Hobby terms that annoy you

[seanofjapan]

Originally Posted by rats60

I have been on EBay about 20 years and have never been burned by a US buyer. I have also done lots of trades within the US and have never been burned. I have had problems with over seas buyers. The last one resulted in me getting a negative because the card arrived "damaged." The card was sent insured, so the buyer could have filed a claim. I also offer returns on all my items. I guess the buyer thought I would let him keep the card and give him a big discount. People like this make me not want to sell out of the US, it is just not worth the hassle.

Sorry to hear about that. Obviously I can't speak for the entirety of the 7 billion people living outside the US, and I sympathize, but I guess I kind of find it frustrating that when (I surmise) sellers have a problem with a scammer in one country like that they just ban the entire world instead of buyers from that one country.

So let me just make my pitch to all you ebay baseball card dealers in favor of perhaps taking a more selective approach to the problem.

Take Japan (where I live) and South Korea (a country I've been to for work several times). It is extremely unlikely that anyone will be scammed by your average Japanese or Korean on Ebay. They are extremely honest societies and while as with every society they do have scammers, they are almost exclusively associated with organized crime syndicates who concentrate solely on domestic scams.

Combined those countries have a population of close to 200 million, baseball is by far the most popular sport and baseball card collecting is a hobby in both countries.

Its a massive potential market but for some reason whenever a scammer in Uzbekistan ( or wherever, sorry Uzbekistan) takes a seller for a ride, they cut the cord on innocent Japanese and Korean buyers too (I'm not Japanese BTW, I just live here). That cuts off a huge potential market.

I've never sold baseball cards on ebay but I do have a lot of experience selling other stuff on forums and I've also been burned on a few transactions and there are a few known countries out there where this is a problem (mainly Eastern Europe) and it seems easy to avoid without cutting off everyone.