Rooky13

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Posted By: Ryan Christoff

First, let me say that I’m a little leery of posting in great detail about the situation since it appears there will have to be legal action taken. The bottom line is, I just want my money. And I don’t want others to go through the same experience I’m going through with the same person. I’m not looking to ruin anyone’s reputation here. If anyone’s reputation is affected by this deal it is due to their actions, not my posting about it.

Certainly there are numerous board members who have sold to Rooky13 on ebay and been paid promptly with no problem whatsoever. I check the auctions won for Rooky13 regularly and they have won plenty of cards during the 5 months that I have not been paid. If these auctions weren’t being paid for they’d have been NARUd a long time ago. I could have easily been paid off in full months ago had they paid me instead of buying more cards on ebay.

I also know for a fact that several major auction houses are in the same boat I’m in and are owed much more than I am. As far as I know, however, nothing is being shipped until payment is received.

I would prefer not to name the auction houses as I’m sure that these dealings have been bothersome enough without having to get involved on this board. If that’s not good enough and you think I’m lying or embellishing the truth, so be it.

I really don’t know how to explain this whole deal without it becoming a 300 page report, but I’ll try my best to summarize: Over a year ago I was contacted by Jorge Marce who said he’d found my website and was interested in cards of Negro League HOFers for a client of his. I sent some scans and some prices and nothing became of it, which is not too surprising. I get similar e-mails at least once a month and very often people have no idea how rare or expensive some of these cards are. I assumed that was the case here. Well, several months later, in February of this year, Jorge contacted me again and said his buyer was serious about getting cards of HOF Negro Leaguers. This time he put me in contact with Sergio directly and I spoke to him over the phone and got a better idea of what he was looking for. He asked me to put together several different groups of cards for him to consider buying. For example, one high-grade high-dollar group of the best cards in the best conditions, one low-grade, lower-dollar group that would at least fill some gaps in his collection but not cost as much, and several mid-range lots that had some high-grade cards as well as low-grade cards.

The prices began at $29,000 for the lowest group and $90,000 for the highest group. He wound up choosing the $90,000 group. We ultimately agreed on $85,000 after I added 2 other cards. One of the conditions of the deal was that I hand-deliver the cards instead of risking loss or damage by shipping them. We picked a date for me to fly to Miami and on April 15th I flew down to complete the deal. A few days earlier he had called to tell me that he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to pay me in full, but would be able to pay most of it on April 15th with the rest in a few weeks. He offered to postpone our meeting until he had all of the money but I had already purchased the plane tickets and re-arranged by schedule regarding my wife and kids, so I decided keep the meeting on the day we agreed upon.

You can read about the meeting in the link above to the thread I wrote back in May. I had brought a few other cards to show him and he actually wound up buying one of them for $1,750. This made the total amount of the deal $86,750. I received $40,000 that day. I was told it would be a few weeks for the rest so I asked for a contract to be drawn up and signed stating that he owed $46,750 to be paid within 30 days. We chose 30 days instead of 2 weeks in order to be sure there was plenty of time to pay without a problem.

Soon after that I won about $15,000 worth of stuff in one of the major auctions. I found that Sergio also won a bunch of stuff in the same auction. Since he was going to be sending them money any way, and since $15,000 of the money he was going to send me was just going to be sent right to the same auction house, I asked if he would mind sending them payment for my invoice when he sent payment for his. He agreed to this and spoke to the auction house about it. They agreed that this was okay. That was back in May. To this day, it has not been paid and my reputation with this auction house has undoubtedly been damaged. It looks like I’ll just have to do whatever I need to in order to get the money and pay the auction house myself.

Over and over I was promised again and again that I would be paid and that the auction items would be paid. I was even guaranteed that I have the auction items by the National, which was still several months away. I hadn’t even considered that I might not have the stuff by then. I planned to have almost all of it there for sale. Wishful thinking, I guess.

So in the period from April 15th until July 21st I received a total of $5,000. This left a $41,750 balance. On July 22nd I received a check for $10,000. The check cleared and left a balance of $31,750.

Several times I asked for him to just send some of the cards back and we’ll call part of the deal off. But he wanted to keep the cards and promised, as usual, to pay me. The check for $10,000 was actually supposed to be for the full amount of $41,750 but he said he had a huge real estate deal closing on August 23rd and if I could just wait a little longer he’d make it up to me. He even offered to pay me 10% interest. I told him I just wanted the rest of the money he owed me, but if he wanted to pay interest maybe we could apply it toward his next purchase. At this point I was still willing to entertain the idea of doing business with him again, I’d just be sure to be paid in full FIRST. After thinking about how much money I’ve paid out in interest for debts I have that could have been paid if he’d paid me on time, I sent him an e-mail accepting his offer of 10% interest. Needless to say, there is a 0% chance I will get any interest at all. He said he was netting $1,000,000 from this August 23rd real estate deal.

A few days ago I received another check which, if it clears, will bring the balance down to only the $15,000 for the auction items I won. So the amount I’m being taken for might wind up being only $15,000. Yes, only $15,000. Lucky me.

I finally considered the possibility that the plan might be to screw me on the remaining balance when I found out that he paid off the auction house for his items, but didn’t pay for mine. It’s possible that the only thing keeping me from being completely taken is the fact that the auction house will not send him his items until he pays for mine, since he had agreed back in May to do so. That might be the only hope I have of ever getting paid.

I could go on and on about unreturned phone calls, and empty promises, etc. but hopefully what I’ve written gives a good enough idea of what’s happened.

For those who find it hard to believe that a collector with a $2,000,000 collection would handle a deal this way, all I can say is, I agree with you.

-Ryan