eBay: One jacket from Japan, multiple auctions, multiple sellers??

[Bender]

Hey guys... apologies if this has already been covered, I couldn't find anything about it.

Perusing various Japanese-market jackets shipping from Japan on eBay, I've noticed that many of the same jackets are featured in different auctions from different sellers. Same jackets, same photos, same measurements, slightly differing descriptions and often different prices.

What's the story here? Are these auctions legit? I've found a jacket I like, but it's double-listed, and I'm skeptical. If this were an anomaly with this one jacket, I would pass... on the surface, it seems shady AF.

But it's so common with so many jackets, I'm wondering if there is a simple, legit reason. Like maybe these eBay sellers are brokers who handle overseas sales/shipping for people, and a jacket might get consigned with 2 or 3 brokers to widen the net? I dunno... just trying to figure it out. If these were all transparently fake listings, you'd think eBay would do something.

Anybody have the inside baseball?

 

[cbez]

I'm Takemura and I live in Japan. I think Americans might buy a jacket that I see for sale, so I list it on ebay with a hefty markup on the price to account for shipping, customs, eBay fees, profit for me, and the occasional return eBay forces me to accept. If someone buys it, I buy it in Japan and then ship it to them.

Now imagine there are dozens of Takemuras.

 

[Guppy]

This happens a lot. It violates ebay rules, but they don't enforce it very well, like a lot of other thing.

What happens is, someone has the real item for sale in Japan, at a lower price. Various speculators list the item on ebay, marked up considerably.

If someone buys the item from the marked up ebay listing, the ebay seller buys the item from the owner in Japan and ships it to the buyer of the ebay listing, and pockets the difference.

It's like drop shipping and taking advantage of market inefficiency.

It's easy to use Google lens to reverse image search the listing photos and find the lowest price listing of the item and buy it, if you want to, at the best price. If it's in Japan there are legitimate proxy shopping services that will handle buying on your behalf and sending it to you for a much more reasonable cost.