I think I got screwed on a 1977 pack

GeoffEighinger

I know it is questionable to buy an ungraded pack, but I put down $31 for a 1977 Topps Baseball pack.

After I bid, I unfortunately saw the seller's feedback was 90% (now 87.1%) so that's my bad as well.

Whaddya think?

1. No wax or gum stain
2. Cards are all awful
3. Condition was questionable
4. Shipped in a bubble mailer inside a Jiffy bag

secretstash

I think all his packs look fake and there are quite a few of these types of resellers on ebay.

Back of the pack is suspect imo and the corners are weak and broken showing wear. http://img.inkfrog.com/click_enlarge1.php?image=IMG_0497.JPG&username=andrewboyer1980&aid=403494173

Chalk it up as too good to be true and didn't follow the rules to check the seller.

GeoffEighinger

Yup! I'm mostly mad at myself.

grote15

That seller is a notorious resealer of vintage packs. Unfortunately, there are many of them on eBay. I would contact him and express your concerns. Many of these sellers will issue a refund in hopes you will not leave negative feedback.

grote15

BTW, you can check to see if the pack has proper collation by checking the backs of the cards to see what sheets they are from. An authentic 77 pack will contain a 7 to 3 split (from back of the pack) with 7 cards from one * or no asterisk sheets and last 3 cards leading up to the gum coming from the two ** sheet.

49ersGuy

New show coming this Fall: NBC Dateline's To Catch a Pack Thief

Cakes

@grote15 said:
BTW, you can check to see if the pack has proper collation by checking the backs of the cards to see what sheets they are from. An authentic 77 pack will contain a 7 to 3 split (from back of the pack) with 7 cards from one * or no asterisk sheets and last 3 cards leading up to the gum coming from the two ** sheet.

Now that is some valuable info, well done and thank you.

lawyer05

@GeoffEighinger said:
Yup! I'm mostly mad at myself.

@GeoffEighinger said:
Yup! I'm mostly mad at myself.

JOE TORRE !!!

Jimmy_Commonpants

Yeh, I got burned on an "unopened" box of 1990 Leaf Series 2 a few months back. It came from what appears to be a reputable dealer, but I think it came in a large lot they bought from a shop. The wrapper had been slit on the back end, most of the perforation on the lid was detached and its obvious someone had taken all the packs out and re-packed the box(well, this became obvious after I opened 3/4 of the box and had nothing other than 3 Randy Johnson and three to four of everything else). It had been fleeced of all the valuable cards(No Frank Thomas, Justice, Walker or Ryan) probably 20+ years ago when those cards were so high. If I remember correctly, Leaf was "lazy" that year and the card order replicates itself in both the packs and the boxes. If you figure out the "count" order, you only have to open a few in any given box to get the count "direction" down and then you can find the packs that had the Thomas and Justice(I believe the Nolan Ryan is with one and the Larry Walker with the other). So the packs with these four cards - and the corresponding cards that would be in those packs - were missing from the box when there should have been two complete sets(30 or so cards short of a set, and the cards I got all had 3-4 duplicates). I looked back at the guy's listing, and it doesn't actually say "sealed" box, so I just chalked it up to my mistake and wont deal with those guys again(after thinking about it, they should have known the box was likely tampered with, but no sense in demanding a refund and I'm not paying to send back the box of garbage).

dennis07

When you consider the millions of dollars that collectors are being taken for $31 is a small amount to pay.

garnettstyle

We are fortunate to have unopened experts like Grote here.

Gemyanks10

@dennis07 said:
When you consider the millions of dollars that collectors are being taken for $31 is a small amount to pay.

I don't care if it's 1 million, or 3 dollars. If it's my hard earned money and I pay for something, I want it to be the real deal.

dennis07

@Gemyanks10 said:

@dennis07 said:
When you consider the millions of dollars that collectors are being taken for $31 is a small amount to pay.

I don't care if it's 1 million, or 3 dollars. If it's my hard earned money and I pay for something, I want it to be the real deal.

Exactly! Unfortunately scams are so prevalent in the collecting world my point is if you are going to get bit then it's better to learn a lesson with $31 rather than a much higher number. I'm not intentionally doing a promo for PSA here but if it's not authenticated chances are good you are getting scammed.

clyden93

@dennis07 said:

@Gemyanks10 said:

@dennis07 said:
When you consider the millions of dollars that collectors are being taken for $31 is a small amount to pay.

I don't care if it's 1 million, or 3 dollars. If it's my hard earned money and I pay for something, I want it to be the real deal.

Exactly! Unfortunately scams are so prevalent in the collecting world my point is if you are going to get bit then it's better to learn a lesson with $31 rather than a much higher number. I'm not intentionally doing a promo for PSA here but if it's not authenticated chances are good you are getting scammed.

Hi guys, I'd be interested in your advice as to how to best avoid being scammed? I'm a collector myself and I find it's a massive problem

secretstash

@clyden93 said:

@dennis07 said:

@Gemyanks10 said:

@dennis07 said:
When you consider the millions of dollars that collectors are being taken for $31 is a small amount to pay.

I don't care if it's 1 million, or 3 dollars. If it's my hard earned money and I pay for something, I want it to be the real deal.

Exactly! Unfortunately scams are so prevalent in the collecting world my point is if you are going to get bit then it's better to learn a lesson with $31 rather than a much higher number. I'm not intentionally doing a promo for PSA here but if it's not authenticated chances are good you are getting scammed.

Hi guys, I'd be interested in your advice as to how to best avoid being scammed? I'm a collector myself and I find it's a massive problem

Buy graded packs. Ungraded is a land mine to the untrained eye and even then without the pack in person its a coin flip proposition. So you can do the buy and send back game to find good ones but it does get annoying all the returns from the scammers selling "unopened" packs.

jfkheat

If you see a seller that constantly sells the same type and years of packs at lower than market value don't buy from them. Always check sellers feedback. There are several known pack resealers on Ebay.
James

Trev

Like others have said make sure to always check out the sellers feedback. A lot of these "known" re-sealers will have negatives for that very action. A ton of quality articles and information floating around the web in regards to all sorts of counterfeit identifiers. A quick google search for: "item interested" + fake + counterfeit, may save you a bunch of $ in the future.

Also, as you can see, there are a lot of experts on this board, never hesitate to post a picture or link if you are having trouble determining a specific item or seller's legitimacy.

Trev

GeoffEighinger

eBay/PayPal has refunded me on this, FYI.

Dboneesq

Glad to hear that you got back your money!!!

Stone193

@Dboneesq said:
Glad to hear that you got back your money!!!

+1

ClockworkAngel

@Jimmy_Commonpants said:
Yeh, I got burned on an "unopened" box of 1990 Leaf Series 2 a few months back. It came from what appears to be a reputable dealer, but I think it came in a large lot they bought from a shop. The wrapper had been slit on the back end, most of the perforation on the lid was detached and its obvious someone had taken all the packs out and re-packed the box(well, this became obvious after I opened 3/4 of the box and had nothing other than 3 Randy Johnson and three to four of everything else). It had been fleeced of all the valuable cards(No Frank Thomas, Justice, Walker or Ryan) probably 20+ years ago when those cards were so high. If I remember correctly, Leaf was "lazy" that year and the card order replicates itself in both the packs and the boxes. If you figure out the "count" order, you only have to open a few in any given box to get the count "direction" down and then you can find the packs that had the Thomas and Justice(I believe the Nolan Ryan is with one and the Larry Walker with the other). So the packs with these four cards - and the corresponding cards that would be in those packs - were missing from the box when there should have been two complete sets(30 or so cards short of a set, and the cards I got all had 3-4 duplicates). I looked back at the guy's listing, and it doesn't actually say "sealed" box, so I just chalked it up to my mistake and wont deal with those guys again(after thinking about it, they should have known the box was likely tampered with, but no sense in demanding a refund and I'm not paying to send back the box of garbage).

If this was tampered, I'd guess it was tampered with when 1990 Leaf was worth tampering with, namely the early 1990's. I can't imagine anyone tampering this stuff these days.