When I used to do a lot of eBay buying and selling a couple of years ago (now I have toned it down quite a bit to keep the clutter to a minimum :lol: ) I didn't really worry too much about fakes. They were pretty easy to spot because the price was way too low or it just sounded too good to be true in some way. I bought a fake on purpose just so I could hit this person with some bad feedback, etc. because I knew a lot of other people who weren't as knowledgeable about the type of thing I was collecting as I was were getting sent fakes a lot. I had a website on this hobby that was pretty popular (about 15,000 newsletter subscribers) and heard from a lot of people who got taken in by these type of creeps. I don't know if I stopped that person or not, but I hope so.
It seems that more and more people now are running scams on eBay. It makes me yearn for the "good old days"

, but I still think the best defence against these guys is to be careful in who you deal with and be as knowledgeable as you can about the product you're bidding on. And I know it's such an old saying that it makes you want to puke, but it is true - if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. No one in their right mind is going to sell something valuable for a pittance.
Of course there are those that can fool you no matter how careful you are, but the best you can do in those cases is take whatever steps you can via feedback and the small help eBay might be to you and just chalk it up to experience. It's too bad things are this way, but that's just life IMHO.