In the case of the 100S that wouldn't die: no, the registries can't claim to
have headed off the fraud. However....
There was another car (HBJ8L/40405) offered on eBay in mid-2004, claimed to be
in France and part of the estate of the seller's grandfather. Good terms,
etc. A third party contacted someone to see if they thought the offer was a
good deal. The person contacted got in touch with the BJ8 registry, and the
registry was able to tell them that the same car was offered on eBay on two
separate recent occasions, in July 2003 out of Massachusetts and again in
November, 2003 from our friend in St. Louis, so it wasn't likely the car had
been in France. The ad was pulled from eBay shortly after.
Steve Byers
HBJ8L/36666
BJ8 Registry
Havelock, NC USA
----- Original Message -----
From: Awgertoo@aol.com
To: davidwjones@cox.net ; mother-ship@earthlink.net ; Healeys@autox.team.net
Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2005 5:02 PM
Subject: Re: Ebay BJ8
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...
-------------------------------------------------
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
|