Terms of Service

Lore is a Wisteria Road venture, operated by Leeandra van Zyl (ABN 78 129 293 789), trading as Wisteria Road and Lore ("Lore", "we", "us"). You can reach us at hello@lorevault.au.

Lore provides (a) a public marketplace of special-edition books and their identifying points, (b) a price guide built from recorded sold prices, (c) a private library and a provenance registry for copies you own, (d) an in-house condition and authenticity review, and (e) the Vault — a marketplace where members buy and sell copies from one another with payment held by Lore until delivery.

You must be at least 18 to use the Vault. Accounts are personal and sign-in is by email and password, with password resets by emailed link — keep your password private and keep control of your email account; anything done from your account is treated as done by you.

You may set a public username and choose to publish your library. Everything else on your library, including what you paid and your notes, is private.

We may suspend or close accounts that breach these terms, the Vault Rules, or the law.

The marketplace and price guide are informational. Prices are recorded historical sales gathered from public marketplaces and from the Vault; they are not valuations, appraisals or advice, and past sales do not predict future prices. All figures are in Australian dollars. Sales recorded from overseas marketplaces are converted at the European Central Bank reference rate for the date of the sale, and the original amount and rate are kept with the record.

We work to keep the marketplace accurate, but we do not guarantee that any entry, print-run figure or identifying point is complete or correct. If you spot an error, tell us.

You keep ownership of the photographs and text you upload. You grant Lore a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to store, reproduce, resize and display that content to run the service — including showing your protocol photos to reviewers, on a listing you create, on the certificate of a verified copy, and to a buyer after a sale.

You promise that content you upload is yours to upload, depicts a copy you actually possess, and is not misleading. Photos taken through the in-app camera are timestamped and treated as evidence; do not attempt to substitute, edit or misattribute them. Embedded camera metadata, including any location, is removed when a photo is stored.

Registering a copy records that you hold it. Submitting it for review asks the Lore team to compare your protocol photos against the marketplace and assign a grade on the Lore Scale. A pass issues a Lore registry number and a public certificate.

A Lore verification is our considered opinion, formed from photographs, that a copy matches its marketplace entry and grade at the time of review. It is not a warranty, insurance, or a guarantee of authenticity, condition or value, and it does not survive damage or alteration after review. Buyers must still inspect a copy on arrival.

Ownership in the registry moves to a buyer only when a Vault sale completes. Registry entries and their provenance log are permanent; we do not delete history.

Lore is a marketplace. Each sale is a contract between the buyer and the seller; Lore is not the seller, does not take title to the book, and is not a party to the sale. We facilitate payment, hold funds until delivery, run the dispute process and enforce the Vault Rules.

Payments are processed by Stripe. By selling you also agree to the Stripe Connected Account Agreement, and Stripe (not Lore) verifies your identity and pays your bank. Lore never sees or stores card numbers.

When a buyer pays, the money is held on Lore's Stripe platform balance. The seller is paid out only after delivery is confirmed and the 72-hour inspection window closes clean, or when the buyer releases early, or when a dispute is decided in the seller's favour. A seller may list before completing Stripe onboarding, but no payout can be sent until it is complete; Lore continues to hold the funds in the meantime. Refunds go back to the buyer's original payment method.

Fees are as published on the site at the time of the sale (currently a seller fee deducted from the payout, and any buyer protection fee shown before payment). Fees are in Australian dollars and include GST — Lore is registered for GST and the fee is a taxable supply to the seller. The sale price of a book is a matter between buyer and seller: a private individual selling their own books does not charge GST; a seller who is registered for GST is responsible for GST on their sales.

Sellers are responsible for describing the copy truthfully, packing it properly, posting it with tracking within the time in the Vault Rules, and for any tax on their sales. Buyers are responsible for providing a correct delivery address and for inspecting the copy inside the window.

Disputes are decided by the Lore team on the evidence — the copy's protocol photos and grade, the listing, the carrier's delivery record (including any signature), and both parties' accounts. A team member who is a party to an order never decides its dispute. The buyer who opened a dispute may withdraw it if the parties resolve the matter themselves. Our decision under the Vault Rules is final between the parties as far as Lore's holding of the funds is concerned; it does not limit any rights you have against the other party or under law.

You must not arrange to complete off-platform a sale that began on Lore, and you must not list counterfeit, stolen, or misdescribed items, or items you do not hold.

• Don't misrepresent an edition, a copy, its condition or its provenance.
• Don't enter asking prices, fabricated sales or shill bids into the price guide, or manipulate the index.
• Don't scrape, bulk-download or republish the marketplace or price data without permission.
• Don't interfere with the service, other members' accounts, or the review process.
• Don't use Lore for anything unlawful.

The Lore name, the Lore Scale, the site design and the compiled marketplace database are owned by Lore. Book cover artwork belongs to its publishers and artists and is shown for identification. Individual facts in the marketplace are not owned by anyone; the compilation is.

Nothing in these terms excludes, restricts or modifies any consumer guarantee, right or remedy under the Australian Consumer Law or other law that cannot be excluded. Where our liability can be limited, it is limited to re-supplying the service or paying the cost of re-supply.

Except as required by law, Lore is not liable for the acts or omissions of buyers, sellers, carriers or Stripe; for loss of profit, opportunity or data; or for reliance on the marketplace, price guide, or a review outcome. Our total liability to you for anything else arising from the service in any 12-month period is capped at the greater of A$100 and the fees you paid Lore in that period.

The service is provided as-is and may change, pause or end. We will give reasonable notice of material changes to these terms; continuing to use the site after that is acceptance.

How we handle personal information is set out in the Privacy Policy, which forms part of these terms.

You can close your account at any time by contacting us. Open orders must complete or be refunded first. Registry entries and provenance history for copies you have sold or had verified remain, as they belong to the copy's record; your name is not shown on them.

These terms are governed by the laws of Western Australia, Australia, and you and Lore submit to the courts there. Questions, complaints and notices: hello@lorevault.au, or by post to 7 Goodwood Way, Canning Vale WA 6155.

These terms were drafted by Lore and have not yet been independently reviewed by a lawyer. A review is in progress; this page will be updated when it is complete.