Coin collectors might be interested in this discussion.

Link (http)

It starts with something else, but much of it is about coins, especially the term commonly used by our French friends and sometimes Italians on delcampe, fourrée .

What does it mean to you ? Do you understand it ?
All comments and help welcome.

Rogermo

This question has now been raised on the French forum.
Link (http)
Our friends there have been quite helpful, but without actually defining what the word “fourrée” is supposed to mean.

They even go so far as to say «C'est à vous de juger si celui qui l'emploie ne se trompe pas.» (It’s up to you to judge if the person using the word is making a mistake or not) and “il y a sur chaque page de vente un lien ‘Signaler cet objet’. L'objet étant signalé, D* decide ….” (There is on each selling page a link ‘report this object’. If you report it, delcampe will decide .

Well, there’s a fat chance of us being able to judge if the word has been used wrongly, or reporting it to delcampe if it has been used wrongly, when it seems to mean so many different things. If it does mean “fake”, then there is nothing to report, but at 400 euros, 30 euros, are these supposed to be fakes ? At 3 euros, probably. But where is the borderline ? At an affordable price, you can never be sure.

You need to search for both “fourrée” and “fourré” (perhaps other versions too) to see what is involved, and you may think that the word corresponds to, in English numismatical terms, principally :

(1) Silver-washed, (2) contemporary forgery, (3) modern reproduction.

with the slightly different alternatives :

(1a) silvered, (1b) silver-plated, ( 2a) counterfeit, (3a) modern forgery, (3b) fake.

A word as vague as this is no use at all in a trade description, especially when the difference in value between totally genuine silver-washed and modern reproduction is enormous (you can see on delcampe that the difference could very easily amount to $600 or more).

This is not a trivial matter, but our French friends don’t seem to realise this.

Rogermo

Unfortunately delcampe has closed Rogermo’s account because of his contributions to the forum (including perhaps his questioning of the French about this, never with much success, but what some French sellers are doing is in breach of the delcampe charter, there's no doubt about it).

Anyway, it’s not au revoir, but good bye. Somebody else will have to try to get delcampe to enforce their own charter before they are sued like eBay. I hope for the sake of all of you that somebody persuades them to sort things out properly with Moneybookers, too. Not before time.

Ogermo