What a Deal!!
 

[url]http-ROOKIE

oh boy......

From what I can tell, the seller had never dealt in baseball cards before, let alone very expensive ones.

This may have been the last opportunity for any of us to get a '52 Topps Mantle for what I could describe as 'normal' pricing.
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He required immediate payment come on. I can guarantee that card is in a fake holder.

Ok... I am ignorant...
 

Thanks for posting. Being relatively newish back to card collecting, I have some questions about this. It seems that it assumed that the card is a fake an the seller is a fraud. When I look at this I see:

Cons:
1) Low price. If it is too good to be true, it probably is.
2) Quick sale. Wanting to sell within 48 hours is a red flag.
3) Not a regular seller of vintage baseball. Most of the other stuff it looks like the seller is listing are t-shirts, DVD's, board games and books.

I realize all of these are red flags.

Pros:
1) In a PSA holder with a registration number that matches the PSA listing.
2) The card looks to be in the approximate condition of a 3.5
3) Seller located in Canada. Isn't that where all of the high numbers were sold before they were dumped into the sea (Canada and the Northeast)?


So, here are my questions:
1) How easily is it to fake PSA holders?
2) I realize for expensive cards the provenance is important, but how do you draw the line on this? When do you trust the holder vs. the seller?

Like I said, I am trying to learn and understand, so any thoughts would be helpful here.

Additional red flag: No returns. The buyer might still be safe if the description listed this as a PSA-graded card because in that case you could send it to PSA for verification/reholdering and they would tell you if it was fake. You could then go through Ebay for a return because you bought somnething with an inaccurate description (though this would still be a gamble). This listing is careful to say nothing about the card being graded by PSA, you only have the picture for that, so if he sends you a fake PSA slab you would probably be stuck with it. With that said, crazier things have happened.