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PWCC Auctions - Mystery Bid Post Auction?
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I know... I know... Why did I even bother?
I thought I would check out the new auction format for PWCC and ended up impulsively bidding for a card (which I didn't even need). See the post auction experience below... Email: Congratulations! You Won! Total Due: $26 Website: Congratulations! You Won! Total Due: $66 I have emailed customer support... |
Sorry to Hear/See that
Ok that is beyond odd. Was there really another bid? IS there some extreme fees? Have you reached out to them? |
“Thank you sir may i have another?”
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With all the other auction houses I deal with, you can see bid history (but not any type of bidder identification.) With eBay, not only can you see bid history, you can also see an anonymized bidder identification and from that ID you can see that bidders history with the particular seller. It isn't complete proof, but with the history information you can start to get some notion as to whether shill bidding may be happening. The opacity of this new PWCC platform is enough to keep me away. Though, I swim in the shallow end of the hobby pool, so no great loss to them. I am sure they won't even notice. |
Well...to be honest, the $26 seems a little on the light side. But I have sold a ton of cards on the light side recently. Maybe the $66 was their hidden reserve?
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Can you put up a link to the auction?
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Went to bed last night thinking I had won a T205 Cicotte at $105. Auction for the individual card had closed and didn't appear that any additional bids could be made.
Woke up this morning and found that somehow I had been outbid and the auction had closed at $155. |
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There is zero way to see the bid history or anything??? Someone got an email that he won at one price, then got an invoice for a HUGE markup!!! That doesn't look good.
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I have placed a bid on a card that closes on Friday. I'm 99.9% sure I won't win it, so I guess we'll see if actual bidders have access to bid history that the peanut gallery doesn't. |
FWIW, I won two >$100 items last night (both graded Auth, so I wasn't worried about card doctoring issues). I bid as I went along, rather than place an auto bid, and the invoice listed both items for my final/winning bid price.
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I am staying on the side lines on their auctions It is a shame they do have some cards at times I would love to get. But not worth it to me |
In addition to the Cicotte that I didn't end up winning, I also bid on a cheap 1989 Topps set. Received an email last night stating I had won with a bid of $10, and similar to the example above, I received my invoice this morning and the bid total was showing as $12.
$12 just happened to be the max bid I had entered. And to answer the question about bid history, I haven't been able to find a bid history for either the auctions I lost or the auction I won. |
I won 2 items, and received an email titled "Congratulations! You Won!".
The price in the email for the first item matched the winning bid I had seen last evening and was indeed below my max. The price in the email for the second item was less than half of the final price, as well as below the overtime price, and was equal to my max bid (actual final price was about 10% below recent sales of the same item). My guess is some glitch occurred with their system sending out these "you won" emails with incorrect prices. |
Customer Service
I have reached out to customer service and we will see what they say...
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I am the last person to defend them, but it sounds like glitches with their new system.
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I emailed PWCC as I had the same issue. I received an email last night that had my winning bid and an invoice that was at my max bid. Luckily the difference was only a few bucks. Their response was that the initial email was wrong and that I was invoiced for the final price (which happened to be my max bid). I think in the future I will no longer use the max bid feature if I decide to bid in their auctions again.
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Looks like.....
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Unless somewhere in his fine print it says "all final bids follow the silent bid system used by local fun night fundraisers. In other words no matter what the "winning bid" actually is you pay the max you wrote down" |
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Your fault. You didn't pay fast enough. You had two minutes to drop the $26 in the mail, but you just had to finish that cup of coffee.
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I am soo glad I sat this one out, as I will in any of their future auctions. What with an undignified boot from Ebay over shill bidding, longstanding issues of knowingly auctioning off slabbed altered cards and dealing with known fraudsters, now we have the rollout of their first independent auction. Yes, there were some nice cards there, but bidders were now faced with with extended bidding and a BP on some items. Now it appears a very serious systems glitch on winners' invoices has occurred.....all on their 1st auction.
Perhaps it is just me, but I wonder if this is the beginning of the death spiral of PWCC. I don't, of course, know any of the financials, but If I were Brent, and thank God I am not, I would be working the worry beads overtime. |
Hanlon's razor (not Ned) applies. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.
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So.. I won a few lots for resale. Won them at fair prices with some minor competition but liked the closing.
Invoice was correct and all prices matched my bid history. That's the good news. I paid my invoice by CC and somehow missed the various options to where the have my items sent(the few items that I have won on ebay over the years have always went to me my house or PO Box). Now I have learned that by default they went to the vault(I discovered this after I saw no shipping charge). I contacted them immediately by their preferred chat method and was quickly entered into a back and forth conversation to amend the shipping error or so one would think. My items were sent to the vault and they will not change the address. I have to wait approximately 20-25 days for the items to be curated into the vault and then request they be sent to me......I tried reasoning with them to no avail, that there must be some kind of remedy. BE VERY CAREFUL WHEN PAYING YOUR INVOICE, the VAULT is the default address now, no matter where you had items sent before. Scott PWCC has reached out to me and helped expedite the process, please see my post below #33. |
Very odd.....you can buy your cards and not take possession of them??? No thanks!
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You'd think they'd be eager to make you happy so your first experience on their new platform is a positive one. |
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Added in edit: One thing that really stood out to me on the new PWCC platform is that the cards are described as "assets." It says a lot about how PWCC views their business. |
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Resolution
Follow up......
So I reached out to Brent via email and within the hour I was contacted by a very helpful CS rep who while unable to reverse what I had done, was able to fasttrack the cards thru curation and into the Vault upon which I can have them sent to me. The curation should be done by weeks end, so only a few days longer than it would have been, had it processed as I thought it had. The rep was most helpful and responsive. Again, if you are paying for these items online just go slow and click the right boxes.. Scott |
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Is this a brokerage firm for assets or an auction house for cards ?
LoL just teasing. |
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Scott, I noticed right away that something was amiss when they showed the invoice and it waived/ struck-though the fees for shipping and sales tax (see OP post with scan). I figured the shipping could be waived as some sort of introductory offer but not the tax and they surely wouldn't be so bold as to show it wasn't being collected. I figured it must have been a promo for the Vault and sure enough, that was the default setting. |
I believe my shipping was originally $15 I can’t see it currently, I assume the shipping from the vault will be the same. Mine was 4 cards at a value of just under 900. I did not have an issue with that. It’s a little more than some, a little less than others, so about average I would say.
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This thread needs a devil's advocate, no?
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vault
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PWCC has my TX resale certificate on file.....these are for resale.
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Ryan, When I went to pay originally, the option to choose where you wanted the cards sent was presented, Vault or my address on record(Vault was the highlighted default). I of course opted to have them sent directly to me. However, the invoice had tax included, so I provided my resale cert and they promptly adjusted the invoice. When I went back to the corrected invoice and paid, the shipping option had defaulted back to the Vault and I did not catch it. Really nothing nefarious, just a business steering their customers where they prefer them to go. I SHOULD have double checked everything, I ASSUMED and we all know how that story goes. Once I contacted Brent, they promptly took care of it to the best or their ability. As of now the items already show in my Vault, not able to request them yet, but not worried as everything is working out as they said it would. I would like to point out to everyone that during this entire email/chat/posting here, that I was precise, cordial and polite, no stones were thrown and it was handled very professionally by them on their end. I think that is about all you can ask when things go a bit sideways. It's easy to start the name calling and accusations, especially on an internet forum, not so easy to undo them. |
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I bid on quite a few cards in this auction. I just checked my bidding log spreadsheet and compared those prices against the ones from my invoice. I wrote down the listed hammer price at the conclusion of the auctions for every card I won. It looks like I won 32 cards. Of those 32, 26 show the same price and 6 do not. However, the prices that are listed on my invoice are all lower than the prices shown on the website at the conclusion of the auction, not higher. Based on my sample data, I believe it is also showing my max bid amount on the website as the hammer price, whereas the invoice via email has the actual winning bid amounts (which are lower). But when I click the link in the email to go to checkout, I am given the higher amounts.
I imagine this must be a glitch in their system that will get sorted out asap. I don't think they are stupid enough to have done this intentionally. I expect they'll send out emails correcting/addressing this shortly. If not, I will start shitting on them too. |
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I agree that in ALL of my interactions with PWCC they are very responsive, helpful and polite. They certainly do customer service right. That said, I just don’t like that I need to be mindful to change preferences in order to get my cards - it just feels like a trap for the unweary (and I am an unweary!). That should be changed - the default should be all cards and/or payouts are sent out unless one formally opts to have card put in vault or money kept on account |
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There are always going to be people that view a vault like PWCC's or Goldin's, that were intentionally set up in states that do not have sales taxes, as a way to get around having to pay sales tax on their purchases, especially since Ebay and more and more AHs are now collecting sales taxes due to changes in the sales tax laws following a Supreme Court ruling from a few years back. PWCC and Goldin use this as a marketing technique to attract more customers, since they offer buyers a way around sales taxes. And it is also a way to assure and increase future consignments for both companies should people leaving items in their vaults subsequently decide to sell something. If a person decides to sell an item and asks PWCC or Goldin for it back to do so, or that it be sent to another AH or consignment seller to be sold on their behalf, then I believe technically they may have triggered the use tax on the original purchase of the item now being sold. If the person wishing to sell an item in a vault just consigns it back over to PWCC or Goldin, it never leaves the non-sales taxing states those two companies are operating out of, and the seller doesn't trigger use tax on the sale of the item. And the subsequent sale by PWCC or Goldin of this consigned item to a new owner affords both sellers the chance to entice/persuade/coerce the new owner to avail themselves of the respective vaults they both operate. Which in turn gives PWCC and Goldin an inside track to gain future consignments from this new seller as well, and on and on. It is a somewhat ingenious way both PWCC and Goldin can take advantage of the inherent greed in many people by having devised a way for them to get out of paying sales taxes on purchases, but also kind of locks those people in to staying only with PWCC or Goldin if they want to maintain that sales/use tax-free status going forward then. Obviously a vault isn't for everyone, especially the old guard hobby collectors and purists who want to actually be able to hold and look at their cards and collectibles in hand, not just look at scans. But with a vault, an owner doesn't have to worry about where or how to store items, probably helps for insurance and record keeping purposes also since everything will be catalogued and supposedly maintained in a safe and secure environment. And if they do want to share what they own with others, I'm assuming they either have or can get a digital record of what they do have residing in a vault. And as already noted, if an owner does decide to let something go, they can easily and simply just have it consigned to the brother/sister company of the vault that handles sales. And a vault obviously isn't needed (or wanted probably) by a dealer who already is registered as such and can supply a resale sales tax exemption certificate to whomever they are buying something from, as a vault doesn't save them any sales taxes. However, there is a potential grey area in regards to triggering use tax when it comes to taking things out of a vault and having them sent to a state that does have a sales and use tax. If you buy something, have it put into into a sales tax-free vault, and then right away take it back out of the vault and have it sent to your home, that should most definitely trigger a use tax liability if you reside in a state with a sales tax. But what if you wait 6 months before taking an item out of a vault, or a year, or 5 years? To my knowledge, individual states do not have general or specific time threshholds on how long you may have owned something like baseball cards before it is exempt from use tax when bringing it into a new state. Think of this. What if you lived in a sales tax free state your entire life, and had all your furniture, clothing, and belongings purchased in that same state, so you never paid sales tax on anything. And then you move and take all your belongings, furniture, and clothes with you to your new home, in a state that does have sales tax. Do you now have to suddenly pay use tax on everything you had acquired over your entire lifetime to the state you just moved to? Most likely not. But what about on a new living room set you purchased in your old state with no sales taxes the week before you moved to your new home state? See how complicated this can get? This is again a reason to review your own particular case with your accountant or tax professional if you are planning on removing items from a vault, and to also review the sales and use tax laws for the applicable state you're going to move those items to. What I don't know is what, if anything, PWCC and Goldin tell their vault customers in regards to sales and use tax issues, and if they even try to forewarn them of any potential sales/use tax liabilities if they remove items from a vault. Maybe some people that do use their vaults can fill us in and share what they know. I would also not be surprised if down the road, companies that set up sales tax-free vaults like this don't start to attract the attention of other states that do charge sales and use taxes, and potentially try to force the vaults to report/share information with them. |
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The concept is potentially good for the right person. ie investors. Also many like it so that you can take a loan against it (in some cases) for extra funds
Other auction houses are trying to duplicate this basic concept. But I am more a collector and would prefer to have the cards under my control and more accessible. Also since I am not comfortable in general with PWCC reputation it just makes me pause. In addition the time it can take to get the card processed in and out of their vault also concerns me(as mentioned above in the thread) So I am sure this service is right for many people and all well and good but it is just not for me |
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Here's another way to look at this though. Say you have a house and live in a state with a sales tax, but also own a second home (vacation home) in a state without sales tax. And all the furnishings and belongings in the vacation home were purchased in that state so no sales taxes were paid on any of the belongings and furnishings in it. And then after years of owning the vacation home you had to sell it, and end up moving all the furnishings and belongings in it back to your main home in a state with sales and use taxes. Do you now owe use tax on everything you brought back to your main home and state you officially reside in, even if items you brought back were originally purchased years, or even decades, ago? See how this can get confusing? I bring up the concept of a time threshhold because though most states don't generally have any actually written into their sales and use tax laws, there are specific instances where such a time threshhold can exist in some circumstances. Say in my example the main house was in California and the vacation home in Oregon, which is where PWCC and their vault is, with no sales taxes. And in addition to all the belongings and furnishings in the vacation home being purchased in Oregon without sales taxes, the owner had purchased a car that is licensed, registered and been kept at the Oregon property also. So no sales tax was paid on it either. And again, for whatever reason, the Oregon vacation home is sold and everything is moved back to the main residence in California, including the car. Now California sales tax laws say nothing specific in this case about potential use tax owed on the furnishings and other belongings, but they do have very specific rules regarding the car. In this case, if the car had been originally purchased in Oregon less than one year ago before now moving it to California, the owner owes sales tax to California in the amount of whatever the sales tax would have been had the owner originally purchased the car in Calfornia, less the actual sales tax originally paid when the car was actually purchased in Oregon. And in this case since Oregon has no sales tax, California is owed sales tax on the original sales price, in full. However, if the car had been purchased one year or more before moving it from Oregon to California, then under California law the car is now exempt from sales and use taxes entirely, and the car owner owes $0 to California for sales/use tax. And this is what I mean about a possible implied time threshhold for the exemption from use tax for property being brought into a state. In this case, if California is going to exempt sales/use tax charged on a car purchased more than a year before moving it to CA, you would assume and expect that they would at least give the same time period threshhold for exemption from sales/use tax for all other property being brought into the state, such as furnishings and other belongings. But since nothing is specifically written in CA sales and use law like this exemption for property other than vehicles, I would advise checking with a tax professional familiar with CA sales and use tax laws, and even contacting the appropriate CA taxing authority to see if they can provide further guidance on a potential time threshhold for use tax exeption of other property being brought into the state. Now this example and rule regarding cars is specically just for California. You would want to look into and review the sales and use tax laws in whatever state you would be moving property to, to see if you can find similar instances like CA where they specify a time threshhold for a use tax exemption, and likewise contact a tax professional knowledgeable in that particular state, as well as actually contacting the appropriate state taxing authority for additional insight and to see what they can tell you about possible time threshholds for use tax exemption. So at the end of the day, items you put into a sales tax-free vault may be removable at some point without triggering use tax. But, you need to research it and look into the sales and use tax laws of the applicable state(s) involved. Clear as mud, right? Welcome to the world of taxes, and in this case specifically state sales tax law. |
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Who knows down the road though? They clearly are smart and ahead of the game in realizing that our wonderful little hobby has gone from being just that, a simple hobby, to a booming industry with surging prices that have caught and grabbed ahold of the attention and interest of serious people in the investment industry. They've set themselves up to be at the forefront of this change from being a pure hobby to more of a serious investment vehicle. Just look at some of the threads we've had recently talking about a potential IPO by Topps, which was undermind by strategic investments of various professional sports leagues and player groups in a major distribution company which then apparently stole future licensing rights right out of the hands of Topps and other card companies. Or the takeover and privatization of the major TPG of our hobby, quickly followed by the announcement of their acquisition of another company heavy into AI technology. Heck, we're starting to read like the Wall Street Journal in some threads. The only thing we're still missing is for Warren Buffet to come out during Berkshire-Hathaway's next annual meeting and declare they're going to start heavily investing in sports cards. And if Buffet were to go even further and expand on how they'll focus on acquiring cards of who he felt was the greatest pre-war baseball player ever, and didn't name Ruth............I can only imagine the thread(s) that would generate on this forum!!!!!!!! :D |
PWCC responded to my inquiry. This is what they said regarding the discrepancy between the emailed invoices and the website hammer prices at checkout.
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For waht it's worth
I won a lot of cards the past two nights from PWCC and am bidding on a dozen more tonight. I believe their platform is very slow, and not the most use friendly. That said, eBay may be faster, but PWCC customer service is way better IMO. Hands down. Now I will be looking over that final invoice very carefully.
Bummed as I lost out on the '55 Jackie Robinson 8. And by only one increment. Rats! |
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You guys are making this tax thing way too complicated. The PWCC vault is in Oregon which has 0% sales tax and that is why PWCC is promoting the vault as a way not to pay sales tax. If you elect to to have your cards shipped to your home state and your state does have sales/use tax then PWCC (seller) is obligated to collect the sales tax for your state and remit it to that state's Department of Revenue. If for whatever reason PWCC does not collect the sales tax (which I highly doubt they would) then you (buyer) are obligated to self report any tax owed on either monthly or quarterly basis.
This is not complicated folks. |
That is a moot point if you are a business and have a valid resale cert.
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As an update.
My items have been curated into the Vault, I was given a quick tutorial on how to request be sent to me, which was easy to do. Then when I encountered Vault fees(all of $6.25) and some extra shipping due to insured value, which was correct but much higher than my winnings bids, due to the fact I got the cards well below value. They then waived these vault charges and extra insurance and I was back to the original amount and the cards will be shipped very shortly. As others have said their customer service is on an extremely high level! So, this all worked out. |
I'm shocked at the number of Net54 members still willing to deal with PWCC.
Just kidding...no I'm not. |
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So it makes no difference if you leave something in their vault for several years before then asking them to return the item to you? What if you left it there in their vault for over ten years before asking that it be returned? Or what if the item is in their vault for several years and instead of you asking them to return it to you, they go out of business and just ship everything back to you at your home address? Or how about this, you have an item in their vault and go to sell it, but decide to use a different seller/AH to list and sell it for you. So you have PWCC ship the item directly to your AH of choice, that just so happens to be in a different state than the one you live in. Do you now owe a use tax in the state you live in, even though the item is never shipped to and physically in your state of residence? Or do you possibly now owe a use tax to the state where the AH that is selling it for you is located, even though it will only be there for a short period of time while the AH completes the sale for you? And for another possible twist, what if you lived in one state when you originally purchased an item that went right into their vault, and a year or two later asked them to now return the item to you. But during the time the item was in their vault you moved to a different state that also had sales and use taxes? Do you have to report and pay the use tax to the state you no longer live in since that was where you were living at the time you originally bought the item and put it into the vault, or do you now owe use tax to the state you had moved to, even though you didn't live in that state when the item was originally purchased? And now here is the real ass-kicker question. Is the answer to each of these questions I just posed above going to be EXACTLY THE SAME in all 45 U.S. states that impose sales and use taxes on items being purchased? And for the record, use taxes are not necessarily always reported and paid on a monthly or quarterly filing basis. For example, in Ohio there is a line item on the state's annual individual income tax return where an individual taxpayer (or jointly filing couple) can report any use tax owed on purchases from the prior calendar year. Any such use tax due and reported will then either increase the amount of Ohio income taxes owed, or decrease the state income tax refund that would otherwise be received. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, think twice, even three times, and then still don't make simplified posts with generalized statements in regards to taxes, especially concerning state taxes where the laws and rules can vary in every single state, unless you truly know what you're talking about. Otherwise, all you're doing is putting conflicting information out there that someone else on this forum that doesn't know any better may read and erroneously follow. I thought one of the basic tenets of this forum was to try and help and educate each other. That is simply what I was trying to do for anyone on here who already had items in either PWCC's or Goldin's vault, or was thinking about putting things in their vaults sometime in the future. |
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Example. Card was at $180. I bid $200. Someone comes in during extended and bids $200. I win auction because I bid $200 first. I got email saying $190 was tots on one like that. Invoice showed the proper $200 when looking now. Waiting to pay and have them shipped to me (which is very easy so I’m not sure what you guys are talking about with being unable to do so) until all weeks auctions are done. |
Not being a vault fan, and a collector... if I wanted to win a auction and then have nothing in hand, I'd bid on an NFT.
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Question for those who did bid. I read the auction rules on closing, and there is nothing in there pertaining to who can bid in extended bidding.
Do you have to bid on an item prior to the 7PM Pacific closing, or can anyone bid in the extended bidding period? |
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Also it’s in the faq’s. |
I "won" something last night with PWCC (I never liked the word "won" for an auction--it's not like I am getting something free, I am paying a lot for this little piece of cardboard!).
The listed cost in the email and invoice were the same. It did default to vault but it was pretty clear about that and easy to click a button to send to my house. Shipping was $5 on a ~$400 purchase. So perhaps they have fixed some of the issues (at least related to these logistics, I realize that there are bigger issues!). The auction ended at almost exactly the price I would have expected for a PWCC eBay auction, for whatever that's worth. |
I won and sold a card here on net 54 . Im pretty happy🤭
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Ultimately in this industry it doesn’t matter about integrity it matters about the cards and money. |
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This dude doesn't subscribe, for example. :D
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Uh oh, looks like they're having server issues lol. Tonight's monthly auction listings suddenly disappeared 2 minutes before extended bidding started...
Will they cancel all the listings? Will they get it back up in time? Tick tock, tick tock... |
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