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.

[Peter_Spaeth]

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.

[bravos4evr]

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

[murphy8276]

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

[70ToppsFanatic]

He is now using gemmintsports123 as his ebay username.

Be careful.

[CardMD]

Originally Posted by bravos4evr

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

[bravos4evr]

Originally Posted by CardMD

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?!

[pokerplyr80]

Originally Posted by CardMD

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.

[edjs]

Originally Posted by pokerplyr80

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.

[turtleguy64]

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.

[CardMD]

Great. Thanks!

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

[kmac32]

Originally Posted by 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.

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