real gems but even there isn’t completely safe as a lot of sellers there will be selling real authentic gems but just using the wrong or a completely unfitting trade name for the gem in order to get an inexperienced buyers attention. Other than that there are still quite a few very honest and noble sellers there(looking at you skygems 
)
I would never buy a gem off eBay cus there are a lot of fake gem vendors (which is majorly ironic since that’s where I sell MY gems), even if they produce a ‘certificate’ of authenticity (these are usually fake). Generally the price gives a good idea of whether or not the person is a legitimate gem dealer…if it’s too expensive or too cheap, be suspicious! The type of gem is also a good indicator…if the gem is super rare it isn’t likely to be sold on eBay and thus could be an imitation.
Oh no! That’s terrible :((