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Fakes & FraudsAnother "just glass"

29th Jul 2012 05:25 UTCMark Heintzelman 🌟 Expert

Seems no way to keep these heally feelies from ripping folks off selling chunks of decorative aquarium glass. Here is yet another, supposedly "chlorite quartz" from of all places, western pennsylvania (yeah, right). Good to be generally suspicious of sellers like these. They simply haven't a clue what they are selling, or simply don't care.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Chlorite-Quartz-Crystal-from-Western-Pennsylvania-12-1-Oz-Healing-/170886284671?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item27c99dc57f#ht_1896wt_1295

29th Jul 2012 13:03 UTCOwen Lewis

Item withdrawn from sale. Presumably you or some other good person pointed out the error to the seller. Poking about in the seller's record and other items, this one looks like a 'clueless' rather than a con artist. If one shops in a flea market then Caveat Emptor! At least e-Bay's buyer protection scheme would have covered any purchaser.

29th Jul 2012 20:15 UTCMark Heintzelman 🌟 Expert

Agreed, more clueless than crook. Problem is this stuff shows up time and time again and it goes unaddressed as ebay has no vetting process whatsoever.

I've tried to address this kinda stuff to ebay many times, but still the only thing they ACTUALLY care about is if the vendor is selling banned or dangerous, counterfeit brand name goods or are drawing customers off their site to other vending sites. They may include an option for misrepresentation, but it is a false option as the third step to contact them MUST include one of the above complaints or you can't even contact them ??!!! ~sigh~

Still, it is pretty arrogant to find something, decide for yourself what it is and try to sell it as such.

Points for honesty, but the black marks for ignorance and arrogance stand.

29th Jul 2012 22:24 UTCOwen Lewis

Or did (s)he simply accept in good faith what she was told by some other person? It's clear that she's no mineral dealer nor pretends to be such. Yet the (wrong) description of 'Chlorite inclusion' says that *someone* knew some buzzwords. I'm charitable enough to think it was not her. People like flea markets, car boot sales etc. Sometime one can get very good value for money - and sometimes a disappointment. Most who trawl at these things do so for the fun and not for the seriousness of the buying. Never mind about e-Bay, you should have seen the amount of the 'tat' at SMAM!:-D

12.99 for a chunk of glass implied to have an aura is hardly worse than a multi-million-pound advertising campaign for a beer 'that reaches the parts that other beers can't reach'.

A friend once told me that she could see my aura and it was orange. I keep asking people whether this is good or bad. None have yet stopped laughing for long enough to give me an opinion....

29th Jul 2012 22:34 UTCAlfredo Petrov Manager

if people would only buy better quality spectacles, without the chromatic aberration, the whole aura nonsense would fade away ;-)

30th Jul 2012 00:06 UTCWayne Corwin

Second one from same seller

Metallic NON-MAGNETIC Hard Mineral Rock Found in Pennsylvania
more ignorance of rocks on ebay

Accuracy in selling doesn't count as much as making a sale,,, sad.

30th Jul 2012 00:19 UTCAlfredo Petrov Manager

That particular one might require one to be an expert in furnace products rather than rocks :-D

...but then again, no one has bid on it either, so the "rock" consuming public might not be all that daft afterall :-)

31st Jul 2012 00:02 UTCHeidi Good

Wayne,

I saw that ebay post when I followed Mark's link on this thread. On this one the seller says "No Idea!!!!" He asks $5. Not so much for a cool rock. I have a bunch of utterly cool rocks I wouldn't sell for $100 but they have no mineral value.

1) Is there a difference to you that he admits he has no idea what it is? (Or is he DQ'd because he made an outrageous claim on his other post?)

2) What do you think the object is? pyrite coating? Lava extrusion? slag?

and 3) Can you see the Egyptian pharoah in the piece of glass?

It looks more like a gibbon to me.

31st Jul 2012 03:18 UTCMark Heintzelman 🌟 Expert

Mind if I chime in on that Heidi?

1). Nobel effort on the sellers part, but sadly they still get it wrong. It's not a mineral or a rock at all.

2). It's actually slag, the waist product of a furnace. The bubbles are a dead give away.

3). Not sure why they even mention that, does the sellers vivid imagination it make the item itself more interesting? I hope not but for some people. . . .

Maybe the spirit of some long dead pharoh of Egypt has been entombed in this "item", increasing it's channelling, spiritual, what have you, powers?

personally I think the only powers in evidence here is the power of suggestion.

31st Jul 2012 11:40 UTCOwen Lewis

Mark Heintzelman Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

>...... powers?

> personally I think the only powers in evidence

> here is the power of suggestion.

Quite right - but, for some, real none the less, so it seems.

Research into the placebo effect is still in its infancy, However, it's now generally accepted that many (but but no means all) are helped through the alleviation of symptoms by the administration of placebos. There is even some evidence that placebo effect even extends to placebo surgery (an incision is made, nothing else done and the incision sewn up again). How else can there be a mass market in quack treatments for uncomfortable conditions, such as arthritis, which are very common and for which there is no cure?

Belief systems of all sorts exert a pronounced effect in some but not in all. I place the healing and other powers of stones in this same category. Don't work for me but, hey, whatever floats your boat, man;-) Provided the boat does float - which, in my case, it never does :-)

31st Jul 2012 15:45 UTCHeidi Good

I adore Pareidolia but I *see* it for what it is. Tell me to go find you a face in that pile of rocks, and I'll be back in 5 minutes with something amusing. People who are fooled by it are unaware how easy it can be to find facial triggers in our visual perceptions. They perceive a one-of-a-kind experience and then overlay that experience with a spiritual dimension seeing Jesus where we might see Yogi Bear. Myself, I am always irked by people who capitalize on that unfortunate impulse, but I suppose the person who spent $28000 on the magic cheese sandwich had nothing better to do with their money. It's hard to feel sorry for that level of stupid. If the messiah was to return, why oh why would he leave spiritual signs of himself in wonder bread and american processed cheese food?

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