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  #1  
Old 06-24-2016, 11:47 AM
70ToppsFanatic 70ToppsFanatic is offline
Dave K.leppel
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Default I Just Avoided an Apparent Big $$$ Scam

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.
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  #2  
Old 06-24-2016, 11:52 AM
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Peter_Spaeth Peter_Spaeth is offline
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The only question I have is why it went on as long as it did with so many red flags, but glad you saw through it.

Last edited by Peter_Spaeth; 06-24-2016 at 11:52 AM.
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  #3  
Old 06-24-2016, 12:19 PM
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Dang, good call, and great idea to offer to pay to have both cards re-certified by PSA in person.

people can really be terrible sometimes..... sigh
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Last edited by bravos4evr; 06-24-2016 at 12:19 PM.
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  #4  
Old 06-24-2016, 12:27 PM
murphy8276 murphy8276 is offline
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Looks like flavouroutlet is everywhere doing scams similar to this including trades/sales of fake cards/etc. You may have gotten a 1952 mantle in a psa case for real but the card wouldn't have been real.

http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=224092 http://www.net54baseball.com/showthr...41#post1551941


Also connects to this thread here in some way, but I don't know of hunky is part of problem or if he was caught in middle and lost money by selling a psa 9 fake jordan from flavour - http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=224115

Last edited by murphy8276; 06-24-2016 at 12:35 PM.
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  #5  
Old 06-24-2016, 01:16 PM
70ToppsFanatic 70ToppsFanatic is offline
Dave K.leppel
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He is now using gemmintsports123 as his ebay username.

Be careful.
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  #6  
Old 06-24-2016, 02:35 PM
CardMD CardMD is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bravos4evr View Post
Dang, good call, and great idea to offer to pay to have both cards re-certified by PSA in person.

people can really be terrible sometimes..... sigh
Quick question. I thought I read somewhere that you could not bring cards in person to PSA for grading. Is that true? If not, then I think I would rather walk in with my Red Cobb to have it switched to PSA instead of relying on those terrible inept delivery services (USPS / FedEx). Never a bad day if you have to hang out around Newport Beach.

Aaron
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  #7  
Old 06-24-2016, 02:43 PM
turtleguy64 turtleguy64 is offline
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my advice to anyone doing a deal like this: arrange to do the transfer of items face to face at a mutually located police station.alert police ahead of time that you will need an officer present.they will be glad to help.if the second party refuses to abide by those terms,you probably are being set up for something bad.many Craigslist people use the police station as the handing over area.
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  #8  
Old 06-24-2016, 03:28 PM
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bravos4evr bravos4evr is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CardMD View Post
Quick question. I thought I read somewhere that you could not bring cards in person to PSA for grading. Is that true? If not, then I think I would rather walk in with my Red Cobb to have it switched to PSA instead of relying on those terrible inept delivery services (USPS / FedEx). Never a bad day if you have to hang out around Newport Beach.

Aaron
I have no idea as I've never had a card graded. I just thought he had a good plan. (I wonder if they might make exceptions for very high end cards?)

guess you should give em a call and find out?!
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  #9  
Old 06-24-2016, 04:29 PM
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pokerplyr80 pokerplyr80 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CardMD View Post
Quick question. I thought I read somewhere that you could not bring cards in person to PSA for grading. Is that true? If not, then I think I would rather walk in with my Red Cobb to have it switched to PSA instead of relying on those terrible inept delivery services (USPS / FedEx). Never a bad day if you have to hang out around Newport Beach.

Aaron
You can bring cards in person if you schedule an appointment and are paying for walk through service. I have recently done this myself.
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  #10  
Old 06-24-2016, 04:30 PM
CardMD CardMD is offline
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Great. Thanks!

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  #11  
Old 06-24-2016, 05:05 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by pokerplyr80 View Post
You can bring cards in person if you schedule an appointment and are paying for walk through service. I have recently done this myself.
Could you tell more about how to do this? When I called PSA, they told me they don't give out their location due to being a bonded location. This was last year.
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  #12  
Old 06-24-2016, 05:09 PM
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kmac32 kmac32 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 70ToppsFanatic View Post
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.
619 is definitely a San Diego area code. I live approximately 2 hours from the depending on traffic. Deal does seem quite shady so I would be careful.

Kmac
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  #13  
Old 06-24-2016, 05:16 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by edjs View Post
Could you tell more about how to do this? When I called PSA, they told me they don't give out their location due to being a bonded location. This was last year.
I just called and set it up. I think as a rule they don't allow in person dropoffs and pickups but will in certain cases, depending on scheduling and staffing. I was told no once the same week they were accepting submissions at the Long Beach show. It probably also depends on the number of submissions you have and how much you have submitted in the past. When I was there I saw a couple of others doing the same thing. This was a couple of weeks ago. It is true that the location was very secure. I actually had trouble finding it. There certainly weren't any PSA headquarters signs out front.
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  #14  
Old 06-24-2016, 07:57 PM
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Jeff F0y
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Pays to be careful. Very smart Dave. Glad you got to the bottom of it!!

Jeff
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  #15  
Old 06-24-2016, 08:44 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by pokerplyr80 View Post
I just called and set it up. I think as a rule they don't allow in person dropoffs and pickups but will in certain cases, depending on scheduling and staffing. I was told no once the same week they were accepting submissions at the Long Beach show. It probably also depends on the number of submissions you have and how much you have submitted in the past. When I was there I saw a couple of others doing the same thing. This was a couple of weeks ago. It is true that the location was very secure. I actually had trouble finding it. There certainly weren't any PSA headquarters signs out front.
Huh, you would think the employees would know about this, and could relay the info when asked. Thanks.
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  #16  
Old 06-24-2016, 10:56 PM
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Originally Posted by edjs View Post
Huh, you would think the employees would know about this, and could relay the info when asked. Thanks.
I was told the requests are handled on a case by case basis. The rest of my post is speculation although the time i was told no was because some of the staff was at the show and they weren't taking appointments.
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  #17  
Old 06-24-2016, 11:59 PM
ajjohnsonsoxfan ajjohnsonsoxfan is offline
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You can arrange to pick up or drop off high value items you don't want shipped. You need to call customer service to set it up. Their office is nondescript in an office park. To get in you need to get buzzed in by security phone in lobby and then wait in secure customer lounge that's located outside the main work area just inside the lobby.
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  #18  
Old 06-25-2016, 04:38 AM
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Good job! It's a shame you went through so many red flags before one finally caught your attention, but at least you weren't victimized!
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  #19  
Old 06-25-2016, 06:35 AM
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Thanks so much for sharing this. I know that I have gotten emotionally involved in deals and almost became a scam victim, but posts like this remind me to always take a deep breath and evaluate every deal carefully. This could have gone REALLY south!
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  #20  
Old 06-25-2016, 08:29 AM
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If you see one of these, just stop.

It's not going to work out. For you.
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  #21  
Old 06-25-2016, 09:30 AM
charrigan charrigan is offline
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Absurd that this board's primary response to someone trying to turn a good deed and warn others of a scam is to criticize the OP for not realizing it was a scam *soon enough*.
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  #22  
Old 06-25-2016, 09:21 PM
70ToppsFanatic 70ToppsFanatic is offline
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Actually I was wary from the start, but before condemning someone who behaves in an eccentric manner as a scumbag scam artist I thought I might be fair to give the guy enough rope and see if he actually chose to hang himself.

The point of the post was to prevent somebody else from getting into trouble. Hopefully it is helpful. It certainly won't hurt and I have no feelings of embarrassment or inadequacy for allowing the guy to show his true colors.

BTW, I have enough of his contact details to track him down and I am looking into filing a complaint so that this guy at least gets hassled enough (if not worse) to get the message that he better not try this crap again.

Last edited by 70ToppsFanatic; 06-25-2016 at 09:24 PM. Reason: Fixed typos
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  #23  
Old 06-26-2016, 04:50 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by charrigan View Post
Absurd that this board's primary response to someone trying to turn a good deed and warn others of a scam is to criticize the OP for not realizing it was a scam *soon enough*.
Don't think it was criticism. Take your blinders off and read again.
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  #24  
Old 06-26-2016, 07:24 AM
charrigan charrigan is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bobbyw8469 View Post
It's a shame you went through so many red flags before one finally caught your attention
Blinders off, read again. The criticism-o-meter is still pointing to "yes."
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  #25  
Old 06-26-2016, 07:37 AM
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bobbyw8469 bobbyw8469 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by charrigan View Post
Blinders off, read again. The criticism-o-meter is still pointing to "yes."
Quote:
but at least you weren't victimized!
Much like the media does, you left out the rest of the quote and only looked at what fit your agenda. Now go away, no drama here, nothing to see here.
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  #26  
Old 06-26-2016, 07:44 AM
1952boyntoncollector 1952boyntoncollector is offline
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I think victims being victimized again even in a remote sense is bad (such as public shaming for being a victim)...you want victims going forward to warn others .....some victims feel shame and dont say anything

some scams are easier to tell than others..but im sure there are scams many of us dont know about and wouldnt want a victim to be afraid to speak out because of some public shaming of being a victim...

(not saying that occurred here or not)

Last edited by 1952boyntoncollector; 06-26-2016 at 07:47 AM.
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  #27  
Old 06-26-2016, 07:50 AM
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bobbyw8469 bobbyw8469 is offline
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And that's fine that you think that, but the OP never took it that way, nor was it intended that way. He already has replied on that thread stating he was wary from the start. Drop it.
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  #28  
Old 06-26-2016, 08:04 AM
charrigan charrigan is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bobbyw8469 View Post
Now go away, no drama here, nothing to see here.
You go away.

A much more appropriate response would have been "thank you!". Saying "good job! I can't believe you almost fell for that, but glad you didn't" is transparently a back-handed compliment that doesn't just affect the OP, it matters for other people in similar situations who probably do feel reluctant to tell their story because they wish they had handled things better in order to avoid being scammed.

It is not drama to tell you that your statement - and others - have no place in the hobby. It is drama to chime in with victim-blaming.


Here's your full, unedited post. If something else you said changes the context so that it no longer fits my MSNBC narrative (lol), feel free to point it out:

Quote:
Originally Posted by bobbyw8469 View Post
Good job! It's a shame you went through so many red flags before one finally caught your attention, but at least you weren't victimized!

Last edited by charrigan; 06-26-2016 at 08:06 AM.
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  #29  
Old 06-26-2016, 09:10 AM
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Listen...I know you are a PSA board regular and that board has gone to shit. Don't try to create drama over here where there is none just because you are bored. It is a good board here. Everyone acts civil. If you want to create drama, do it over on PSA - lord knows that board needs some spicing up!
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  #30  
Old 06-26-2016, 09:13 AM
charrigan charrigan is offline
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BobbyW -- King of the Ad Hominem. It is not drama to point out that you engaged in totally unacceptable behavior, for which you have no defense. If you don't want it to continue, stop.
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