Odd blockage of survey marks on eBay

[Wintertime]

I think that eBay has occasionally removed survey marks from sale when surveyors have notified the company that a certain item shouldn't be traded publicly, but I've never encountered this before when trying to view a survey mark listing:

 

Unfortunately, access to this particular item has been blocked due to legal restrictions in some countries. We are blocking your viewing in an effort to prevent restricted items from being displayed. Regrettably, in some cases, we may prevent users from accessing items that are not within the scope of said restrictions because of limitations of existing technology. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience this may cause, and we hope you may find other items of interest on eBay.

I've heard of restrictions on, say, the sale of Nazi memorabilia in Germany, but what could be triggering this ban? Maybe their WWII filters went overboard and it is, as mentioned above can happen, a mistake?

 

FYI, here's a search that turns up the two ACE benchmarks currently listed on eBay:

 

http://shop.ebay.com/i.html?_nkw=Corps+of+...ngineers+survey

 

If I click on either of them, I get the above message. Here are individual links to their pages:

 

WWII Corps of Engineers US Army Brass Survey Mark

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...em=370396891428

 

WWII U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS SURVEY CONTROL MARK

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...em=290445039754

 

Patty

[NGS Surveyor]

Patty, I was able to click on your links and see the eBay listing for each. However, I would rather have seen the message you quoted blocking them. Several of us here at NGS have been trying to ban the sale of our survey disks for several years (by sending emails to the seller and, when necessary, eBay). Any sales of survey disks could encourage some folks to go out and start prying disks out of the ground - we certainly don't want that!

 

GeorgeL

NGS

[Bill93]

So why did they let them get listed and then block viewing? Would seem to make more sense to block the initial listing. Or does this mean they are visible in some countries and not others?

 

Hmmm. I just searched by item number for the second one and got the top part of the listing, including picture. It let me enter a bid bid (I did not confirm bid), but where I would expect more description I got an error saying:

 

This request could not be forwarded to the origin server or to any parent caches. The most likely cause for this error is that:

 

* The cache administrator does not allow this cache to make direct connections to origin servers, and

* All configured parent caches are currently unreachable.

 

Edit: Then I searched for the first one and got a full listing with no error messages.

Edited June 15, 2010 by Bill93

[+o-captain]

I had no trouble looking at either one of them. My biggest problem is what he wrote on the second one:

 

"Rare 1940's 3.5 inch wide Brass Corps of Engineering US Army survey mark plate. Date was sanded off by my Dad so he would not get in trouble and pay a fine. "

 

I am appalled at it! To ruin it so as not to pay a fine. Sheesh. What is this world coming to? He could have just blurred the stupid photo rather than sand off the date.

[+TheBeanTeam]

I had no trouble looking at either one of them. My biggest problem is what he wrote on the second one:

 

"Rare 1940's 3.5 inch wide Brass Corps of Engineering US Army survey mark plate. Date was sanded off by my Dad so he would not get in trouble and pay a fine. "

 

I am appalled at it! To ruin it so as not to pay a fine. Sheesh. What is this world coming to? He could have just blurred the stupid photo rather than sand off the date.

 

I also could view both of them.

 

The quote above made me cringe......the seller and his dad both know this was wrong.

[Wintertime]

Interesting. Well, I'm glad that the rest of you can see the listings. I don't know why eBay won't show them to me. I even tried a different brower. Oh well. They weren't anything I was going to bid on; I was just curious what was going on.

 

Patty

[foxtrot_xray]

Odd, I can see them too. The first one is sold now tho - Buy-It-Now went through.

 

Patty - of the top of my head, it may be based on IP (like how BBC blocks non-UK members from watching videos on their site), and something with your IP is making eBay mark you as not being able to purchase it. (California law, etc?)

 

As to what George says, TRYING to get eBay to post the message is fine and all, but I doubt they'll do it unless it truly is 'illegal' to see and trade them. If you find one ripped up laying on the side of the road, it's already been disturbed, right? Trying to block something because it may 'encourage' people from doing it, IMHO, isn't the way to go about getting people to stop. :/

 

(I'm not commenting on that "my dad sanded it".. that was rather dumb.)

[+PFF]

Perhaps the date was sanded off because this is not REALLY a World War II item.

 

I am somewhat familiar with WW2 weapons. But what would you do with this? Throw it at the enemy? Or is it some kind of Secret Decoding Wheel?

 

-Paul-

[foxtrot_xray]

Perhaps the date was sanded off because this is not REALLY a World War II item.

 

I am somewhat familiar with WW2 weapons. But what would you do with this? Throw it at the enemy? Or is it some kind of Secret Decoding Wheel?

 

-Paul-

Decoder ring. Definitely a decoder ring. Out of a box of Honey Nut Cheerios.