The pirate statue had 14 days to leave Massapequa, N.Y. And leave it did.
The owner of the six-foot-tall resin figure recently took it to the QuikDrop store on Long Island to have it photographed and put up for auction on eBay for 14 days. An online bidder from Utah paid $750 and the store's workers packed it and were preparing to send it last night.
Next in line were 59 videotapes with several years' worth of "I Love Lucy" episodes, a pile of aluminum wheel rims and a Happy Holidays Special Edition 1988 Barbie.
Such troves of junk are innocent enough. But as more eBay drop-off stores spring up around the nation to help redistribute the accumulated cargo of an acquisitive culture, some public officials worry that they could become unwitting fences for stolen goods. As some states push to regulate the industry, eBay and the stores are joining together to oppose oversight.
States like California and Florida are debating whether drop-off stores like QuikDrop International, AuctionDrop and iSold It should be governed by the laws to prevent the sale of stolen items that currently apply to pawnbrokers, secondhand stores and auctioneers.
The focus on drop-off operations is intensifying because they are multiplying rapidly.
According to eBay, there are more than 7,000 locations listed in the company's directory of independent businesses, or trading assistants, that sell on behalf of others and offer drop-off services. Many of these, including about 3,800 AuctionDrop locations in U.P.S. Stores, are retail-style storefronts. And hundreds more of these stores are expected to open in the next year.
The stores and eBay have no corporate connection, but they are closely linked. EBay's revenue growth is based in part on signing up new eBay sellers; the drop-off stores help bring into the eBay fold people who might be reluctant to hold an online auction themselves.
In California, where the number of drop-off centers has grown quickly, secondhand dealers are required to report transactions, fingerprint people selling items like high-priced jewelry and electronic equipment, and hold onto those items for 30 days.
EBay is lobbying against a proposed law that would set up an electronic database to track stolen goods sold at secondhand stores in California. The state attorney general recently released an opinion that the drop-off stores should be classified as secondhand dealers. EBay asked that the bill exempt the centers from regulation, but such an exemption has not yet been written into the bill.
"We simply cannot see the need for any of this legislation," said Tod Cohen, vice president for government relations at eBay, which is based in San Jose, Calif.
Some law enforcement agencies, however, argue that drop-off centers could well become conduits for stolen items as Internet-based crime rises.
So far, there has been little evidence of stolen goods passing through drop-off stores. But law enforcement officials say that is because there is no easy way to track stolen items in and out of the centers.
"People are using pawnshops less and less," said Danny R. Macagni, chief of police in Santa Maria, Calif. "These eBay drop stores don't have to notify us like a pawnshop, so stolen property could be sold and we'll never even know about it."
The drop-off stores typically take in an item, photograph it and put it up for sale on eBay. If a sale goes through, the store sends the seller a check, minus a store commission that is often as high as 35 percent as well as a fee for eBay and other processing charges. If the item does not sell within a certain number of days (at QuikDrop, it is two weeks), the owner is asked to retrieve it.
Chief Macagni said that as more commerce - and crime - move into the online world, increased monitoring of online sales can only help. State and municipal laws regulating pawnbrokers and secondhand dealers vary, but usually require that dealers report transactions to the police, hold items for a certain period before selling them, and even take fingerprints of customers.
California, Florida and Texas have been considering legislation that would impose regulations on drop-off stores. And in New York City, where secondhand stores must obtain a license and maintain transaction records for police inspection on demand, the Department of Consumer Affairs is considering whether the drop-off stores qualify as secondhand stores, said Dina Improta, a department spokeswoman.
EBay officials and store owners, however, say criminals are not likely to walk into a drop-off store, offer personal information, leave a telephone number and wait for a check to arrive in the mail.
Still, lawmakers say legislation is needed as a deterrent.
"These drop-off stores are now sort of the locus of potential stolen property," said Leland Yee, a California state assemblyman who is sponsoring the bill. "You don't necessarily go through a fence, you go through the Internet, and eventually it lands at these drop-off places."
The regulatory ambiguity surrounding drop-off stores became evident this year, when Daniel Brady, the owner of an eBay drop-off store in Tallahassee, Fla., was arrested for violating a state law governing secondhand stores. The law requires those stores to give transaction records to local police within 24 hours and hold each item for 15 days before selling it.
Mr. Brady, who spent several hours in jail, had his case dismissed when a judge ruled that the law did not apply because the store never owned the merchandise at any time, as secondhand stores do. Florida lawmakers debated updating the existing law to encompass drop-off stores as well, but did not take action in the legislative session that ended this month. The bill is expected to resurface next year.
Mr. Brady disputed the suggestion that his store was anything like a secondhand store, and definitely not a pawnshop, which typically pays cash for the items it receives. "We don't buy anything," Mr. Brady said. "All we do is facilitate the sale of the goods for the customer."
But Robert Verhoeff, president of the Collateral Loan and Second Hand Dealers Association in California, a supporter of the legislation in California, argues that drop-off centers should have to comply with the rules that govern pawnshops and secondhand dealers.
Mr. Verhoeff said "the benefit to law enforcement is clear" in applying regulations to online auction middlemen. Some states have introduced legislation that would require the drop-off stores to register with the state as licensed auctioneers, which often means completing training courses, paying an annual licensing fee, and even placing payments in escrow accounts. Others, such as Louisiana, have no proposed legislation but are considering such a requirement. Intensive lobbying on the part of eBay recently helped win an exemption for drop-off stores as well as individual eBay sellers from legislation in Ohio on auctioneering. Now the company has focused a team of lobbyists on Sacramento to defeat Assemblyman Yee's bill.
"I feel for the pawnshops," said Jack Reynolds, co-founder of QuikDrop, based in Costa Mesa, Calif. "I realize they're in a highly regulated business with a lot of paperwork, but there's a reason for it." He noted that pawnshops offer cash for items and "we don't do that."
Elise Wetzel, the founder of iSold It, which is based in Pasadena, Calif., agreed. "In an online selling format, you don't give the customer money right away, and the item is posted on the world's largest public marketplace for all to see."
Ms. Wetzel's chain has 80 franchises open, with 200 more planning to open by the end of this year. The chain has held more than 160,000 auctions in just over a year.
All the iSold It stores, she said, get information on every customer and mail checks. "They don't get a check until the item sells," she said, "and it gets mailed to their residence. It's very different from what happens through a pawnshop."
But those safeguards may not be sufficient to prevent thieves from using the drop-off middlemen.
Even the high commission that the stores charge, Chief Macagni said, would hardly be a deterrent for a criminal. "When they drop off a full set of wheels and tires from a dealer's lot that's worth $4,000, they can afford to let 35 percent go."
Mr. Cohen of eBay, however, argued that the sale of stolen goods was a "very small subset" of overall fraud on eBay and imposing a paperwork burden on drop-off centers would do little to reduce crime.
Instead, he said, the push by pawnbrokers and auctioneers to have regulations apply to drop-off stores is mostly a tactic to make life harder for new rivals.
"This is in the fraternity hazing category," Mr. Cohen said. "If I got hazed, you're going to be hazed, too."
From The New York Times (registration required)
The owner of the six-foot-tall resin figure recently took it to the QuikDrop store on Long Island to have it photographed and put up for auction on eBay for 14 days. An online bidder from Utah paid $750 and the store's workers packed it and were preparing to send it last night.
Next in line were 59 videotapes with several years' worth of "I Love Lucy" episodes, a pile of aluminum wheel rims and a Happy Holidays Special Edition 1988 Barbie.
Such troves of junk are innocent enough. But as more eBay drop-off stores spring up around the nation to help redistribute the accumulated cargo of an acquisitive culture, some public officials worry that they could become unwitting fences for stolen goods. As some states push to regulate the industry, eBay and the stores are joining together to oppose oversight.
States like California and Florida are debating whether drop-off stores like QuikDrop International, AuctionDrop and iSold It should be governed by the laws to prevent the sale of stolen items that currently apply to pawnbrokers, secondhand stores and auctioneers.
The focus on drop-off operations is intensifying because they are multiplying rapidly.
According to eBay, there are more than 7,000 locations listed in the company's directory of independent businesses, or trading assistants, that sell on behalf of others and offer drop-off services. Many of these, including about 3,800 AuctionDrop locations in U.P.S. Stores, are retail-style storefronts. And hundreds more of these stores are expected to open in the next year.
The stores and eBay have no corporate connection, but they are closely linked. EBay's revenue growth is based in part on signing up new eBay sellers; the drop-off stores help bring into the eBay fold people who might be reluctant to hold an online auction themselves.
In California, where the number of drop-off centers has grown quickly, secondhand dealers are required to report transactions, fingerprint people selling items like high-priced jewelry and electronic equipment, and hold onto those items for 30 days.
EBay is lobbying against a proposed law that would set up an electronic database to track stolen goods sold at secondhand stores in California. The state attorney general recently released an opinion that the drop-off stores should be classified as secondhand dealers. EBay asked that the bill exempt the centers from regulation, but such an exemption has not yet been written into the bill.
"We simply cannot see the need for any of this legislation," said Tod Cohen, vice president for government relations at eBay, which is based in San Jose, Calif.
Some law enforcement agencies, however, argue that drop-off centers could well become conduits for stolen items as Internet-based crime rises.
So far, there has been little evidence of stolen goods passing through drop-off stores. But law enforcement officials say that is because there is no easy way to track stolen items in and out of the centers.
"People are using pawnshops less and less," said Danny R. Macagni, chief of police in Santa Maria, Calif. "These eBay drop stores don't have to notify us like a pawnshop, so stolen property could be sold and we'll never even know about it."
The drop-off stores typically take in an item, photograph it and put it up for sale on eBay. If a sale goes through, the store sends the seller a check, minus a store commission that is often as high as 35 percent as well as a fee for eBay and other processing charges. If the item does not sell within a certain number of days (at QuikDrop, it is two weeks), the owner is asked to retrieve it.
Chief Macagni said that as more commerce - and crime - move into the online world, increased monitoring of online sales can only help. State and municipal laws regulating pawnbrokers and secondhand dealers vary, but usually require that dealers report transactions to the police, hold items for a certain period before selling them, and even take fingerprints of customers.
California, Florida and Texas have been considering legislation that would impose regulations on drop-off stores. And in New York City, where secondhand stores must obtain a license and maintain transaction records for police inspection on demand, the Department of Consumer Affairs is considering whether the drop-off stores qualify as secondhand stores, said Dina Improta, a department spokeswoman.
EBay officials and store owners, however, say criminals are not likely to walk into a drop-off store, offer personal information, leave a telephone number and wait for a check to arrive in the mail.
Still, lawmakers say legislation is needed as a deterrent.
"These drop-off stores are now sort of the locus of potential stolen property," said Leland Yee, a California state assemblyman who is sponsoring the bill. "You don't necessarily go through a fence, you go through the Internet, and eventually it lands at these drop-off places."
The regulatory ambiguity surrounding drop-off stores became evident this year, when Daniel Brady, the owner of an eBay drop-off store in Tallahassee, Fla., was arrested for violating a state law governing secondhand stores. The law requires those stores to give transaction records to local police within 24 hours and hold each item for 15 days before selling it.
Mr. Brady, who spent several hours in jail, had his case dismissed when a judge ruled that the law did not apply because the store never owned the merchandise at any time, as secondhand stores do. Florida lawmakers debated updating the existing law to encompass drop-off stores as well, but did not take action in the legislative session that ended this month. The bill is expected to resurface next year.
Mr. Brady disputed the suggestion that his store was anything like a secondhand store, and definitely not a pawnshop, which typically pays cash for the items it receives. "We don't buy anything," Mr. Brady said. "All we do is facilitate the sale of the goods for the customer."
But Robert Verhoeff, president of the Collateral Loan and Second Hand Dealers Association in California, a supporter of the legislation in California, argues that drop-off centers should have to comply with the rules that govern pawnshops and secondhand dealers.
Mr. Verhoeff said "the benefit to law enforcement is clear" in applying regulations to online auction middlemen. Some states have introduced legislation that would require the drop-off stores to register with the state as licensed auctioneers, which often means completing training courses, paying an annual licensing fee, and even placing payments in escrow accounts. Others, such as Louisiana, have no proposed legislation but are considering such a requirement. Intensive lobbying on the part of eBay recently helped win an exemption for drop-off stores as well as individual eBay sellers from legislation in Ohio on auctioneering. Now the company has focused a team of lobbyists on Sacramento to defeat Assemblyman Yee's bill.
"I feel for the pawnshops," said Jack Reynolds, co-founder of QuikDrop, based in Costa Mesa, Calif. "I realize they're in a highly regulated business with a lot of paperwork, but there's a reason for it." He noted that pawnshops offer cash for items and "we don't do that."
Elise Wetzel, the founder of iSold It, which is based in Pasadena, Calif., agreed. "In an online selling format, you don't give the customer money right away, and the item is posted on the world's largest public marketplace for all to see."
Ms. Wetzel's chain has 80 franchises open, with 200 more planning to open by the end of this year. The chain has held more than 160,000 auctions in just over a year.
All the iSold It stores, she said, get information on every customer and mail checks. "They don't get a check until the item sells," she said, "and it gets mailed to their residence. It's very different from what happens through a pawnshop."
But those safeguards may not be sufficient to prevent thieves from using the drop-off middlemen.
Even the high commission that the stores charge, Chief Macagni said, would hardly be a deterrent for a criminal. "When they drop off a full set of wheels and tires from a dealer's lot that's worth $4,000, they can afford to let 35 percent go."
Mr. Cohen of eBay, however, argued that the sale of stolen goods was a "very small subset" of overall fraud on eBay and imposing a paperwork burden on drop-off centers would do little to reduce crime.
Instead, he said, the push by pawnbrokers and auctioneers to have regulations apply to drop-off stores is mostly a tactic to make life harder for new rivals.
"This is in the fraternity hazing category," Mr. Cohen said. "If I got hazed, you're going to be hazed, too."
From The New York Times (registration required)