The beginning

It was by chance that, right around the turn of the year, December 2025–January 2026, I found myself in my very first eBay Live auction. Products are offered live there, and viewers can bid directly against one another. Or perhaps it was not entirely by chance after all, because eBay had suddenly started advertising it quite conspicuously, and I clicked on an announcement. eBay Live has been around since mid-2022 and initially existed mainly as a niche within eBay for collectibles such as trading cards. It was not until 2026 that the platform really seemed to develop into a major player of its own within eBay. By now, eBay Live is active in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, France, Italy, and Canada.

While eBay Live is currently growing explosively, I have now spent more than eight months watching what actually goes on inside such a successful American Live community. In late December 2025, I clicked on a show announcement by a certain OG Jewelers in Miami, Florida. OG Jewelers is represented in the Live shows by auctioneer Diego. OG Jewelers has been registered on eBay since December 2021. Since then, up to the publication of this blog, I estimate that I have watched at least 700 hours of Diego’s eBay Live broadcasts, possibly considerably more. I was an extremely faithful attendee, and his Lives would continue deep into the night.

Diego seems tireless, a barrel full of sparkling explosives. My impression is that OG Jewelers, in the person of Diego (with assistants), started doing eBay Live sometime in 2025. When I first looked at OG Jewelers’ eBay Live page, it appeared that all the previous shows were still listed there as well; back then, you could simply watch them again. As I remember it, there were already dozens of them. I clicked on several and was struck each time by Diego’s enormous amount of routine and experience. For the past few months, those playbacks have no longer been available. Buyers now only receive a video receipt covering the minutes surrounding their own purchase; I received those myself when I bought a few things. But months later, even those video receipts appear to have stopped working. What began, however, as curiosity about an extraordinarily charismatic seller grew into a months-long look at a world in which entertainment, personal involvement, and hard-nosed commerce constantly turn out to be intertwined. A human soap opera within the eBay Live environment, in which the question gradually began to arise whether anyone is actually to blame — and if so, who.

In terms of Live participants, OG/Diego is not one of the biggest players: usually around 20 to 200+ people are watching. His colleague Mr Wikd, a watch auctioneer, for example, draws much larger crowds of roughly 250 to 1,000+ participants, but auctions only once a week, on Mondays, in shows lasting five to six hours. OG/Diego initially auctioned as many as six days a week; nowadays it is two to three times a week. His Live shows often last around five hours, and sometimes even longer. Large sums of money change hands with both eBay Live sellers, with sale prices ranging from under $100 to peaks of as much as $50K for rare watches.

The first time, I dropped into one of Diego’s shows right in the middle of it, and he was selling silver chains at the time. Briefly forgetting that such a thing as etiquette exists (a typical Sagittarius trait, for the non-skeptics among us), I soon voiced criticism in the chat about the extremely high prices — for example, around $200 for what I considered an ordinary silver chain. To my surprise, at the next show I attended I noticed that I had apparently been put on mute in the chat, because nobody responded to me anymore and nobody seemed to be reading my messages. But if I wanted to bid, I still could: my name simply appeared among the bidders.

eBay Live explained by eBay
eBay Live explained for sellers
eBay Live Policy by eBay

Showmaster Diego

Before continuing the story, I want to explain why, in the months that followed, I was practically glued to my iPad and literally spent hundreds of hours watching Diego’s eBay Live shows. Diego keeps going incredibly hard: he is hustling hard. During his first months on eBay Live, he still did everything by himself and would keep going until the early morning hours in Florida (California is three hours behind Florida, so it is three hours later there). His shows often lasted around five hours, and I regularly watched virtually the entire show. Back then, most of his eBay Live shows ended for me at around 12:30 a.m. or even later, which meant around 3:30 a.m. for him (or later). Diego certainly keeps you occupied, that much has to be said, and I am far from the only one who feels that way. It is downright addictive, a kind of virtual cross between a fairground and a living room: something is constantly happening, after a while you know all the regulars, and before you know it, another few hours have gone by.

As it turns out, Diego was anything but a novice when he arrived on eBay Live. OG Jewelers had already been active on Whatnot since at least 2023, a platform built largely around live selling. There, Diego had already spent years developing virtually the same lightning-fast and remarkably seasoned presentation style that he later brought to eBay Live. Elements that I initially thought were typical of his eBay shows — La Familia, mystery boxes, giveaways, and so-called breaks — already existed there as well. More about that later in this blog. By now, OG Jewelers has sold around 117,000 items on Whatnot, accumulated more than 25,000 reviews, and gained over 130,000 followers. Anyone who watches the old clips can immediately see where Diego’s enormous level of experience comes from: eBay Live was not the beginning of his live-selling career, but rather its next stage. OG Jewelers also does well on eBay. The account has existed since December 2021, has sold around 15,000 items, and has accumulated more than 13,100 feedback ratings. At the time of publication of this blog, its positive feedback stands at 99.3%.

In my eyes, this makes Diego almost a human sales machine.

Diego. Still from a Whatnot-clip pubished by OG Jewelers themselves

At the time of writing this blog, Diego’s shows have scaled back to just a few times a week. This blog describes a history that was constantly evolving. My story begins roughly at the peak of ‘Diego’s eBay Live curve.’

Diego of OG Jewelers turned out to be — and still is — the absolute showmaster, with a powerhouse voice that gives Elvis himself a run for his money, and no, I am not even exaggerating. Diego also sings regularly, laughs, makes genuinely funny and witty jokes, and has everyone wrapped around his little finger, whether man, woman, or gender-neutral person.

Out of professional deformation, I immediately started looking into who I was dealing with, and I found The Man on OG Jewelers’ Instagram account, where I managed to identify him by the appearance of his hand and the jewelry he wears on and around it. Diego now had a face for me, although for many months afterward he carefully avoided showing himself on eBay Live, despite people occasionally asking him to. It was not until August 2026 that he sometimes deliberately appeared on camera himself. I also once called him by his first name in the chat, but received a mild reprimand that I should not share personal details (I was off mute again by then; more on that shortly). But I was not the only one who used his first name. Some people mention him by first name in the eBay reviews as well. In the first show I ever saw him do, he joked that he was 82 years old, and I, still completely blank as to who was speaking here (and also somewhat autistic in the sense of taking everything literally), thought that perhaps this was actually true — except that he seemed to have remarkably young hands. But given his showmanship, I would happily credit him with 82 years of experience. I occasionally asked him something in the chat, but he dodged all personal questions, and I would estimate him to be around 32–35 years old.

For the time being, Diego presented himself facelessly as a man with a booming, full-male voice that commands attention, and immaculate hands adorned with expensive jewelry. I have never seen even the tiniest speck of dirt on his pink nails and fingers, and those hands are therefore constantly on screen while he displays his gold, silver, diamonds, and more for eBay Live.

The first purchase — and then two more

So I was on mute, which annoyed me quite a bit. Then Diego suddenly decided to put his silver enamel Stitch up for auction as well, and on impulse I bid on it. Although the pendant sold to me for $89, I ended up paying just over $107, including shipping and tax. After that I would buy one more silver chain, which cost me a little over $60, and $7.56 worth of candy, complete with ‘OG’s’: Diego’s initials handwritten in Sharpie, along with “OG♡U.” Because yes: there were plenty of things that made it clear Diego was quite a character. He would occasionally sell candy, for instance, when he felt that a particular item had sold for too little. Since I had already bought a chain during the same session and shipping for each additional item would cost only $1, I bid on the candy. After those three purchases, I never bought anything again. But with my very first purchase, the Stitch, Diego had noticed that there was something unusual about me as a buyer: I was on mute!

By then I had started following OG — or rather Diego; he also uses the name OG for himself, even though it is actually the name of the jewelry business — on Instagram and had gone into his DMs. There I told him that I could not say anything in the eBay Live chat because he had muted me, and that I thought I knew why: the very first time I attended one of his shows, I had been critical of the prices. I apologized for that. Diego was like an angel swooping in who somehow knew telepathically that I was sitting there in the Instagram DM chat. Even in the middle of his show, he immediately responded to me there. I was taken off mute, and everything was — or seemed to be — fine again. I instantly felt a strange sense of familiarity, as if I had known him for years (who knows, if past lives exist). I was visible in the Live chat again!

Diego’s eBay Live regulars could recite these lines in their sleep, because they have literally been repeated thousands — tens of thousands — of times. A Diego anthology.

A ‘victim’ of his own success: ‘La Familia’

Diego affectionately calls his eBay Live community “La Familia” and emphasizes that everyone in his OG Jewelers chat belongs to the “OG Familia.” This does not, however, stop him from charging his familia top dollar without batting an eye. My further research regularly shows that items he presents as particularly valuable can be found on eBay itself or elsewhere online — sometimes the exact same products — for a fraction of his price, for example half as much or even just one-fifth. This applies, for instance, to silver Disney pendants that I also found elsewhere and to Invicta watches, just two examples from a much larger assortment. It soon became clear to me that I seem to be one of the few people who consistently does research before buying anything. Many of his buyers — especially, it seems to me, admiring male customers of the macho “has plenty of money and wants everyone to know it” type — readily pay a hundred dollars or even thousands of dollars more in his Live show for the exact same silver pendant or the exact same watch than is being asked elsewhere on eBay or online.

So this blog is emphatically not about some small seller doing $1,000 a year in sales on eBay, but about a business whose annual revenue, by my estimate, runs into the millions, with eBay alone presumably bringing in many hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. That is hardly surprising, given that OG deals in gold, silver, natural and lab-grown diamonds, so-called moissanite ‘diamonds,’ AP, Rolex, and Breitling watches, and much more besides, all of it at the higher end of the market. For those who would like to know more about moissanite: strictly speaking, moissanite itself is not a diamond but silicon carbide, a different mineral that can look very much like a diamond. Moissanite can indeed register as diamond on a simple thermal diamond tester, whereas equipment that measures multiple properties is better able to tell the difference.

One mitigating circumstance should immediately be noted here, because in my opinion eBay itself does outrageously good business from an eBay Live seller such as OG Jewelers, simply for the use of its platform. The seller has to hand over a substantial share of his revenue to eBay. ChatGPT summarizes it for us as follows:

In a U.S. eBay Live sale, a seller such as OG Jewelers pays various fees to eBay. For most categories, eBay charges a 6% selling commission on the total sale amount, plus 2.9% for payment processing and a fixed transaction fee of $0.30 per order. Together, those two percentages mean that normally 8.9% of the total sale amount goes to eBay, plus 30 cents per order. The 6% selling commission is also capped at $100 per item sold. So with an OG eBay Live show lasting more than five hours, during which many products are sold — most of them for more than a hundred dollars and regularly for more than a thousand — substantial sums of money are involved no matter what, both for OG itself and for eBay.

And yet I regularly find myself scratching my head. For example, he sells tiny silver earrings with a single stone, available in various colors. In terms of the sheer amount of raw material involved, their value cannot be particularly high. I do not pretend to know, incidentally, what proportion OG Jewelers actually makes itself and what proportion may come from elsewhere, for example from mass production. But these earrings appear so frequently that I suspect they are either purchased or produced in larger quantities.

Iced-out is by far their biggest specialty: it means setting large numbers of stones into earrings, bracelets, chains, watches, pendants, and so on, with the most expensive versions containing genuine diamonds, either very small or larger ones, while cheaper versions use other stones. They do this to virtually all of their chains, pendants, bracelets, and rings, and also quite often to vintage Rolex watches, adding diamonds to the bezel, among other things. As a result, these custom-modified vintage Rolex watches no longer qualify for eBay’s Authenticity Guarantee. With such an iced-out aftermarket modification, the customer therefore does not receive the authenticity check through that program that would otherwise be available for an eligible, non-customized watch.

In today’s diamond market, where lab-grown diamonds have put considerable pressure on both the prices and perceived value of natural diamonds, natural diamonds (“natural, earth-mined diamonds,” in Diego’s words), lab-grown diamonds, moissanite, simulated diamonds, and other stones can also be difficult for the average customer to distinguish from one another. That is precisely why it is important to be absolutely clear about which stones have been used in a piece of jewelry. Diego is generally quite conscientious about stating this: “This goes through the diamond tester and goes beep, beep, beep!” when, for example, he is talking about moissanite. But during a Live show, the average buyer has no direct way of independently checking whether a stone really is what it is said to be, and therefore has to rely to a considerable extent on the information provided by the seller. A simulated diamond, incidentally, is not a specific type of stone but an umbrella term for materials that imitate the appearance of diamond, such as cubic zirconia, glass, or other colorless stones. The buyer is thus confronted with a dizzying variation on the theme of ‘diamond’ — from ‘natural diamonds’ and ‘lab-grown diamonds’ to ‘moissanite’ and ‘simulated diamonds.’ Only a fraction of buyers will take their jewelry or watches containing whatever kind of ‘diamonds’ to a local jeweler after receiving them to have the stones independently tested.

Diego once joked during his eBay Live show, when a massive cold wave hit the eastern United States in the winter of early 2026, that it was caused by OG Jewelers shipping out so much iced-out jewelry. Once again, he had everyone laughing. Most of their jewelry therefore contains some form of ice-out; even the Stitch I bought has an ‘iced-out’ little belly.

Back to those earrings. Diego sold — and still sells — them both individually and, especially toward the end of his shows as a ‘reward,’ by the full box of twelve pairs. I was therefore quite astonished when, on several occasions, an entire box containing twelve pairs in all the different colors sold for around $78, while in a subsequent show literally a single pair from that same box sold for more than $80. In a recent show in September 2026, things became even more extreme when OG/Diego sold the entire box for $48.

Diego knows how to get his customers so carried away with his charm, charisma, and praise that people, with dollar signs, hearts, or both in their eyes, blindly pay absolute top dollar for a pair of little earrings that might have a realistic retail value of no more than $15 in an ordinary brick-and-mortar store. The customer mentioned above, who bought just one pair, ultimately paid a total of about $102 — shipping and tax were added, after all — for a single pair with an estimated retail value of $15.

But it goes further than that. During those hundreds of hours of showtime, I have seen so many sales to the very same customers that it started to make my head spin. Such is Diego’s charm that he would quite casually sell the exact same earrings, watches, and what have you to the same person all over again. In other words, people became so worked up that they simply kept buying things they already had at home — often already bought from him, sometimes even in multiples — over and over again. Take, for example, the notorious mass-market Invicta watches: they kept buying those again too. While the exact same Invicta watches might be sold brand-new online by Invicta (!) itself for $25 or at most $50, they would readily pay Diego/OG close to $200.

Some people in the chat who were more ‘awake’ would make rather cutting jokes about this, and some of them were banned. I stopped voicing criticism myself because I did not want to be muted or banned again (although I kept getting muted anyway — never banned; more about that later). But Diego never flinched. Meanwhile, a customer might be paying as much as $150 more for one of those mass-produced Invicta watches than it cost elsewhere.

And why did — and do — these customers behave like that during the auctions? There is something in the brain that says: I want that, and you’re not getting it. But there is also the excitement whipped up by the legendarily good salesman Diego, and even… falling in love with the seller. Yes indeed. Plenty of grown, wealthy men — or at least men rich in credit cards — regularly shouted, and still shout, “I love you” at Diego in his chat. It is all affectionate “Bro” and “Buoy” (with that cool uo pronunciation), and they mean it. Diego is always very alert and calls back: “WE love you too.” Rarely is it: “I love you too.” Diego keeps his head, at least.

But things began to get out of hand. Diego started becoming a ‘victim’ of his own success. “Mysterious Lady” was one example. I have slightly altered all the real eBay names to protect people’s privacy, although the regulars in Diego’s chat will know who I mean. I will give only a few examples of customers who became in over their heads in their involvement with Diego. They included both men and women.

For the section on “Mysterious Lady,” I chose to use the full screenshots so that the dates and chronology remain visible as well:

Mysterious Lady

One of the people who just kept buying, even when she already had everything ten times over, was Mysterious Lady [name slightly altered]. By then I was attending virtually the entire show almost every evening, and I watched the whole thing unfold like a dramatic stage play. By her own account, she was a nurse and worked very long (night) shifts. She was thick as thieves with someone I will call Snowgal here [name also slightly altered].

Mysterious Lady seemed to have developed a definite crush on Diego, and in order to keep hearing him call out and boom her name all the time, she just kept buying. The two of them even spoke on the phone live in the middle of one broadcast, after which he let out a primal roar as if he were the happiest man in the world. But things started getting out of hand. She began demanding more and more attention and even insisted that he text and call her outside the show. He would keep trying to talk his way around that, or say that he had indeed sent her a message, but then it had been ‘just’ through eBay, not to her private number. The regulars knew that he was married and had children — one of the few personal details he occasionally shared — and there were frequent exchanges between Diego and people in the chat, but none of that seemed to dampen the fun.

To my surprise, Diego himself began going along with it more and more once it became clear that she really did keep spending many hundreds of dollars almost every evening — in my view on all kinds of nonsense, such as endless quantities of the same earrings in different colors, silver chains in duplicate sizes, and even duplicate Invicta watches. Naturally, he did not want to lose such a good customer, but by then he was clearly paying a very different kind of price himself. He even started calling her his “Internetwifie” during the show, and for me that was the moment when this could no longer be just a bit of harmless fun. Diego also began to seem noticeably more nervous about her, at least that was my observation. And at some point it really was over. One day she came back into the show and Diego said, “You’re not welcome here anymore,” and threw her out of the chat. She just managed to fire off something along the lines of, “WTF, you can’t do that to me,” in the chat — as if, as a very premium customer, that indeed could not possibly happen to her. A few shows later, he also confirmed that he had banned her.

From that point on, or shortly afterward, there was a change of course. The show was no longer on virtually every day, and suddenly he brought in two new sellers: Lino (a woman) and Logan (a man). At first, however, they met with outright resistance from the people who were, after all, so crazy about Diego, and in terms of sales performance — simply how many dollars they managed to rake in — they did not even come close to his shadow. The first major crack in the magic had appeared.

Snowgal

Snowgal was, as I said, close with Mysterious Lady, and at one point she even mentioned her own full name in the chat and said that she was on Facebook. She was not saying this to me, but once again out of professional deformation, I immediately went looking. And sure enough: found her right away. Snowgal turned out to live in California, just like me, and seemed to be the same kind of ‘in between jobs, vaguely employed’ person that I am. Apart from me, she is just about the only one who was there from the beginning and stayed. Like me, she seemed to watch mostly as a pastime, and like me, she had only bought a few things during the first month or months.

She and Diego constantly seemed to run into a peculiar communication hurdle. She was very present — unlike me; by then I hardly ever said anything anymore, I was simply there — and acted almost as though she worked for OG Jewelers by trying to ‘keep the chat on track.’ Although Diego did sometimes seem to appreciate that, she also apparently started getting seriously on his nerves, because she was being muted all the time. Unlike me, she simply did not seem — and still does not seem — to understand that Diego the human being has his nerves and his limits too, and she kept asking why she had been put on mute again.

By then Diego had also started a “VIP WhatsApp” group, and she would go there to ask why she was not being heard or seen in the show. And sometimes she would suddenly be back in the chat again, talking about the period before that when she had apparently been on mute. I then sent her a DM on WhatsApp saying that Diego kept muting me too, and what I thought the reason for that was. Because I also noticed that the few things I still said only got through every now and then. With his stand-ins Lino & Logan — because that is what they were and still are; they simply never became full-fledged sales stars like Diego — I could still get through in the chat for a while, but after that things went downhill again as far as the muting was concerned. And I truly said nothing remarkable and hardly ever said anything at all anymore.

But apparently I had struck a nerve with Diego, and Diego muted, like a truly capricious king on his throne, left, right, and center — he was always there, even when Lino & Logan were running the show — Snowgal, me, and other people too. The VIP group on WhatsApp turned out not to be a success and stalled at 80+ members. When it became clear that dissatisfied customers, besides occasionally speaking up in the chat during the Live shows, were also coming into the VIP chat to air their grievances, the rules there were tightened considerably and only admins were allowed to post messages anymore. So mute became a tool there as well.

At the time of writing this blog, I still have not been thrown out: not from the OG Jewelers Live and not from the “VIP” group. Nor had Diego ever banned me from the show, and he most certainly knew I was there, because both he himself and information from eBay showed that sellers can see which names are present in the chat. But in front of others he never again gave any indication that he saw me; I was ‘merely’ tolerated.

Snowgal never responded to my WhatsApp message and later left the group again — she came back several times and then left again. She apparently continued to believe that there was no personal irritation toward her behind Diego’s behavior, whereas it seemed perfectly obvious to me that he often regarded her as a nuisance, at the very least. Like me, she was only a peanut to Diego in financial terms, but she did not seem to realize that either, because she referred to herself, with what I considered a misplaced sense of authority, as a ‘repeat customer.’ But like me, she had perhaps spent just under $200 in total; to Diego, that was more of an afterthought.

As far as could be seen and demonstrated in the shows and in the WhatsApp group, Diego never told her outright that she should stop acting like such a busybody in the chat, or anything along those lines. What else may have been said between them out of sight or behind the scenes, I obviously do not know. She could also lash out quite sharply at men in the chat and seemed not to realize that Diego wanted to keep his genuinely important customers on his side.

One of the men she clashed with in Diego’s chat did, however, after they reconciled, buy her a Hamsa Hand Pendant 925 Fine Silver as a gift through eBay Live— and thus during Diego’s show — which is currently listed on OG’s website for $300. The price mentioned for it in the chat at the time was, from memory, somewhere around $175 to $200, and she accepted the gift.

So La Familia too turns out to have its limits, but Diego himself is the first to create uncertainty about where those limits actually lie. He actively seeks closeness, encourages involvement, and gives people a great deal of public appreciation — for example by repeatedly calling out their names and acknowledging them as regulars — while at the same time sometimes muting those very same people or reining them in in other ways without openly making clear why. That gives his role something of a Janus face: on the one hand he invites and rewards involvement, while on the other he does not always make it clear when that same involvement starts to irritate him or becomes too much. That means the responsibility for whatever goes off the rails within his familia certainly does not rest solely with the ‘family member’ in question.

Jiu-Jiu

After a few months, it had become quite clear to me that many people, especially men, would call out to Diego that they loved him — and probably genuinely meant it too, not just as a jeweler — while Diego himself was, above all, playing a role. I do not rule out that some of his customers were or are genuinely dear to him, but what they did not seem to realize was that he always kept a certain distance. He also told the chat several times that some people had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars with OG, but that “if they started threatening him,” it was over. He once had a very wealthy repeat customer who suddenly demanded that what he had bought be shipped that same day, accompanied by a statement about what would happen if it was not, which could be interpreted as a threat. Diego then banned this customer, who had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars with him, and barred him as a customer.

Jiu-Jiu [name changed, but still recognizable to people from the chat] was one such very wealthy customer. He was active at NASA and spoke, at any rate, about a group of around twenty people who had completed some kind of training program or course and whom he wanted to give a silver astronaut pendant as a farewell gift: an “Iced Out Astronaut Pendant 925 Silver,” with a regular OG retail price of $480 each. By then he had already spent heavily with Diego here and there, so this was only one of the side gigs.

Jiu-Jiu appeared to have Asian roots and became very close with Diego once it emerged that he wanted to buy no fewer than twenty of those expensive silver astronaut pendants. Later, Diego also wanted to hook him up with matching silver chains (“I’ll hook you up” is a phrase Diego uses frequently in this context). They were the best of friends, but when Diego jokingly imitated one of those Asian Hollywood martial-arts cries — “Hiii-yah!” — in response to Jiu-Jiu, Jiu-Jiu said, with dignity, that he did prefer to be treated with cultural respect.

This ‘love affair’ went on for weeks, until suddenly things began to sour here as well, and Jiu-Jiu’s final comment in the chat was this: [see screenshot]. And so this was yet another loyal La Familia customer who would never return:

Dayati

I also slightly altered the name “Dayati,” so that some people from the chat may still recognize who I mean, while the man himself otherwise remains anonymous. This was yet another strange side story in the whole soap opera surrounding Diego. This man too was ‘filthy rich’ and bought a great deal. Then suddenly he set his sights on Valentina. At the time, she was known only as one of Diego’s assistants, alongside the Live hosts Lino & Logan. A long-haired blonde woman with dark eyes and highlighted, but naturally dark, hair. Like Diego, she had until then been nothing more than a voice, and she was also a staff member in the WhatsApp VIP group. But Dayati had apparently decided that he might be able to win Valentina over, and that money and gifts would be the successful way to do it.

He had Diego bring out expensive, heavy silver chains, while insisting that Valentina appear on camera to model them around her neck. For several weeks, the atmosphere in and around the chat began to feel downright questionable to me. It almost seemed as though ‘women were being traded.’ Fortunately, it never went that far, but Valentina did what was asked of her and appeared on camera several times, wearing low-cut tops and tight shirts, blowing flirtatious kisses toward the camera and apparently giving Dayati an inch — but not a mile — much as Diego had done in his own way before. She let her hair fall elegantly around her and posed in various ways for the insistent Dayati. It went so far that, for a brief moment, it actually seemed as though she was already his girlfriend and he had therefore ‘succeeded.’ On Sunday, June 28, 2026, he even said rather possessively to another man in the chat: “No I already got her… She mine chat.”

And all of this while money was literally being sold for money — see the next subheading, because yes, that happens in this show too — he said that Diego should simply pull a stack out and give it to Valentina as a tip. As far as he was concerned, Lino, the female co-host alongside Diego, could also take a grab from the stack of dollars. Lino, incidentally, always deliberately stayed out of view. Diego once panned the camera around, but when it landed on her, she quickly covered her face. I still managed to take a screenshot (professional deformation again, as I mentioned earlier).

I was very, very surprised when, only months later, it became clear what was really going on — or, to stay on the safe side, let us say: that things were very different from what they had seemed. Valentina was not ‘fair game’ after all, but turned out to be… according to Diego, his wife. At least! Suddenly Diego was talking about his wife on eBay Live and even showed some photos of himself and Valentina on his phone, striking poses that I would readily classify as ‘sexy.’ I took screenshots of those as well; this was on August 2, 2026. So all that time, at least as far as anything visible in the chat and the WhatsApp VIP group was concerned, Diego had in no way made it clear to Dayati that Valentina was not single. To me, the obvious conclusion was therefore that when he spoke of his wife, he meant Valentina.

The very good customer Dayati also disappeared from the familia scene not long afterward. I did not try to investigate whether Valentina is in fact Diego’s wife.

Photo 1: Diego showing photo(s) of Valentina and himself on eBay Live.
Photo 2: Diego and Valentina together on camera during eBay Live.

On Offer

What OG Jewelers offers during eBay Live is considerably more varied than you would expect from a standard jewelry store. That brings me to the second strand of this Familia blog: the products and sales formats themselves. From gold, silver, and watches to candy, stacks of banknotes, and eventually the so-called breaks, it quickly becomes clear here too that OG Jewelers goes far beyond the boundaries of an ordinary jewelry business.

The usual: Gold and silver jewelry, with or without diamonds, gemstones, or enamel (chains, pendants, earrings, bracelets, etc.), but also bullion, coins, scrap silver and gold, gold and silver bars, and more.

Loose diamonds and other loose gemstones

Self-explanatory.

Penny drops

A penny drop is essentially a small giveaway within the Live: a real item with ordinary retail value is offered for just a few cents. Whoever manages to slide ‘Max Bid’ to the right the fastest wins. So it is not exactly a level playing field, because in practice the winner is the person with both the fastest internet connection and the quickest reaction time. There are usually only three seconds to do it, sometimes up to ten, and the clock is not extended when someone bids, as it is with ordinary auctions. The winner therefore pays practically nothing for the product itself, and at most the usual shipping costs, if applicable. In the eBay Lives I watch, such penny drops usually occur only once or a few times during a broadcast lasting several hours. The items being given away can, incidentally, have quite a substantial value, sometimes even running into several hundred dollars.

I regularly tried to participate myself, but sometimes the three seconds were already over before I even had a chance to move the bid slider. And besides: if your connection is slower than that of the fastest bidder, you are simply starting at a disadvantage.

(Rolex, AP…) Wall clocks

Dollars fresh & crispy

No, this is not a joke, and perhaps it does make you raise an eyebrow. With some regularity, Diego sells dollar bills, fresh and crisp, in original bank bundles and, according to Diego, straight from a federal bank. You can picture it like this: virtually everyone on eBay Live pays by credit card. Some debit cards in the U.S. also offer cashback or other rewards, but credit cards are generally more attractive in that respect. The advantage of a debit card, on the other hand, is that the money is taken directly from your account, so you cannot buy things with money you may not actually have yet. With a credit card, of course, the key is to pay off the next statement in full. OG/Diego offers a bundle of cash, you bid just above face value — say $2,350 for a bundle containing $2,000 in two-dollar bills — and you also pay $10 shipping plus tax. Then, about a week later, you receive a package ‘just like any other,’ except that it contains actual cash: voilà, your own ATM delivered to your home, made to order.

And this is where things get ‘spicy.’ Diego has, on multiple occasions during eBay Live, sold entire stacks of brand-new, crisp $2 bills, in original bundles just as they come from the bank. These were not rare or graded collectible notes, but ordinary, current U.S. currency that can be spent at face value. One of the bundles I saw come up several times contained $2,000 in $2 bills. That appears to be directly at odds with eBay’s own Collectible Currency Policy. It states:

“Listings for current, exchangeable, ungraded currency from any country worldwide cannot exceed $1,000 in value, whether in a single listing or in a combination of multiple listings.”

In other words, eBay sets a maximum of $1,000 for this kind of ordinary, exchangeable, ungraded currency. A bundle containing $2,000 in regular $2 bills represents exactly twice that limit. Nor does this appear to be a rule that can simply be set aside for eBay Live. According to eBay, sellers on eBay Live must also comply with the general policies governing prohibited and restricted items.

I have kept multiple screenshots of sales like these. Below you can see both an example of the $2,000 in $2 bills offered by OG and the relevant passage from eBay’s own policy.

Diego also regularly gives away dollar bills; for example, he may include a ‘lucky’ two-dollar bill for the first ten buyers, and people often ask him to sign it. The giveaways frequently involve amounts ranging from $40 to $500, and Diego has also mentioned on several occasions that these were/are funded by eBay itself. Of course, I cannot verify that. “Should we do a giveaway? Should we? I don’t know, OG. I don’t know.” (a line frequently heard from Diego)

Candy

Every once in a while, Diego also sells candy or something else that falls outside the usual metals and gemstones. Just for fun, basically. Since I had already bought a silver chain, I could bid on these sour gummies and pay only an extra $1 in shipping.

Watches

When it comes to watches, virtually all the famous and expensive watch brands pass through OG Jewelers, but so do the cheapest ones from what you might call the ‘still reasonably reliable’ segment, such as Invicta and Casio. As far as the more expensive brands are concerned — Rolex, Audemars Piguet (AP), Patek Philippe, Cartier, Omega, Vacheron Constantin, and Breitling, to name just a few — OG Jewelers often deals in aftermarket watches, a very central term at OG. This refers to modifications made not by the original watch manufacturer itself, but later by third parties such as OG Jewelers, for example by adding diamonds. Once modified in this way, these customized, aftermarket watches are no longer eligible to be sent to eBay for authentication. And this happens to be one of OG Jewelers’ major specialties: adding diamonds to the bezel and sometimes to the bracelet as well. The added diamonds and the jeweler’s work make such a watch more expensive to produce, but in terms of actual market value, in my view, they are more likely to make it worth less, because the original watch has been altered.

On top of that, such iced-out modifications, when carried out by an experienced jeweler, can conceal minor damage or imperfections on parts of the watch from view. That obviously does not have to be the purpose of the modification, but it does make the watch’s original condition more difficult for a buyer to assess.

So the modification is both labor-intensive and potentially profitable for the jeweler, but for the customer — however fantastic they may think all that bling-bling is; put simply, you have haters and lovers here and almost no middle ground — the purchasing game becomes considerably more uncertain. In connection with this, I saw customers report several times in the WhatsApp VIP group, back when customers were still able to post there, that a stone had fallen out of their watch or ring. They also complained that OG’s customer service was not responding. In any case, they had to make considerable effort to get a replacement or assistance.

Pokémon and related cards

This only occurred during a short period within the time span covered by this blog.

Surprise boxes with guaranteed value

Here, eBay Live participants can bid on boxes with a certain guaranteed value, but they do not know what they will receive. In my example, these were Rolex watches, and a few people did indeed buy them blind. This is permitted by eBay, but there is a possible complication here: because OG Jewelers almost always sells pre-owned Rolex watches, many of which are later modified into the iced-out versions mentioned earlier, we are often dealing with the aforementioned aftermarket watches. As a result, the value guarantee — perhaps $15,000 in such a case — has to rest largely on trust and on the buyer’s own research, if the watches in question are indeed aftermarket Rolexes. I did not take screenshots of the final reveal in these sales, so in these two cases I can no longer establish whether they were in fact aftermarket Rolexes:

Surprise boxes, but with a much clearer element of chance

People bid here as well, but the element of chance is many times greater. In the example shown below, the prizes are tennis bracelets, with the value stated or claimed by Diego ranging, for example, from $200 and $300 up to $600. There was, however, one lucky winner who received a 10K gold tennis bracelet with natural diamonds, which Diego said was worth around $20,000. I have to reconstruct that figure from memory.

Based on my estimated 700 hours of observation, I have a strong impression that with valuations like these, Diego generally tends to position them at the very upper end of what still sounds at least somewhat plausible.

This immediately illustrates something important. People start bidding, and there are almost always one or two people — again, according to my own observations — who keep reserving/buying more and more spots, because that increases their chance of winning the grand prize. And mathematically, that is of course true in itself: more spots means a greater chance. But that is precisely where the trap lies. A greater chance is still no guarantee, and as someone keeps buying more and more spots, the amount they spend can become completely disproportionate to the additional chance they are buying. And then, of course, it will be someone who bought ‘only’ one or two spots (boxes) who ends up walking away with the claimed high-value prize. I have quite literally seen many examples of this.

And this applies even more strongly to the section coming next, about the so-called breaks, with their allegedly extremely expensive AP and other watches. People who had literally spent around $5K–$6K, or even more, on a whole string of boxes would then still have to watch dejectedly as some lucky duck, with just one spot — or perhaps two — walked away with the grand prize. And here too, the same ‘but’ qualification applies. Claimed values of around $20,000 and, in the case of AP watches, often around $49,999 (a figure I saw repeatedly with the AP watches) are exactly that: claimed values.

Here, however, yet another issue arises with eBay’s own rules. Mystery boxes are permitted on eBay Live, but eBay expressly states that no item with special monetary or collectible value may be highlighted unless that item is included with every purchase. In this case, there was precisely one standout grand prize among many tennis bracelets valued considerably lower. Participants bid many hundreds of dollars on individual boxes without knowing which bracelet they would receive. That makes the setup look very much like exactly the element of chance that eBay Live explicitly prohibits: paying for a chance at an exceptionally valuable item rather than for a clearly defined purchase in advance.

eBay Chance policy
eBay Live Chance policy

Intermezzo: OG/Diego regularly puts Constantia (me) on mute (but never bans her) and blocks her on Instagram

It has already come up a few times: the OG/Diego mutes. Snow Gal noticed it, I noticed it, and there were others as well who, for example, would go into WhatsApp — back when that was still possible — to ask or report whether they were even still being seen in the Live, because their messages were consistently getting no response. As for me, I noticed time and again that I was apparently on mute; every now and then I would suddenly be taken off mute again, or discover that I already had been, because all of a sudden someone in the chat would respond to me. And believe me: I repeatedly asked very explicitly, “Can anyone see my messages?” At some point, it even became physically noticeable that my messages were no longer getting through. I could tell because, the moment I pressed “Send” on a comment, a little spinning circle would appear as though eBay were thinking. And apparently it was, because my comment would then disappear into the realm of the unseen. In the normal mute situation, my messages had still remained visible to me; in the ‘spinning-circle’ situation, they disappeared altogether. By then I had long since resigned myself to the mutes and had become — and remain to this day, after many months — an almost completely silent observer. I had long since realized that Diego ran things according to his own whims — or, if you prefer a more objective word, his own judgment.

But something happened in July 2026 that was rather striking. There had never been any clash between Diego and me — either in public or behind the scenes — apart from the occasional Instagram DM in which I pointed out that I apparently seemed to be on mute again. In fact, at first OG/Diego even followed me back on Instagram and liked my Insta Reel showing how I won the candy on his eBay Live. Months later, however, he unfollowed me. I got the impression that this happened around the time when he mainly continued following back the really big players on Instagram. Behind the scenes, in our sparse exchanges, he always felt like a completely different person to me: much calmer and even somewhat subdued — however unbelievable that may sound.

In May 2026, he still liked some of my posts, and in June I suddenly noticed that the OG Jewelers account seemed to be gone. For a short time, it really was; I checked in an anonymous browser. But in July he turned out to be back — just not for me: I had been blocked. And that was, and still is, difficult for me to understand, because I had only spoken with him sparingly in the Instagram chat and everything had simply been friendly. He had even liked some of my posts. I certainly had nothing on my conscience, except — if you can even call that “having something on your conscience” — asking about the fact that I apparently kept being muted. And that situation has remained unchanged to this day. As for the reason, I can only guess. It is a little inconvenient for me because I can no longer see the actual updates on Instagram. You can still see a preview of the first posts, but after that Instagram immediately requires you to log in, and then I lose access altogether. In the first screenshot, incidentally, I was talking about something else as well: the entire chat had briefly become invisible.

Diego/OG and Constantia on Instagram: the first heart-shaped like shown here was from Diego

‘Breaks,’ but not in the sense of trading card breaks

The breaks bring up the rear in this illustrious OG Jewelers lineup. This latest high point from the “Pioneers of Jewelry Live Auctions” — a quote from their Instagram profile dated September 9, 2026 — with which OG Jewelers and Diego say they have ‘revolutionized’ eBay Live (that, too, appeared earlier in their Instagram profile), begins with a rather substantial gallery. A word of reassurance: you do not have to click through it. But of course, you are very warmly invited to do so.

The reason I chose to include so many screenshots this time is that, alongside the phenomenon itself, I also want to show quite a bit of ‘the chat.’ In other words, I deliberately let the participants speak for themselves as well. The screenshots alone will reveal the considerable confusion that existed from the beginning — and continued — about how exactly the system works. And I cannot entirely reassure you on that point. Whether intentionally or not, the whole thing is rather vague. In any case, it is unmistakably a casino-like affair. My very strong impression is that a majority of participants thoroughly hate the whole thing because of its sheer slowness. Shorter break sessions do occur, but in my observations the process usually lasts around three hours, regularly approaches four hours, and sometimes even goes beyond that.

Diego suddenly introduced it around the third week of August 2026. The latest eBay Live gig was a so-called break format. The term break originally comes primarily from the world of trading cards, where participants buy a spot in a box, pack, or case break, after which the contents are opened live and distributed. Diego seems to have broadened the concept considerably: at OG, no traditional card box is being ‘broken’; instead, break refers to their self-developed system of bidding, spins, Casios, gold boxes, and a claimed extremely valuable grand prize.

Suddenly, a computer screen appeared in the middle of the picture, filled with a mysterious array of flashing boxes, a scrolling neon-text bar, and so on. I joined a little later and had missed the explanation. I genuinely understood absolutely nothing of it, but it turned out I was far from the only one. An OG Jewelers staff member says they programmed the break game themselves. This person, who also acts as moderator during the breaks, said so personally in the chat. OG began offering the break game more and more often and eventually also realized that many people simply did not understand it. As a result, explanations were given increasingly often during the show. But naturally, new people are constantly joining an eBay Live, so continuing to explain it is a bit like mopping the floor with the faucet still running.

Many enthusiasts of expensive watches are desperate to win the AP (or some other high-end prize) and sometimes bid many thousands of dollars in an attempt to secure as many spots as possible, which still gives them absolutely no guarantee that they will win.

Each break game usually consists of five rounds of up to twenty auctions/spins. Before every spin, there is a separate bidding round; the highest bidder buys one spot and then receives one spin on the digital wheel. That wheel contains twenty spaces: eighteen blue crosses, representing a cheap Casio watch, and two gold boxes. If all five rounds were played all the way through to twenty spots, that would mean ninety Casios as consolation prizes out of one hundred spots for the less fortunate spinners (unless, of course, they happen to be masochists). But usually it never gets that far: a round ends as soon as both gold boxes have appeared. Across five rounds there are therefore ten gold boxes to be won in total. Nine of those generally contain a prize with an OG-claimed value of roughly $400 to $800 — for example a watch or chain — while one gold box contains the actual grand prize: a much more expensive watch, often an AP, for which OG/Diego generally claims a value of around $40,999 to $59,999.

Diego is usually vague about those Casios. During the eBay Live, one is lying on the right-hand side of the screen as an example, and thanks to a very recent question from someone in the chat — recent, that is, for the purposes of this blog — to which Diego for once gave a concrete answer, namely: an F91W Casio, I was able to look up what Google had to say about its price. Google came rushing over to inform me that SHEIN happened to be running a promotion at that very moment offering the exact same watch for $7.50. Even the people in the chat who had already looked it up themselves and generally estimated the thing at between $25 and $30 turned out to have been too optimistic.

Keep in mind that while some spots certainly sell for under $100, many bids eventually shoot far beyond that. The early ones usually remain below a hundred dollars, but as more blue crosses appear and the gold boxes remain stubbornly absent, the amounts rise quickly: to $250, $500, and sometimes even $1,000. Yes, people really do bid $500 or $1,000 for one of those ‘rare spins’ when the particular break is nearly full (feel free to click through some of the screenshots).

When one of those gold boxes appears, nobody knows in advance — at least, assuming the system really is random. And that is precisely why a round can seem to drag on forever. Not only does the wheel have to spin again and again, but before every single spin there is another full auction, and that too takes a considerable amount of time. It regularly happens, for example, that the wheel lands on a blue cross fifteen times in a row before a gold box finally appears.

ChatGPT calculation:

Sometimes the two gold boxes appear early and a new break round can begin almost immediately; sometimes it takes nearly all twenty spots. Over many rounds, however, those differences average out: with two randomly distributed gold boxes, the second one appears on average around position 14. As a result, the average length of the rounds ultimately remains fairly similar. To reach all ten gold boxes in the end — only one of which contains the actual super prize — the machine has to be spun an average of about seventy times.

And what does eBay think of all this: has eBay perhaps become an online casino?

eBay is strikingly clear in its own rules about games of chance during eBay Live: “We do not allow chance-based items or sales during eBay Live events.” The company refers not only to lotteries, raffles, and random drawings, but also to sales in which the buyer gets a chance to win an item instead of receiving a clearly defined purchase. At the very least, that seems difficult to reconcile with what is happening here. After all, the participant bids money for a spot, after which a computer randomly determines where that spot lands. The element of chance is therefore not incidental: it ultimately determines whether someone lands on one of the gold boxes and thereby gets a chance at the super prize.

eBay does provide an exception for so-called case, box, and pack breaks, but only for pre-approved sellers. Moreover, eBay’s own information page makes clear what the platform means by such breaks: card breaks, in which packs or boxes of trading cards are opened and participants buy spots for, for example, a team, player, or division. Simply calling something a break therefore does not automatically turn a random prize draw into a permitted break. You cannot make something policy-proof simply by calling it a “break” if the setup still fundamentally operates as a chance mechanism.

eBay Breaks, explained by eBay

Nor does eBay’s exception for mystery boxes necessarily provide a way out. According to eBay, an item of special monetary or collectible value may not be highlighted unless every purchase includes such an item. That provision becomes particularly relevant in a system where one exceptional super prize towers over a large number of much more modest outcomes.

Whether eBay has given OG Jewelers separate permission for this exact specific format cannot be established from public sources. But judging by eBay’s publicly available rules, it is difficult to deny that the setup is at odds with both the wording and the apparent intent of eBay’s own policy against chance-based sales.

eBay Live policy
Chance Listings Policy

Conclusion

For a change of pace, I also regularly spend hours watching other eBay Lives. From what I have been able to observe there, they tend to be much more conventional: ordinary auctions, sometimes supplemented by a penny drop or a small giveaway, such as a cap. I have not seen the same striking sales formats there as I have with OG — no candy, no large stacks of banknotes being resold or giveaways worth hundreds of dollars, no mystery boxes, and no breaks. It should be noted, however, that I have followed these other Lives far less frequently and for much shorter periods of time; my hours of observation there are therefore nowhere near comparable to those I have spent watching OG Jewelers.

Selection of other eBay Live shows I occasionally watch:

eBay Live sellers, from left to right: Hemeisport, Vookum, Happy Jewelers, Mr Wikd (2x)

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Immediately after publication, I notified both OG Jewelers/Diego and eBay about this blog and asked whether they wished to respond.