My experience with investinbaseball, a Net54 Advertiser

[Republicaninmass]

Sean reached out to me, and despite this thread, he offered me a card on my want list. I have to say I commend him for extending the olive branch, and he didn't let this thread get in the way of making a deal. I greatly appreciate it.

[bnorth]

Originally Posted by Republicaninmass

I just wanted to share my last two buying experiences with Invest in Baseball, an advertiser here on the boards.

In March I purchased a card via Buy in Now. I received a message from the seller saying

"Ted, I can't sell you that card... My lister grossly mispriced it."

I really didn't think anything of it, as mistakes do happen. I cant remember exactly, but it sold at auction less than 20$ over the buy it now price.



This take me to last night where a see a few well priced low pop cards via Buy it Now, as well as some HIGHER priced low pop cards. I can tell someone had done some homework, and I figure the "lister" is no longer "mispricing" cards. I thought I would give them another shot.


I hit the BIN for four cards, and pay. About 20 minutes later, all four sales, canceled, and refunded, with a note from the seller asking me if

(I am) "Republicaninmass from Net54".

Now this tips me off that because he has seen my ebay ID buying his cards, he ran to check past sales, realized his error, and is now going to simply "fix" his pricing errors. Apparently these types of "pricing errors" happen all the time.

Seller states

"It (pricing errors) happens many times a day. I do nothing but program spreadsheets and type numbers all day and mistakes happen"


Moments later, I then get a somewhat convoluted message saying

"Thank you for catching my pricing errors"

I dont know if this was meant to be funny in some way, but it provoked me to post.

Let me mention that Invest in Baseball has never brought cards to market that I can't find elsewhere, from sellers willing to sell at their advertised price. I will not be "buying", or "catching pricing errors" since I've never had a sale go through, on any more deals from this seller.

I think it is appalling that since I am on a message board, where the seller advertises mind you, my purchasing habits are scrutinized, and subsequently penalized, more so than someone who is not familiar with all the intricacies of buying and selling cards.


I'm not a huge buyer or seller on ebay, and I'm sure my business won't be missed. However I can't help but out of curiosity, wonder how many people, especially those from N54, might have come across these "pricing errors".

"You weren't the only person that had an order cancelled"


Good luck with your future business, I refuse to be a part of it.

Ted Sherman

That is crazy that the same thing happened both times. Unfortunately he is selling another members T206 lot and this news could hurt that members sales.

He is on my do not buy from list also and has been for a while.

[HRBAKER]

So if I infer correctly, he thinks you only hit the BIN on underpriced cards so anything you buy must be mispriced?

Thanks for sharing.

[Rookiemonster]

Yeah that's a joke but atleast you get to leave a ton of negative feed back .

[Leon]

I sent a link to Sean to see if he would like to respond.

[111gecko]

For what it is worth, I have done several transactions with them and all of them have been very smooth..

[Sean1125]

I have helped Ted get into shows for free prior to public access, given him free cards for autographs for emergency situations, and bought and sold to him in the past with no issues. For you to post this thread shows that no good deed goes unpunished.

A 1952 Topps Eddie Mathews was purchased for $650 among 7 other items that were cancelled. I had to cancel orders for three different people and pull the entire 1952 Topps set down. This was an isolated incident and you can see in our completed listing the entire set was pulled down late last night. We had to get tech support on the phone and had an emergency with the errors on this set. 100% of the items that "sold" were cancelled and this member was NOT singled out.

This was a gross spreadsheet and pricing error and you refused to accept that answer. I am so sorry that you could not let some pricing errors slide. If anyone would like to see a copy of my upload spreadsheet to in fact verify what I have said, I am more than willing to provide it.

Here is a photo from last night on our website showing how wrong these errors were:



Here is a photo showing the cancellations and the set being taken down (you are not alone):

[Mikehealer]

Originally Posted by bnorth

He is on my do not buy from list also and has been for a while.

This is probably the best way to handle this problem, there are way too many others to deal with. Why bother with the ones you don't like or trust.

[1952boyntoncollector]

I had had issues with Sean in the past, but if its an obvious pricing area no matter on the amount of cards than its understandable...if you were a consignor to Sean you wouldn't want your card sold at 10% market price you would want him to cancel the sale as an example..

if i had done that to you, i probably would of given you a coupon discount like 10% on future orders though to keep you happy

[Econteachert205]

I sold a bunch of cards to Sean only a few weeks ago. I said if they weren't as I described to let me know. He actually gave me a little extra cash after the fact because he thought they were a good deal to him. He's been fabulous and honest to deal with. I've had sellers cancel purchases because of a mislisted item probably 5 times. It happens.

[MattyC]

I have had Sean find me high dollar and low dollar cards over the years; I have had him help me sell when I needed to sell a piece to get a new one, and didn't have the bandwidth due to work-- and he's always been upfront, honest, and diligent. He responds promptly when I reach out, and I would recommend him to anyone.

He's a dealer, so he will never pay a collector's price, which is an important thing to keep in mind when a collector is trying to sell TO any dealer. As opposed to THROUGH the dealer. Though once we were able to match numbers on a larger deal, and he wired high five digits in my account immediately. That action talks.

Anecdotally, at a show once I saw him give a customer extra money, after he paid for and then bumped a card. I remember remarking to myself that not many dealers would do that, well after buying a card. I felt it was a stand up gesture and I felt it telling of his character.

Seems there was some kind of clerical error here, as opposed to anything nefarious. If I saw cards that were listed in such error on eBay I might hit the BIN, but I would understand if the seller saw and asked to correct his mistake, seems reasonable.

[atx840]

Never once had an issue dealing with Sean. He's personally gone out of his way to help me with other dealers or collectors on several occasions.

Looks like an error that's affected a significant amount of his items, makes sense to correct it and relist.

[vintagetoppsguy]

Originally Posted by atx840

Looks like an error that's affected a significant amount of his items, makes sense to correct it and relist.

Not taking sides here, but I think Ted's frustration is that this is the second time in a row this has happened. If that happened to you twice in a row from the same dealer, wouldn't you be frustrated? Again, not taking sides, so that said, Ted could have been more reasonable given Sean's past generosity to him.

[pokerplyr80]

How far below market value were the prices of the cards you tried to buy? I'll admit I would be upset if this happened to me twice in a row, especially from someone who advertises on this site. But if I was trying to take advantage of an obvious pricing error, I think I would just let it go.

[atx840]

I can understand the frustration. I've had purchases canceled due to what I assumed was the seller realizing it was me and suspicious they somehow missed out on a hidden error/scrap "gem" that I spotted.

Sometimes they where correct, usually not but I wouldn't post about it.

This does not look like one of those situations as Sean has a legitimate reason and did not single out anyone.