Harvey

Is it a rule that sellers are supposed to stay away from descriptors like "rare", "hard to find", etc.? Just curious, because I thought I saw it in the rules, but I'm too lazy to check right now!

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re: Is this a rule?

(Historical Perspective)

There are two reasons for the rule:

- descriptors like, "great, wonderful, fantastic" are subjective. Beauty is in the eye of the potential buyer. Sellers will never say that what they offer is a piece of crap. Does a restaurant say that they have terrible food? No, they all say their's is the best, yet many go out of business for not having the best. Superlatives and such descriptors are a waste of space.

- stating that an item hold potential investment value by using words like rare, hard to find, can also be misleading, and usually people stating such do not have the expertise to do so. Have you ever asked a seller who sells a 4 cent purple Lincoln definitive as "Extremely Rare", and charges tens of thousands of dollars for it how the seller determined that the stamp (super common by the way) was extremely rare? The answer is usually that the seller saw others selling this extremely rare stamp no Ebay for that amount. So much for "extremely rare". Again, potential buyers know if a stamp belongs in their collections. They don't need to be told anything other than the condition, and the price.

Connoting investment potential can also be a violation of federal law, that on complaint can cause an investigation by the federal Securities and Exchange Commission regarding unlicensed investment advice. The odds of that happening in a selling platform like Stamporama is miniscule, but the rule keeps things on the straight and narrow in that regard.

 
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