eBay Items Encourage Gold Parties Without Regard to State Laws

Currently eBay is displaying 16 bid items and 8 eBay store items for "Gold Party Gold Testing" kits without regard for the legal ramifications in many states which require precious metal buyers to have a precious metal resale license. This License in necessary for running gold parties. Also the gold party precious metal buyer must perform all police required paperwork for each seller, do seller ID checks, and conform to legal precious metal holding periods. These all must be done at gold buying parties or the law may be broken. In my state, Maryland, the holding period is 18 days. Two forms of positive identification usually requiring a driver's license must be handed over tho the buyer.

On eBay the 18 items are all listed under a single seller name as are the 8 store items. Neither eBay nor the user mention that gold parties may be illegal in the buyers state without the proper legal credentials, forms, identification and waiting period requirements.

Specifically buying and owning the testing kits are legal. Using them to have gold buying parties without licensed individuals may be illegal in your state. This should be explicitly stated at the beginning of the description so as not to allow people ignorant of their state laws concerning the purchase of second hand gold and other precious metals from the public to be subject to legal action.

The descriptions and holding periods legally required allow the police to examine the precious metal objects to determine if they are stolen goods. There is no other way to prevent people from using these parties as a means for selling stolen jewelry and silver items without these requirements. Many stolen items have been recovered from authorized dealers. These will eventually be returned to the rightful owners.

I do not blame eBay since it is just a venue for sales. However, a venue for sales should still prevent the words "Gold Party Gold Testing" from appearing in the description of the item. This tends to make people think of going out to start their own gold party operation. At the very least there should be additional warnings about running these parties without the legal requirements for each state being considered.

In the past, eBay has been responsive to elimination of potential illegal usage of items purchased on their venue.For example prior to absinthe being made legal, it was sold on eBay as a collectible bottle which just happened to have absinthe in it. In reality people would open the bottles to drink the absinthe. When eBay became aware of this ruse, they quickly banned the sale of absinthe on their auctions. The empty bottles are no longer desirable to the public so there were no sales of absinthe listed.In addition, some states such as Maryland prohibit the mailing of bottles filled with any alcoholic beverage. I assume this is because alcohol is flammable and glass is dangerous if it breaks. It could also be because state taxes could be evaded. Even wine cannot be mailed into Maryland.

Hopefully, eBay's rules will be modified to eliminate the "Gold Party" clause in descriptions and item titles.