HiJacked Serial Numbers

thefootballcardstore

I was reading the thread titled "How do you turn in a fake auction(er) to EBAY" and thought I'd post something similiar.

Half of my vintage inventory has been hijacked by members from the set registry. It started out with a client emailing explaining they couldn't register a card because I had it registered. However, I only have a 1982 set registered. So I started digging. Someone, or many people have been registering our cards in their sets. Based on scans I would think.

Now I've been emailing PSA asking them to contact these people. We will have to start covering the serial numbers.

So, how people have had the same thing happen? Are the sets really that competitive? Does covering serial number wrong? Do e have any other choice?

Jeremy

1420sports

I would imagine that PSA would remove the card form the offenders set, and give a warning. If it happens again to the same person the set is gone.

It would be very easy to register a set based on eBay scans, but I do not see what the point would be.

Cheating is for cheats.

brucemo

Three free gradings.

bruce

GATOR5

Guys,


Anyone can hijack a cert just by punching in sub #'s...

Some folk know how to ruin a good thing..

Matt

Virtualizard

I wouldn't cover up the cert # in an auction. I know if I was looking at an auction (as a bidder) and saw that, I would be suspicious. That could only hurt you as a seller. It's a minor, temporary inconvenience to have to contact PSA about it. I had it happen to me a few weeks ago and PSA took care of the problem right away.

JEB.

JasP24

I'm not sure what the answer is, but requiring a picture to be loaded when adding cards would help. The retail websites could easily super-impose their pictures with the site name or initials. For ebay sellers, the normal sized ebay pic is so small, it would be easy to tell who got their pics from ebay. For those sellers with large pics, they would have to super-impose their site name or initials on the card. Or a simple "Property of" overlay.

I'm doubt EVERY ebay seller and website owner would go to the trouble of overlays, but I think it would cut down the "cheaters" significantly.

Bottom line, PSA should require pics to be uploaded by registry members. It really doesn't take much work to do it, and it I think it adds legitimacy to the set.

JasP24

thefootballcardstore

Wonderful - I'd like to make something clear. This was a problem over many different years, not just one year.
PSA has quickly taken care of all of the problems.
In one case, it really was just an honest mistake

I suppose I should leave the serial number on the scan - another option would be to register the cards till sold. But what a pain that would be. Pictures I wouldn't mind, but for some of the baseball people, dealing with 700+ scans just for one set might be a chore.

Thanks for the help - I imagine it would look bad.

Jeremy

Yzerman19C

Jeremy

The biggest problem with people registering cards that dont belong to them is when the legitimate card owner goes to register them they have to go through Gail which is a big waste of her time as well as ours. The more time Gail wastes on this area the less time she has to be doing more productive things.

I recently noticed an individually registering all kinds of cards from ebay scans including some auctions i had won that i had to ask Gail to correct. People like that should be thrown off the registry . 99.9 % of the people on the registry dont do this its the small portion that do make it annoying

As for selling cards on ebay without the serial number. i think it will cost you $$$ if you do. There is no easy answer

Randy

JeffVN

I'm agreeing with Randy - there is no easy fix for this one. Gail and BJ spend a huge percentage of their time runing down the multiple entry cards on the registrey, and have done so on several occassions for me on cards that I have tried to enter into my sets on the registry.

Ultimately, they should toss people off the regisrty for entering cards that they do not own onto the registry, the problem is probably more one of figuring out who they are and how frequently they are doing it. If they do figure it out, I'm sure they will take steps to ban these folks, as it is costing them big chunks of time (which means $$$$) to keep fixing the problems that these people cause.

MickeyC

Here's a spin on the topic...

I purchased a card from a PSA authorized dealer, with whom I've had successful transactions. The card got lost in the mail and I never received it. But, after I purchased it, I added it to my set, using the dealer's scan.

My concern is if I delete that card from the set, whoever stole it can add it to their set. If I keep it in my set, I'm hoping I eventually get that email from PSA saying, "someone is trying to add _____ to their set and you have it registered"..then I'll have my thief.

So, it can work both ways, I guess. Instead of hijacking the serial number, I'm holding it hostage!

Mark

Virtualizard

Mark,

That made me think of a way PSA could help. Maybe they could keep a database of cert #s that sellers and buyers report as lost or stolen. Then, if someone tries to register the cert #, action could be taken to trace the history of the missing card. Maybe PSA could set it up so that the person registering the card could complete the process and not know that the information has been recorded about them registering a suspect card. I wonder if PSA would be willing to do this?

JEB.

MickeyC

It's a great idea, but the execution of it would be a problem. I'd have to prove to PSA that I own the card, send them a receipt, they verify it, blah blah blah...Don't think it's something they want to do on their end, but I'd definitely want to have something like that in place.

Mark