I’ve seen a post earlier asking for tips to avoid scammers when buying secondhand gear online and I wanted to post this as a more comprehensive way to share some basics.

I buy most of my gear from EBay Marketplace as most people in Europe and Germany do, so that’s the platform that I’m most experienced with. All of this stuff applies in general and should work for Facebook marketplace or Craigslist as well.

A dead giveaway on eBay Marketplace is that most of the time it’s really old hacked accounts with no other listings or maybe a couple low effort fakes, like furniture or other household items. These profiles either have no reviews at all or maybe sometimes the friendly tag (the friendly tag is only one you can get without actually completing a sale, so they get that one by texting between accounts to make it look more legit) never buy from anyone that has no reviews at all or just the friendly tag. These people are also very very quick to reply and will try to get you to send money via PayPal friends, most of the time they make up some excuse for why you can’t pay via the secure Goods and Services option with PayPal, at that point just report and block them. And the easiest way to tell is simply the price, most of the time they try to use low prices on expensive items to try and trick people into thinking that they found an absolute steal. What they are actually selling is another thing to look out for, as it’s mostly popular brands or really hyped cameras I’ve seen tons of fake listings of some in particular.

These are the ones to look out for : - Everything surrounding Leica - Contax T2 and T3 - Yashica T4 and T5 - Olympus MJU 1/2

and for those that buy digital gear the Fujifilm X100 series and most Sony mirrorless cameras.

Here’s some things that you can try to use when you get suspicious that the person you’re talking to might be a scammer. Reverse searching Images in the listing is always a good idea, most scammers use stuff from the internet. You can also ask them to send you some more pictures, most will either refuse or send images that clearly don’t show the Item in their listing. Asking if you can use PayPal Goods and Services or other safe ways to pay is also a good way to tell, most of the time they will try to talk you out of it and give you a cheap excuse why they can’t do that.

And always remember, if something looks too good to be true it is most likely a scam, that is the golden rule. Once you send that money over PayPal friends it is gone, and you probably won’t ever get it back.

Most of these scammers are either lazy or dumb (and sometimes both) so most of them are easily avoided if you just stick to these tips.

I’ve never been scammed by someone with all positive reviews and I’ve been actively buying gear for 3 years, hopefully it stays that way. Stay honest and friendly when selling stuff to get yourself some positive feedback on your profiles and your listings will sell out like hotcakes.

Hopefully you can be a little safer when the G.A.S strikes next time, good luck and happy hunting👋🏻