I have both bought and sold antique American watches and used, high end Swiss mechanical wrist watches on Ebay. I would not buy anything on Ebay from a seller whom I didn't know, unless I knew at least as much about the kind of item he was selling as he likely did. That is still no guarantee you won't get burned, of course, but it improves your odds considerably. In the extreme cases, I have been offered watches that sellers didn't actually own, based on pirated images, in which the seller invited me to conclude the transaction off-line. I have also had back bidders on my own auctions receive phony second chance offers made to look like they came through Ebay from me. (The scammer got their Ebay IDs, though they were supposedly protected, and knew exactly how much the bidders had bid on my lots, but the Ebay rep I spoke with denied even the possibility that their site could have been hacked.) More typically, though, one finds sellers who ascribe all kinds of attributes to a watch that it doesn't actually have (either because they don't know the difference, or they're hoping they'll find a buyer who doesn't), and then plead ignorance when you challenge them. If they respond at all, they will most often attribute the inaccuracies in their listing to an unnamed "expert" third party - usually a "watchmaker." But in very few cases do they ever actually correct or amend their listings. I also get plenty of "mind your own business responses," meaning essentially, "since we're not defrauding you, its none of your business." In my experience Ebay will never get involved even in an obvious case of fraud. They simply don't care, as long as the buyer gets a refund.
As far as Civil War artifacts are concerned, I am convinced that a lot of Ebay sellers would call a Tibetan prayer wheel made any time before 1880 a "Civil War prayer wheel," if they thought it would fetch them a higher price.
Bringing the