Being the newbie that I am when it comes to online auctioning websites like EBay, yesterday I stumbled into their anime DVD section and thought I'd found a fan boy's paradise. “A Cowboy Bebop (All episodes) Box set for only £20? What a bargain!” I said to myself, grinning at the prospect of such a steal.

Thinking everyone else must be fools for not snapping up this offer, I quickly made sure I won the auction. Unfortunately for me - and only after I'd purchased this box set, did I realize that I had been the fool!

You see, it seems that EBay is bootleggers' heaven when it comes to DVDs - expensive anime DVDs in particular.

And that's exactly the reason for this article, a warning, from one sucker to the next, that a lot of the extremely cheap anime on websites like EBay is in fact not the real thing. Below I'll list the following tell-tale signs you should keep an eye out for when you think you've found an absolute bargain.

• 1. Region Free, Region ALL. Most of these bootlegs do not have specific regional DVD settings and claim to work in every DVD player.
• 2. Subtitles Chinese. A lot of these DVDs originate in China and Hong Kong, which is apparently (and evidently) rife with piracy.
• 3. A strange number of discs for a long series. For example, 3 discs that contain the entire Cowboy Bebop series – which would usually be spread across 6-8 discs.
• 4. Lack of DVD publisher information visible on the DVD case and/or stated by the seller.
• 5. If it's from China, just don't bother.
• 6. Don't be convinced by the professional looking box art, strangely enough, these bootlegs are known to have great box art.
• 7. If a price is too good to be true, it usually is. Make absolutely clear that it is a legit DVD, if just by comparing the DVD covers from here with an official anime store.

But hang on; you may be wondering - what's so bad about bootlegs in the first place? They don't seem too bad?

Well, for a start, the picture quality is poor. These DVDs are often produced by recordings taken from Japanese TV and/or have been compressed massively to squeeze onto a DVD with 8 other episodes. The sound quality is also poor, for the reasons outlined above.

The real kick in the teeth however is often the terrible subtitles, which have been produced on a whim and are full of spelling & grammatical errors. So even if you think you put up with the questionable picture and sound, your next challenge will be to understand what the Herman^TM is going on.

It's strange to think that large global corporations like EBay aren't doing anything to stamp this out. Not only is it hurting us (the viewers) and the official publishers of the bootlegged titles, it's also hurting the reputation of EBay itself. I'm sure it would only take a few well appointed moderators, similar to those on any public internet forum, to delete the majority of these items, but hey, that's for another article and another day.

And with that parting shot, I'll be bringing this info-article to a close. If you're like me and lose your mind when you see something extremely cheap, I'm sure my experiences will have educated you to be more wary about what you decide to go in for in the future. Good luck!