I Just Avoided an Apparent Big $$$ Scam

[70ToppsFanatic]

I offered a graded Clemente RC for sale on eBay. Received a message from someone interested in trading for one of three 52 Topps Mantle RCs he has for my card plus some cash. I accepted the offer on one of the Mantle's he sent me scans of.

The person who I agreed to trade with lives on the west coast far away from me, so I offered to travel out to him to do the trade in person. He resisted that.

Then he asked if I would do the money part of the deal in cash. We are talking multiple 5-figures here. Like it's really a good idea to travel carrying tens of thousands of dollars in cash or agree to meet someone you don't know with that kind of money in cash.

He then goes silent for a week and when I contact him and ask how he proposes to get the deal done he suggests that I should wire the money part to him. Then he will send me the Mantle and then I can send the Clemente back to him.

I tell him it is too risky for people who have never done a deal before and that I will travel out to him as previously offered to get the deal done. He then gives me a story about the card now being with a relative of his in a different state and I can travel to his relative with my card and cashier's check and do the swap there.

Even if I was not already suspicious enough, I could not make that work so I suggested meeting at PSA (I will travel out to Newport Beach and he is close enough that he can drive within 90 minutes) where I will pay for both cards to be re-holdered (which would verify they are both ok and protect each of us). He rejected that because he didn't want to get the card shipped back to himself, and then he rejected it again when I offered to cover the shipping costs.

I would hate to see anyone become a victim of this apparent scamster, so beware if you are approached by anyone with a similar story/moduc operandi.

The guy says his name is Alden. He claims to be from San Diego, but his ebay username (was flavouroutlet but recently changed to
gemmintsports123) traces to Arizona. He has high feedback (>200) but
most is un-related to cards and the few card items are only within the past year but not recent enough to see. Most of his feedback relates to dental whiting strips and nicotine smoking cessation gum.

His cell phone number (starts with 619-288-xxxx) traces to southern California.

His email address came through as:

batman batman supercardsxxxx@gmail.com (I changed the last 4 characters of the email address to xxxx)

At the very least this guy is very eccentric. Given all of the yellow flags, I think it wise to advise the hobby to be very careful if you bump into this guy.