That and I would never buy anything that was shrink wrapped on eBay. A couple hundred bucks gets you a shrink wrap machine and you get that investment back with two or three "MIB" (Mint In Box) sales. For example, I can take my purple SF box and drop a packaged loose leaf paper pack into it along with a few plastic electrical connectors, shrink wrap it, and sell it for the amazing low near mint price of $89. It feels and sounds just like the original contents when you shake it, and the collector willing to pay that for a sealed boxed set will never open it knowing that it will immediately devalue the purchase (which, unbeknownst to the collector, was already devalued before he/she bought it).

That is not just eBay. Fakes and frauds are common in any and all collector markets. eBay has the additional problem of not being able to actually handle the items.

Best bet is to check the seller's rating. Not just the number but the actual reviews since eBay combines buyer and seller ratings. Generally anyone with a 10 or less you should be extremely careful. Also anyone with less than 95% is not doing enough right.

Also with certain items if it is coming from China, it is probably a knock off and you should be wary that it will not be the same quality.

Yep. The big scam in comic books is the CGC rating. For a hundred bucks you send this company your book and they "appraise" it...you can send them the worst copy you own with rips, tears, missing staples, i.e. falling apart and they'll rate it for at least several hundred in value with their system (or several thousand if it's actually in decent shape). The catch is it gets "appraised" for the person who sent it in, they do not guarantee the value once that person offloads it. They enclose it in a heavy duty plastic case which, apparently, is easy enough to open and reseal...you can see where I'm going with this.

I was at a comic shop once where someone brought a CGC copy in with the corresponding certificate (in someone else's name of course) and was asking a crazy price for it. The shop owner made a counter offer but insisted that he be able to open the case and actually inspect the book first. The customer finally agreed, and when the case was opened it turned out to be a color copy of the comic book cover with no staples slipped over a Go-Bots comic. In other words, the guy paid an insane amount of money for something that was the furthest from being legitimate because he himself never bothered to inspect it...and he got it from a reputable eBay seller (who also was not the name listed on the certificate and coincidentally also probably never inspected it).

But hey, at least it had the hype of a CGC rating to help the sale...and that's more than enough for a lot of collectors. ;)

The other ongoing "scam" with comic books is the most reputable price guide (Overstreet) was purchased by one of the big comic book shops over a decade ago. Interestingly enough, the annual guide following the acquisition seriously devalued anything less than near mint...in other words a "very fine" or "fine" copy (which is one and two grades below NM respectively) were once 70-80% of NM and 60-70% of NM prices, now VF is 35% and F is 30%.

Which naturally helps the shop owner acquire valuable books at 10-25% of guide prices on the uber-cheap (i.e. what was once 10-25% of 60-80% of NM is now 10-25% of 30-35% of NM value), and turn them around for well above his "guide values" due to the fact that most collectors accept that silver age books are getting tough to find in any condition. While the retail values are still high, it's the shop owners that make out like bandits now when folks sell in desperation.

Quality is superb, well bound, great covers (which could provide hard cover if you stacked enough of them up), the scans are crisp and clear and the colours on the maps wonderfully vibrant. You get everything, even a page of the counters, the only things missing are the dice and pencil. The pdfs are all indexed as well. This is a top end product.

Not got the modules yet, I'm hoping that when enough of them are republished WoC will do a print-on-demand bound set.

Looks like WoC has taken back their intellectual property with a vengance, with luck it'll spark a big revival of interest in Star Frontiers. Showed the books to my friendly local games shop (Orc's Nest in London), when they started going they were selling the originals. If they could get a good trade deal they might consider selling them there, but not sure if that's an option (or really necessary given how easy you can get them from DrivethruRPG/RPGNow).

Would be nice to see SF back on the shelves though...

Here is a link that shows some of what is going on

http://www.tenkarstavern.com/2017/09/evil-hat-has-applied-for-star-frontiers.html

WotC are definitely serious about it all.