As with Oblivion, I found kind of pointless that you couldn't sell items stolen elsewhere. How do merchants know you stole this goblet from a shack 5 kilometres away? I'd want this fixed so that I can sell what I steal to regular merchants (at least merchants from different cities?).

i agree if bounty is handled seperately in each hold why cant stolen items be the same way? If i steal in Solitude why cant i sell my loot in Whiterun? If they dont care/dont know about my bounty then why would they care/know that what i'm selling is stolen?

In Oblivion it was to get you to join the Thieves Guild

However in Skyrim you come across them in the story so you're right, this is pointless. Though its not exactly on my high priority list for a fix

as a thief/assassin that took him about 40 something hours to join the thieves guild it was a pain having to carry all that loot and not being able to sell it.

If you take enough points in speechcraft, all merchants become fences if you invest in them... You can even steal right from them and resell their items back to them..

modav BypassVendorStolenCheck 1

which would still be useful for being in the same town that you stole things in. But the point remains, If other holds dont know or care about your bounties then why would they care or know that what your trying to sell is stolen?

Because that's the way the stolen system works. It will never change, just like it never changed in Oblivion.

Well it should

Again its not exactly my #1 concern though

oblivion also couldn't handle a multi bounty system properly either. Skyrim does and there lies the hope.

There's other people that will offer to fence for you, and joining the thieves guild to get someone to fence for you doesn't take 40 hours,
you don't get a ton of Fed Ex quests, you pretty much have access to a fence right from the get-go

lol i didnt say i was trying to join them the hole time... though when i did want to join them it took me some time to find a mission that led into it... strangely i was doing a mission for the dark brotherhood when i got it.

look i understand that there are fences and such that are eventually opened up in other towns and until then you can go to the main HQ. But the point i'm trying to make is that it simply defies logic that if i steal from one hold and then go to another that either doesnt know or doesnt care about my crimes elsewhere then how would the shopkeeps, that dont even have any of the information that the guards have, know that what i am selling them is stolen property from a hold on the other side of the map?

I was hoping stealing items was going to work like it did in Fallout 3 / NV where NPCs couldn't tell if something was stolen, was majorly disappointed to see it works like it did in Oblivion which was dumb.