An ebay seller is currently selling altered polymer banknotes to make look like an error. The back design of the polymer note is totally missing. Is this legal ? There are some questions I like to ask.
(1) Why are these being allowed to be sold in Ebay.
(2) Are there any legal implication with the issuing banknote country ? Here is the link and may be gone very soon.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Polymer-Plastic-Singap...1QQcmdZViewItem


As pointed by Thomas Krause of Polymat, he had done experiment using industrial printer cleaner solution. It does remove the back of the polymer banknote.

Here are the exact words listed in the auction :

The problem is not legal or not legal. The first step is actually to prove that it's indeed altered and therefore illegal to sell it on ebay. The thing is, ebay doesn't have the experts to do so and highly relies on consumers or experts to put in feedback. Sometimes it may be some troublemakers who want to throw sellers off for whatever reasons. Sellers are the Kings in ebay. In fact, there were a few cases where some sellers threated to sue several numismatics forum users for mentioning that they were selling fakes as it ruins their image.

And the next thing is, it isn't just Singapore banknotes that are altered, there are plenty more fakes especially plenty of Chinese counterfeited goods. Just impossible to remove them all

There are some problem with the link that I have listed earlier. Just search for "missing back", there is a list of items sold by the same ebay seller. Not just this Singapore $2 note, there are also polymer notes from Nepal, Romania etc. The seller stated clearly that it is an altered polymer banknote. He is not cheated anyone. I am more concern about the defacing of the polymer banknote and this is clearly stated MAS website ( Monetary Authority of Singapore ) that is an offence to deface a banknote.

Agreed but somewhere along ebay rules, as long as you declare what you are selling and not in the list of prohibited items, it's all "ok". Copies, altered etc are all "ok" as long as it's specifically mentioned in the auction listing. Vague but I see too many of such similar listings on ebay.

Personally I do agree that altering such banknotes are very bad and wrong but what can one do unless he alters like several thousand dollars worth of it? Ask Singapore to extradite him? Sounds more expensive

I guess the more important thing to do is to educate the buyers what they are buying, instead of just pursing the sellers alone. Hey, sellers do exist because there are buyers!

Thanks for the link, was really never aware of such altered notes.

In contacting the Reserve Bank of Australia concerning an offering of their banknotes which were altered they stated that it was impossible for this type of error to occur since the Polymer notes go through several levels of printing. At most one or two colors may be missing from the note, but not all the colors. They also stated that altering their banknotes was illegal. I would assume that this would also be true in Singapore. As for ebay I have reported these notes to eBay every time I run across them being auctioned off since they do fall under their fraud policy. Of course we never learn what action, if any, they take. I have once seen one of these notes sell for up to $300. My suggestion to everyone is that if you see these notes being offered that you report them to eBay, and also contact the Central Bank of the country which issued the note giving them the information as to the user's name on eBay, the eBay number, plus an image of the note. While eBay may ignore people like us, if the Central Bank of, say Singapore, were to complain perhaps some action would be taken.

yeah, he is being honest...he is saying he altered them...I guess the only question would be is it legal to do so and sell it on ebay...I dont know...If he was selling the bill as an error, that would be bad...as it is...he honestly tells you he altered them.

I just noticed a Romanian 2000 Lei that has been similarly split and being sold on ebay.

Look here a real print error:
http://transylvanian-numismatics.com/phpBB...c.php?pic_id=28

As others have said nothing the seller is doing is wrong under ebays policy. But it would be up to the issuing government to go after the seller.

To me it's illegal and I wouldn't buy it.

yeah...I wouldnt buy it...all it is is a defaced bill...I can do that myself if I wanted...which I dont...I guess a person might buy it in order to pawn it off as an error...which does make it a bit more dubious.

Yes, that's true. The fear start when the buyers re-sold to unaware buyers as genuine error banknotes. At the end of the line, people feel cheated over these altered polymer since they may not be told the truth about these notes. These happened to reproduction banknotes which were sold as genuine ones.

I agree Derrick that realy could prove to be a problem

Definately. Once something's in the market, the big problem is when people without sufficient knowledge in the field trade counterfeit or altered collectables unknowingly. It's already a problem with some coins (mainly modern cfts. of Chinese dolalrs)