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.

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.

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

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

He is now using gemmintsports123 as his ebay username.

Be careful.

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

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.

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?!

You can bring cards in person if you schedule an appointment and are paying for walk through service. I have recently done this myself.

Great. Thanks!

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

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.

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

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.

Pays to be careful. Very smart Dave. Glad you got to the bottom of it!!

Jeff

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.

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.

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!

Thanks
 

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!

If you see one of these, just stop.

It's not going to work out. For you.

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*.

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.

Don't think it was criticism. Take your blinders off and read again.

Blinders off, read again. The criticism-o-meter is still pointing to "yes."

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.

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)

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.

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:

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!

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.