I am a stamp and postal history collector and over the years I have bought items that I would now like to sell duplicates so that I can buy other items I want. As I have been a member of eBay since last century, somewhere in the 1990s, I also sell there, but a year ago, things took a turn for the worse.

Up until then, I was selling on eBay and getting paid in PayPal, in dollars, and that money was used to buy other stamps or to pay for exhibition fees. Now listen to my anti-eBay diatribe:

I charge $4 for postage anywhere with postal relations with Israel. The letter is sent registered mail. Why registered? Because if you do not and the other side complains that it hasn't arrived, eBay immediately refunds the buyer. Fair practice, right! If it is registered, then it has been signed for. If it is lost, you can ask the post office to reimburse, but that has limits as well. They refund up to $50.

So I put an item on eBay for $5, knowing that it is worth $20 (I paid much more) and it gets sold for $5 (that is the name of the game) and then I add the $4 and the buyer pays $9. NOT TO ME, but to eBay. I now have to send this within 4 working days or eBay starts sending me mails and notices whatever.

I then go to the post office to send the item registered, the actual cost is $4.70 but no worries. I pay for this out of my own pocket because eBay has not transferred the money to me. However am I getting the $9, nope, look at this image:



So eBay will only pay me $7.42 of which $4.70 I had already paid to the post office, so for the item I sold, I am only getting $3 for! Is that fair practice? Of course not, but that is eBay.

Does eBay pay me immediately? Oh no. About a year ago they signed a monopoly deal with a company called Payoneer and you can no longer be paid in PayPal. You have to setup and account in Payoneer and eBay will transfer the money there. When do they transfer? They have two days in a month when they transfer, 1st or the 15th. Sold an item on the 1st, next payout day is 15th, so you have to wait.

End of story, no. eBay wants to make sure that the recipient receives the item. They will not release funds until the recipient has the money. I already paid $4.70 out of my own pocket and I don't have the item or the funds. How does eBay know when the recipient has received it? Either by feedback, or if you show them a mail that he says he received it or the registration number has shown to be delivered. Many countries do not share this information, England, Germany and America are some of those.

If 6 weeks has passed, they transfer the $7.42 to Payoneer, on the payout day.

Yippee, now I can use the money to buy items. Oh no! Payoneer doesn't allow that. I can only withdraw the money to my bank account and they charge $10 for that and only if you have at least $50 in the account and only to that limit. But, if you withdraw then the bank charges you a conversion rate, so more loss. Edited: So I decided that I needed $100 and decided to withdraw it to my bank account. So to get $100, I have to have $110 as that is the Payoneer charge. They used IBAN to transfer to my account and they made me pay the charges of $3. So that is $13 taken off in commission.

What about if you want to buy something on eBay? PayPal or your own credit card! Another foreign currency conversion.

Basically what both of these companies are doing is to make a profit on the money that they are holding, which is rightfully yours.

Edited: Now eBay is taking seller fees, for items that I received cash from, from my credit card and not from Payoneer. I can't even pay for items using Payoneer.

Lately I've been trying to build a display page about the national awakening in Europe in the 19th century because this had an impact on the fathers of Zionism. One example of the events taking place in Europe was the unification of Italy and the delayed addition of the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venice.

In 1815, the Congress of Vienna convened, which was intended to shape the map of Europe after the upheavals caused since the French Revolution and during the Napoleonic era. Strangley the Congress determined that the kingdom would be included in the territory of the Austrian Empire. The Kingdom of Lombardy-Venice was Italian speaking and Austria was German speaking, very different cultures, history and languages.

In 1859, Austria was defeated by the Kingdom of Sardinia and France in the Second Italian War of Independence, and was forced to surrender Lombardy to the French Emperor Napoleon III. France, for its part, transferred the territory it had just won to the Kingdom of Sardinia, and thus the end of the unification of Italy was in sight. For the sake of completeness of the historical picture, I will mention that the area of Venice was handed over to Italy only a few years later, in exchange for its participation on the side of Prussia in its war with Austria.

The thematic point that interests me is the handover of Lombardy to Italy in 1859. One day an item caught my eye at a well-known European auction. The title in the auction catalog was:

Sardinian War, 1859: Austria against the Kingdom of Italy - loss of the Kingdom of Lombardy.

Interesting, I said to myself. The Sardinian War is another name for the Second Italian War of Independence, so I should definitely read the auctioneer's description of the item:

23.12.1856, Augsburg- Milan, 2 double 6 red-brown Kreuzer, on a letter weighing up to 1 luth. At that time Lombardy was still part of Austria, and the letter was sent within the Austro-German postal union. The letter passed through Switzerland, and the Swiss Post received 3 kreutzers in return. Arrival stamp of Milan from December 27, 1856.

Nice, I thought to myself. Augsburg is a city in Bavaria. A luth is a unit of weight that was used at that time in Austria, and is equal to 17 and a half grams. The fact that Lombardy was still part of Austria is exactly the heart of the matter for me. I paid 130 euros for the item, to which were added 65 euros in additional expenses (commission, handling and shipping fees), as well as 110 NIS that I paid to customs in Israel.

The item arrived and I excitedly opened it and then I sat down to examine it more carefully. I immediately had questions. The Bavarian stamps are indeed from the 1850s, but I found no sign of the letter passing through Switzerland or of a payment to the Swiss post office in return. Then I noticed that the year on the stamp is 1866 and not 1856 as written in the sale catalog! In 1866 Lombardy was already part of Italy, and the letter had nothing to do with the Sardinian War that ended seven years earlier.