Probstein123 Experiences

[bnorth]

Originally Posted by sbfinley

Personally, I have not agreed with him before. I've outted a handful of bad items or misleading listings to him in messages over the years which were all ignored with the exception of one time in which he (or an employee of his - it's been several years to be honest) argued with me over a series of messages that the signature below had been authenticated. They refused to pull the listing and someone paid almost $700 for the card.





PWCC, for better worse, has responded to all messages I've offered about incorrect listings and either pulled the item or amending the listing to describe the item correctly. No Probstein auction I ever alerted them about has been amended or pulled and almost always the auction ended with someone less educated overspending on a bad item.


That being said:




This is also true. I choose not consign with him for the reasons I listed above, but I still regularly buy from him because at the end of the day if someone has the item I want at the price I want then I could really care less about that person's business ethics. It's just baseball cards at the end of the day. I'm not holier than thou. I do my due diligence and caveat emptor.

Strangely I do care about the ethics of dealers with cards/memorabilia. Weirdly I have bought a few watches from some seriously sketchy people.

[charlietheexterminator]

Bought from Probstein and sold through Probstein, never an issue. I recently needed to raise some funds quickly for a large purchase, told this to Rick. I overnighted some cards to him, he posted them that day. The auction was over the following Tuesday evening, the next day the funds were in my account. He did the right thing by me.

[Rhotchkiss]

As a buyer, I have never had an issue with Probstein. I have never sold anything with him. Two major differences between Probstein and PWCC (1) Probstein does not advise “clients”, opine on condition with stickers, or put out “market” info; instead, he just lists the item, often with nominal or insufficient description, and (2) I am not sure, but I do not think he takes economic positions in most/many items he sells via auction; he does have BINs but not sure if those are his or clients looking for exposure. Probstein seems to be a true eBay storefront/consignor, listing other people’s stuff en mass and moving product for people. To me, he is not a true AH but just a mass mover of stuff on ebay.

[Snapolit1]

Originally Posted by Rhotchkiss

As a buyer, I have never had an issue with Probstein. I have never sold anything with him. Two major differences between Probstein and PWCC (1) Probstein does not advise “clients”, opine on condition with stickers, or put out “market” info; instead, he just lists the item, often with nominal or insufficient description, and (2) I am not sure, but I do not think he takes economic positions in most/many items he sells via auction; he does have BINs but not sure if those are his or clients looking for exposure. Probstein seems to be a true eBay storefront/consignor, listing other people’s stuff en mass and moving product for people. To me, he is not a true AH but just a mass mover of stuff on ebay.

+1. I agree. To my eyes he presents a totally different business model than PWCC.

I don't see him making the kind of affirmative representations of expertise as PWCC does. PWCC is almost like your personal card financial advisor.

Complaining to him that he should not sell a particular card that you don't like how its graded to me seen akin to complaining to Amazon that they shouldn't refuse to sell "Bob's Natural Dog Treats" because they don't satisfy your definition of the word natural.

I haven't checked but believe he typically has like 70,000 items for sale at any given time.

I'm sure others disagree strenuously.

[GeoPoto]

I have bought from Probstein many times without any problems. I have never consigned anything to him. But I do auction discards on eBay and while I would accept (timely) returns for any reason, I do think the TPG slab (and the scan) should preclude post-sale disputes regarding condition, unless the card is credibly outed by BO or some similar process. Everybody has to live with the limitations of the TPGs to screen out all alterations and the possibility that any given card may or may not have been altered prior to grading. Absent complicity in the alterations, I don't see how you can expect the seller to be responsible for theoretical imperfections in the history of a card that he purchased graded and is now selling.

[wondo]

I consign with Rick. Fast turn around and attentive service. A bonus is that he will move $30 items.

[Case12]

For me, fine low dollar and high volume dealer.