posted on May 7, 2001 08:35:13 PM newMEASURE THE MEASURING TAPE!
I ran into the wildest (at least to me) trick knife sellers are using on eBay to comply with eBay blade length rules.
I was looking through the Butterfly knife listings, when I saw certain styles, that I KNOW for a fact are not within the eBay blade length, although in the pictures, they are photographed beside a measuring tape or in some instances a ruler which shows them being of legal length.
Having been in the cutlery business for years, I knew the measurement couldn't be right, but was puzzled for a while, TILL I measured the tape laying beside a couple of the knives, and found the rulers were wrong.
Then it dawned on me, what some sellers are doing is photographing a measuring tape or ruler, elongating the picture of it, doing an overlay of the ruler on the picture of the knife, and it clearly appears that the blades are the legal length, ONLY when you put your own ruler/tape up against your monitor and measure the picture of the tape do you discover the tape is actually considerably longer than what it reads. An easy trick to do. Wonder how long it will take eBay to catch on to this??
Of Course Beware, the trick can be reversed, That is, an item placed beside a ruler can be made to measure larger than it is, by reducing the ruler and then over laying it on to the pictured object.
If a seller is using a decent photography program like PaintShop Pro7 - it can easily be done and totally undetectable, photographically, that is.
