Scammers in the Buy Sell Trade Section
 

Over the last 2 days there have been at least 2 scammers trying to get members to do deals on the BST. Neither had gotten approved and slipped in through the cracks. Be very, very careful about new members over there and ALWAYS PM me so I can look into any strangeness. Be careful over there.

https://luckeycards.com/phunc1929pontiacgehrigprem.jpg

Leon, maybe we need a new "BST Authentication Service". Anytime a deal is done on BST, the card has to be sent to you for "Authentication" and then you forward on to the buyer.

I'm kidding, I'm kidding :)

And maybe, Leon, you can grade and slab the deal! Let us know how much that will cost and what your turnaround time will be, please.

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Scammers
 

I know this may sound crazy but I think there should be a way us regular Net54 users can see these known scams after they are discovered so we can learn what to look for better. Kind of like free tuition to the School of Hard Knocks……

The "Luckey Vault" has a nice ring to it...

Leon's Grading
 

Hi Leon, Can you also employ a reduced cost grading scale using only grades 5-10 so that I can trick buyers into thinking their grade 5 is actually EX and their 9 is actually a "mint" card?

Ha!!! Ha!,,, not so far fetched. I won’t go through the whole story. Bought a Ty Cobb T205 on ebay, sent for grading, came back counterfeit. The seller would not return my money. Fast forward 10 years, that same seller won a card I was selling on ebay. I told the story on Net54, he was member here. Outed him. Lots of action on this site. Finally the seller decided to return my money 10 years later. But we did not trust each other, came to an agreement, I sent the counterfeit card to Leon, he sent the money to Leon. Leon, the Great guy he is sent the card to him and the money to me. It was over $1000.00. Thanks agin Leon. Joe

That has to be some kind of record. A refund ten years later, wow!

Yes, for sure.

Chief Bender waited over 40 years for the Dillsburg, Pennsylvania baseball club to pay the money they owed him from a game in 1901.

I don't even remember that, Joe. But I am glad I could help. There are probably a few more stories out there....

The most time I gave a refund was 2 yrs...to a forum member. He got mad at me and said he didn't know it was the wrong guy on the card....it was Daffy Dean and he said he thought it was Dizzy...so I refunded him. I think he was banned before that. Maybe that had something to do with it.
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Not sure if this was one of them but I noticed one persons first post was trying to sell a T210 Joe Jackson. Selling that card as your first post has to be a red flag even if they turn out legit.

EDIT: looked and that person is now banned

And to think I as many of you used to trust folks and send cash through the mail.. Sad that times have changed for the worse..

Speaking of scams and keeping an eye out, is there anywhere on the boards that gives the reputation of other members? On a very similar board I watch (BlowOutForums), they have an "iTrader" page which gives feedback of transactions on the site. Is there anything similar hear? I imagine after a few years on this site, I will get an idea of who is trustworthy, but as a "newbie" on the site, it is hard to assess who is trustworthy beyond the number of posts (which is not the best indicator). As a new guy, I imagine if I engaged in a trade, I would be the first to ship which I am totally fine with, but how does a new guy know they are dealing with a reputable member?

Until you get it figured out only pay with regular Paypal so you have protection. I have been on here for a while and have sent decent piles of cash to members I trust in the past.

There was a time when I sent cash in birthday cards and US Postal Money orders for card purchases. About a million years ago, eBay used to let sellers take checks and money orders...

Yep. Deals were made often where the cards were mailed pre payment. I have a relationship with several here where that's still the case. Not recommending it for all! After dealing with someone for 15 years the trust has been built

In the early days of eBay, I think those were the only ways to pay. I remember mailing out plenty of checks to pay for cards I won, then waiting for the check to get there, get deposited and cleared, then for the card to be shipped and finally get to me. It's funny now when you see people post stories about buyers complaining when they don't receive a card in 3-4 days. Back then, it was usually a minimum of 2 weeks.

In my early eBay days, and at a point in time where I'd been on Net54 a bit, I won an early 1960s Popcorn card of somebody, a B&W card of no significant value of some player I wanted a card of... I'm at work, and during a break I peak at the auction, and I see I've won. I get home that evening, and after supper I email the seller (who, unknown to me, was occasionally on Net54) asking him if he wanted a check, money order, or what for payment, and I sent him my address. I go to bed. Next day, I get an email from him, saying he didn't care how I paid, and that he'd already mailed the card. He felt he knew me from Net54 and he was confident I'd send payment (I think it was about $4.00, give or take a few cents). I'm reading that in the evening after another workday. I mail payment the next day, and the day after that the card arrives in Kentucky from California. Sometimes we're a trusting bunch...

I think the seller was the same guy who wrote what follows in his initial email to me. I saw it, and I wondered what weirdo ball collector was sending poetry, because at first glance it looked like a poem. It wasn't. And I loved it, commited it to memory. Here goes:

"I like to sit outside, drink beer, and hollar at people.
If I do this at home, the police are called and I go to jail.
But if I do this at a baseball game, I fit right in."


I figure if one of you guys came to Kentucky and joined me in my front yard, roadside, a cooler between us, beer in hand, that as we hollared at passersby we'd last about 15 minutes before the police arrived.

But if we went down to Nashville or up to Bowling Green for a minor league ball game, we could drink beer and hollar at one team, both teams, the umpires, and they'd sell us more beer.

Thanks Frank, that made me smile

Maybe I've just had dumb luck, but I've sent many people on the BST section of the board a PayPal FF payment and always gotten what I ordered. I had one mix up recently where I was sent the wrong card. But I sent it back and the correct card was sent plus $5 cash for my trouble. There are many great collectors on Net54. Now if it's someone that only has 1 post and joined the board yesterday, I'm not going to order from them. I'm trusting, but not stupid. ;)

Probably not dumb luck. There are a lot of great people on here. I have done 100s of deals on here and really only got screwed once. I made a trade very heavily in their favor and was OK with that part. Then the 2 cards that arrived where complete garbage. It was a long time member that quit posting not long after that. Have a kinda strange one going on now. Made a deal a month ago and mailed my side out the same day. Still have not received my my part of the deal. Holding out hope as I have done many deals with them before.

A few thoughts from a BST frequentier:
1. I love it.
2. I've never had a bad transaction that I can recall. Scammers are pretty easy to sort out and a little conversation over pm, email or text pretty much seals the deal with someone's intentions so I do my best to communicate.
3. I'm not concerned with whether a sold item retains it's original price and believe the OP owns that decision.
4. Deleting posts is bad.
5. My only request is that cards I want be listed too high for others interest and secretly 90% off for me.

Not if we put a sign up saying "you honk we drink":D

I think we would all like #5.:D

I tried the Jedi mind trick of posting "these is not the cards you are looking for". It didn't work as the cards quickly got 2 more bids.

Probably bought and sold 100's of card to members. Can only remember a couple bad transactions. Big buy of T205's from a member in Canada. We agreed on a price and he got paid immediately. He then turned around and sold a few of the cards to other another board member for a few more $. If i remember I wrote a "crescendo of a post" about it. One of my first big deals on here.

Second was with a very well trusted board member that guaranteed cards to grade numerical but some came back an A and I wanted a refund. Acted like I was in the wrong for asking for a refund. Needless to say this member is a fraud and has continually slabbed altered cards.

Not sure if either are still active members but good ridden if not.

I am completely new here, and joined because of an eBay seller telling me they could negotiate but only source of contact they would give was here.

I have messaged them on here several days ago but haven't gotten any response, I am new to forums such as this period so maybe I did something wrong, I am not sure...

At any rate, I joined a few days ago and have just enjoyed browsing conversations on the vintage and the knowledge, so thank you for having me!

and purple stickers....gotta have purple stickers....

Welcome Aboard - Great Group here.........

LOL, now that is funny.:D:D:D

Welcome to the board. I am sure if you contact Leon or a moderator they could help you with contacting the member. Any chance you have a OPC Gretzky RC w/blue lines?

Caveat emptor:
- the principle that the buyer alone is responsible for checking the quality and suitability of goods before a purchase is made.

It's right at the top of the Buy/Sell/Trade sections. I had never heard that Latin phrase before, and had to look up what it meant. It's usually fairly easy to sort out when someone is legit. Personally, when I see a card for sale that I think I want, I do have to remind myself to slow down and just go over some basic details that help rule out some of those red flags.

I've only been a member here for 6ish years, and I've made ~20 deals. Nothing but good things to say about the collectors here.

Well I haven't been as fortunate as you have, but for the most part I agree with you.

Now that you can't sort cards by era on eBay, BST here is pretty much my only source of cards. It's not worth wading through 6000s copies of cards from that 1991 set that uses Conlon photos.

And while I've done fewer deals here than some, I've still done plenty. And have never had a problem.

I do not, I only own a Topps Gretzky

Nat,

I feel your pain and despise the way Ebay changed their search function and eliminated cards by era searches also. You do know though that you can do a search and type in things you don't want to have come up, like modern Conlon cards? Just type the word Conlon in the search box with a minus sign in front of it, like this: -conlon

And you can add as many other things you also want to remove from searches as you like. Similarly just type them in the search box also with a minus sign in front of what you want removed from the search. Just remember to leave a space between each separate thing you want removed from the search, don't type it all in as one continuous word/entry. And when you finally have a search with all the items you want excluded from it entered, save the search so you don't have to go typing it all in again.

My apologies if you already knew this, but from your post it seemed like you may not be aware of this search option/function.

Or you can do something like this:

card (nabisco,welch,sugar daddy) -(raquel,1993,1994,1992,"Bob Welch","Noah Welch")

It means I'm looking for a "card" that has ("nabisco" OR "welch" OR "sugar daddy") AND does NOT contain any of the list of items in the parenthesis with the minus sign in front.

I find it easier to include everything within parentheses separated by commas like this:

-(1996,reprint,rp,etopps)

which will eliminate items with any of the following in the title: 1996, reprint, rp, etopps.



Similarly, you can search for one out of list of things by including them in the parentheses without a -sign in front like this:

(1958,58)

which will yield results with either 1958 or 58 in the title:





A combined search for a 1958 Mantle might look something look this:

(1958,58) Mantle -(1996,reprint,rp,etopps)

I was just offered a Babe Ruth rookie for $900 because he needs cash for his sick mother and to send his son to school :D

He said he got my email from here and saw my post looking for Ruth Boston items.

Well - If you dont want it - I will take it. Could you forward the contact info???

Thanks

So if he or she is a member tell me the ID and they won't be any longer. But there are scammers contacting our members off of the forum too...
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These are from the BST long ago...the Arrelanes came from the original Trucker Boy find and boomeranged back to me after my first collection sale.

https://luckeycards.com/pd311x2.jpg

He told me his n54 name was Drumback which is obviously not true.

That Melchoir looks like a scammer trying to run away after Net54 figures out he's trying to scam people. :D

I remember sending cash for low-dollar eBay transactions. $20 or less. Didn't feel like waiting for a check to clear and didn't want to pay the fee for and go to the trouble of getting a money order. Never had a problem. But that was quite a while ago.

I sent and received many PWEs with cash and change taped to a piece of paper. I think it was an extra 11 cents the USPS would charge me when the sender had too much weight from the change.

When paying, I'd just round up and send all bills instead of worrying about exact change -- or having the coins signal to anyone that the PWE contained cash of any sort.

I have to say, whenever I do a deal on here, I do have a certain sense of trust. Never been led astray, the deals are fair, and it's always a good experience (at least so far). I've never encountered, and probably will never encounter again, such a fantastic community.

Thanks Tim, Wasn't aware of that little nuance with the parenthesis. Will have try that method as well.

Yep Same here.... KUDOS All!

I have only completed around 20 transactions here on Net54, but I can say that all of the deals have gone fairly smooth. There was a delay with USPS on one, but with some good communication and patience everything went well. This has been a good site for BST and info.

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The MO on these scammers is they generally won't have any posts or very few. They will have joined in the last 30 days, usually much less. One just tried to scam a member today or yesterday. Scammers id was/is Davehunk107.

Many of the names and id's recently, of these scammers, have "dave" in them....I hope Dave is having fun LOL.
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There's a HAL 9000 joke in there somewhere.

Open the BST doors, HAL.
I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.

Dave's not here, man.

I hope HAL doesn't keep out all the Daves. :(

Just want to bump this as I am getting pm's almost daily of scammers on the BST. Same MO.....Very few or no posts, just registered....although the time they registered isn't definitive as they can register and just lay low, as the one did just now... Please be cautious and PM me .....no one that has pm'd me before a transaction has ever gotten scammed. If they have 100+ posts they aren't a scammer. They might be something else but not that.
thanks

Yeah I keep getting pms from an account with 0 posts saying that I should email some random address to get the cards I’m looking for.

Please PM on all of those and I can at least ban them and their IP.....
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hahaha, now that is where I would have headed too.

NO, I'm DAVE!!!!!

What?????

I'm a lot of things, but not a scammer :D

A few more scammers the last few days. Still the same MO's.....just joined with no posts or just a few...and a price too good to be true.

IF someone with low a post count and a price too good to be true makes you an offer send them my way please!

I keep bumping this so our members will know what is going on. These scammers crawl under the door to the BST and never have registration info on file.... because they are effing scammers... :)
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I received a response earlier this morning from a WTB request that I had posted on Saturday in the 20-49 BST. It read, "Hello I’m sure my brother still have that for sale and the best way to contact is via email XXXXXX@gmail.com" (actual email address removed). Nothing suspicious there :D. By the time I did some digging into the unfamiliar username, it had been banned. Thanks for staying on top of it Leon.

Regards,
Mark

Mark, you have a sharper eye than me… I actually had 3-4 e-mail connections with his “brother” before it finally dawned on me that this was a total scam. I reached out to Leon and found out this dude was full of crap and was banned.

Not sure what the scam would have been but the guy seemed desperate to know my mailing address (which I never gave). Not sure what the scam would have been, but I did want to share the “where are you? What is your address?” was the MO of this creepy scammer.

Not quite burned… but closer than I’d like to be.

The perp probably only wanted to violate your daughter and burn your house down. Too many crazies out there to suit me.

I think it was that message which warranted, at the time, a call from the FBI.... After they spoke to his dad it never happened again. :)

And back to topic, the scammers are still trying to get in so everyone please be aware.
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Help them out
 

Let’s give them their own section in BST :

The Scam section, any years or cards you’d like…

The lack of sales could be a deterrent to posting more scams.

But seriously there should be some mechanism to keep low post members from selling . They wouldn’t have seemed to “earn” that right yet .

And they surely haven’t participated or contributed to the board/community if their first three posts are selling Cobb and Ruth and Mantle RC.

Maybe we should.
A longtime member got burned today for a few hundred dollars. The scammer on the bst had 0 posts and joined in the last day or two. The scammer said his brother had some card or something. And our member sent Venmo, so there is no recourse. I hate that this stuff is still happening today. Everyone needs to beware or you will have a bad learning lesson.
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How about all things being equal (listing price, interest rate, response window), you list it on Net54, you have allegiance to Net54 community members. Else, why are we a community if don't support each other's acquisition pursuits?

Just got scammed
 

I am the guy Leon refers to in the previous post. Let me explain so it does not happen to someone else.

I ran a WTB for the two T3s needed to complete the set (happy about that!!). A guy PMed me with an account named dwynejames889 (now banned by Leon) who wrote " Hello I’m sure my brother still have that for sale and the best way to contact is via email lynchchris872@gmail.com"

I have done numerous transactions on the BST and am trusting of people, apparently too trusting. I did not check when the guy registered or anything. My bad.

The guy sends me a pic of a Paskert which looked great but I could not enlarge it and asked for a back scan. He supplied neither a pic I could enlarge nor a back scan. First red flag missed.

Then he had a Zelle account that he shared with someone. Another red flag but not as uncommon as you might think. His name is Christopher Lynch and the Zelle account was to Jonathan Pearl.

We had agreed on a price of $220 and I even threw in another $5 for shipping. This morning he emailed and said someone else had contacted him and wanted the card for $300 so he needed another $50. That is when I started checking into his history and contacted Leon.

Only out $225 so not the end of the world but should have seen it coming. Do as instructed in previous posts in this thread and see if the person offering you the item has a successful history on Net54.

Happy Collecting!

Leon,
Is there a way to 'quarantine' newbies, since this seems to be a quick hit enterprise? Obviously someone could bide their time, but it seems like most of these attempts have been new registrations?

A shame it has be that way, but awesome Leon that you are so diligent managing those.

There are no registrations for those scammers. They crawl in under the door, so to speak.
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Not sure what the scam would have been but the guy seemed desperate to know my mailing address (which I never gave). Not sure what the scam would have been, but I did want to share the “where are you? What is your address?” was the MO of this creepy scammer.

Could want your address to set you up for a robbery knowing you have a collection...

If you click on someone's user name, you can see how many posts they have made and how long they have been a member. There is also some personal info there about them. (If they don't fill it out that's a clue.)

You can also click on their user name to send a private message. You can ask them for references.

Leon is doing a good job at dealing with the scammers but we all should be doing our own diligence before we buy. And then if we still want to buy the card from that guy who just joined Net54 yesterday (because it's a $900 card the guy is selling for $200) then that's our choice.



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And I hate to say it, but another good reason to not always be posting pictures of man caves and collections on a public forum. Knock on wood, I've never heard of a member's house being robbed.......yet! And pray I never do.

FYI, the last 3 days I have received PM's each day about scammers on the BST. The MO has been the same....some guy says his brother has a card blah blah blah. So if anyone just registered and/or has no or very few posts AND they are offering to buy or sell cards, be very careful. A few times the banned person has kept contacting members through emails....Please, please keep PMing me....
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491. Cravin'-It Emptor
When your unbridled desire for a card causes you to be unaware of all of the red flags pointing to it being a scam.

It's not fool proof, but I do enjoy members who put successful transactions in their signature line.

I also do reference checks occasionally. I mostly buy Reds stuff, and I have asked other Reds collectors if they've don't business with XYZ.

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