In a message dated 3/9/2005 4:50:22 PM Eastern Standard Time,
davidwjones@cox.net writes:
The registries have also been very useful recently in the shutting down of
several frauds.
There was a "100S" on e-bay that had apparently been cobbled together from a
standard 100 and a lot of reproduction and spare parts...
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David--
In that case the car was "caught" not by a Registrar or by reference to a
registry's info but by several folks who knew about the car's bogus provenance
and its repeated appearance on Ebay. BTW, it is probably still "out there" as
the supposed sale was for something less than the car's reserve price on a
previous Ebay sale by the same seller.
Wouldn't it be nice if one could run a car number by a registrar to see if
the car is at least real? Certainly for a model as limited as is the S (52
cars) that is possible, and in fact the keeper of the S registry, Ken Freese,
has
posted his data online. But for other models this is not the case and one
would have to make reference to the keeper of the Registry. Unless the
information on the database is being kept current and accessible in some form
it would
not help in similar circumstances. And data from the BMIHT is not quickly
available and does not, in any case, include info on ownership, etc. etc.
Best--Michael Oritt
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