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.

 

[John_Z]

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?

I’ve recently bought a jacket from a Japanese seller. The day after I hit the BIN button I had an offer from a completely different Japanese seller for the same jacket at a higher price. I msgd both sellers asking for an explanation but received no response from either.

It was 8 days or so before my jacket was shipped to the UK. It did arrive after the usual Japan to UK transit time and it was the jacket in the listing. All this time the same jacket was still listed for sale by the other seller.

Once I had the jacket I again msgd the other seller of the same jacket stating that he couldn’t possibly have it for sale as it was now in my possession and that I’d reported him to eBay for his unethical practices. He didn’t respond but did immediately end his listing.

Checking the -ve feedback for both sellers it revealed both had a history for cancelling orders for no longer having items to sell.

It is my belief that these private sellers are just self employed agents for a commercial warehouse who steer the base price. The agents then move the goods on adding whatever they see fit as their commission.

So to sum up you get multiple private sellers trying to move the same stock from some large warehouse. They’re not offering for sale items they own and have in their possession.

 

[cbez]

there's no grand conspiracy. you can easily find the original items listed on japanese ebay, mercari, etc.

ebay could care less as long as they get their cut.

 

[bigmanbigtruck]

And they get even more of a cut, so they don't have much incentive to take off those listings either.

 

[dannyk]

there's no grand conspiracy. you can easily find the original items listed on japanese ebay, mercari, etc.

ebay could care less as long as they get their cut.

A lot of people don’t know how to do that. I do. But some aren’t super knowledgeable or hey there’s a not insignificant number of “older” people in the hobby. They couldn’t afford this stuff in their youth then they retire, kids move out etc…and bam now they have some money to spend on themselves. Not saying it’s hard, but it’s easy to forget in today’s world not everyone knows all the tech, tips or tricks. Plus there are a bunch of unfortunate scammers and jerks on eBay. It gets harder to be a repeat offender these days; but they persist nonetheless.