I find the best thing to do when looking for chase cards like 1st edition shinings is to wait for auctions to come up. Those are typically your best shot at not having to pay 50% more than the last sold or stuff like that.
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Ya the excuse to build traffic is bullshit. I wish people would just list cards for what their comfortable selling at. Ebay can even get rid of the best offer button. Tell me the price without the run around please. The double to triple market price listings are quite annoying to buyers. It does not build traffic for other over priced listings. Just pick a price and list it. Simple process made more complicated by greed. The usual question sellers are asking themselves is. What’s the most I can milk out of this card?
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I’ve had success with that but as I get closer and closer to finishing my sets I admit I’m also getting more and more impatient. I just want to buy the dang card, you know? Often I actually am willing to pay a premium on a Buy It Now if it means I can get it immediately versus waiting 5-6 days for an auction I might not win. But I’m definitely not willing to pay a 50%-75% premium. No convenience is worth that much!
I’m at 70 holos locked in with 5 left to nab. The end of a long journey is nearing. I’m closer than I’ve ever been but because the cards are so expensive I’m still awfully far away. I have to slow down and be smarter about how I buy these and my old tricks aren’t working as well. I will probably have to move away from DM negotiation and just try my luck at auctions. Bleh.
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Why can’t the scammer just use your picture of the slab with the cert number covered?
He could but then he would be sending a different item to what he is listing which is pretty pointless as the buyer would easily notice
I list pretty much everything I sell at slightly above market price. For the most part, I have no trouble selling stuff. I have a great feedback score, provide detailed item descriptions/photos, am responsive to questions, and just generally operate honestly and professionally… It seems like people will pay a little more for a guaranteed positive experience. Also, eventually, all the lower priced ones will sell, and mine WILL be the cheapest! Might take a while, but if you don’t need the dough immediately, it’s the way to go.
To be honest, if I list an item and it sells within a day or two, I generally take that as an indication that I priced it too low.
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This has a $4k bid… www.ebay.com/itm/313507864886.
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Ah, the “airhole Zard” makes its ugly return!
There were also several incidents recently where they knowingly sold resealed MTG product, openboosters even made a vid about his purchase and how he handled the situation:
They´re known for bad business for a long time already but it seems that recently it really accelerated again.
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Came here to search if anyone knew someone there directly and found this convo string. Damn. A December auction I had them ship to my PWCC Vault never showed up I came to find out this month. Ironically I had been tracking 5+ weeks of delay for PWCC to even register items I won from their December auction and just freaking carry them over to their vault at the same building address. (No joke they were charging me the usual high fee shipping to do that til I noticed).
My PWCC “Rep” kept telling me it’s nothing to worry about and the Shipped Items I had routed to them as well as their 5-6 week Items sitting next door would all likely be fully curated in the next few weeks Max. By the time that promise failed to deliver I realized I don’t have much to worry over regarding the PWCC auction items I won, but what about the 7 outside purchases I shipped to them for my vault… so far I can only see 5 of the PWCC auctions registered halfway or less in my vault, two items that aren’t even mine, and 3 of the 7 outside shipments nowhere to be found. Two of the tracking numbers at least show delivery w/signature to PWCC, but going back to PRobstein, his auctions rarely show tracking info accurately I’ve noticed, and my remaining $500 purchase from him is MIA. eBay won’t help because it’s far past 30 days, I’ve messaged him countless times on EBay only to get a single response 3 months ago. Emailed and called their corporate contacts a bunch and it’s all crickets from them.
Yesterday PWCC confirmed they’ve got no other pending shipments or items not yet processed for me, and the tracking info from PRobstein still shows as “Waiting for Package” on USPS. Now I need to find another way to find a human there. 
(sorry for the rant)
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@john Ya go ahead and check probstein123 recent feedback on eBay. Persons been very shady. Complaints range from:
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Item never arrived
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Bad pictures and recieved a damaged card not described as damaged
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Same issue except cracked PSA cases
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Double listed item’s
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Shill bidding their own auctions
If eBay won’t help you open a case thru PayPal directly or thru your bank directly. You will get your money back. And let this be known to all E4 members Probstein123 needs to be black listed!
Yeah I’m definitely up to speed now, unfortunately. I did some digging and ended up reading through the latest PWCC/Probstein card trimming lawsuit. Interestingly enough it seems he got himself out of it by throwing a bunch of money at the plaintiffs, and now he’s in the process of sueing PWCC as well for similar ‘travesties’. It appears he was able to get details of the settlement sealed and even dismissed, as did PWCC. But most recently it notes that the case is not dismissed in entirety because the judge said it’s not in the right jurisdiction and referred it up to the state courts. It’s a lot of jargon so I’m not 100% certain I interpreted it all accurately. But back to robb-ster, I did find several addresses, old and current phone numbers (latest of which is another hot complaint about no one answering), and also some more items I don’t care to share online. If he runs this through the same ‘delay of game til it’s gone’ tactic he apparently has been using elsewhere I will gladly throw another suit at him. Benefits of growing up with lawyers all around. 
I mean, it’s their card and they can do what they want with it. It’s unbelievable that we are seriously reaching a point where people think it’s “greedy” to list a card above market value lol. No one is forcing you to buy the card. No one is even forcing you to click on the listing. Just bypass it and move on. Gary has had his massive Charizard collection listed on eBay for ages, and he has even said in the past he really has no intention of actually selling it. I guess he’s committing a sin for listing it, right? I listed some cards during the boom following Logan’s box opening back in the fall. Some of them didn’t sell, and prices have dropped on them, but I still have them listed in my eBay store for the same prices I listed them at back then. Sue me.
The “what’s the most I can milk out of this card” thing is also ridiculous thinking. Why shouldn’t a person get the most they can for the card they’re selling? Like, are you actually serious? The entire point of selling is to make as much money as you possibly can, and if you aren’t doing that, you probably aren’t a very good businessperson. We aren’t talking about essential goods like food and water here. We are talking about pieces of cardboard with cartoon pictures on them. If a person can get more than market value for their card, why shouldn’t they do it? If someone comes along and offers you $50 for a card that typically goes for $25, are you seriously telling me you’re going to say, “No! Absolutely not! I don’t want to be greedy! Have it for $25?” Come on.
It’s funny: people will complain about sellers listing items above market value because they are trying to “milk” the card, but those same people probably have no problem with lowball buyers making offers less than half the market value or sending “what’s the lowest you’ll go” type messages. And it’s funny that you mentioned eBay getting rid of the best offer button, because if they did, sellers would STILL get inundated with “offers” in their messages. But I guess that’s fine, right?
TL;DR: It’s their card. They can do whatever they want with it.
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Aerodynamic
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@cerulean I wasn’t talking about any one person. No need to fly off the handle on me. Ill make sure to avoid your listings tho if that’s how you feel no biggie 
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I still firmly believe that anyone should be allowed to offer their own cards for sale at whatever price they want - even if it’s a German Rayquaza GS for $250k. It’s okay to be upset about it as a potential buyer, sometimes it’s even understandable to make fun of some extreme examples.
At the end of the day however, it’s the seller’s property and literally no one is entitled to dictate their prices. If it doesn’t sell, that’s the their problem. If the buyer can’t get the item for the price they want, that’s the buyer’s problem.
Any time spent on being angry about that is simply wasted.
Sounds harsh, but it is what it is.
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If that guy weren’t such a tool and blatant market manipulator I don’t think nearly as many people would make fun of the 250k price
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@nish, 100%, yes.
So since it was my post that sort of spurred this I wanted to clarify my feelings about this just for the record.
There has always existed a tension between the “hobby” aspect of Pokémon and the “business” aspect of Pokémon. These two concepts are not mutually exclusive. They overlap and intermingle and one fuels the other and lots of people are both. But there have always been participants who are in it “for the hobby” or in it “for the money” since the earliest days of the game. It is easy for these people to be at odds with each other because they have different goals. The hobby collector wants cards. The business collector wants money. There has to exist a negotiation between parties because they need each other.
But the tension we have right now is different because people are actively and aggressively chasing fortunes and are very public about their intentions. “Investment” has entered the Pokémon vocabulary in a way it previously has not existed. You can call it the Logan Paul + Logic factor or whatever you want, but the truth is that the perception of Pokémon has changed. If you are a “hobbyist”, there’s a good chance you’re a lot more skeptical towards the “business” side of things because you have spent the last year being inundated with investment hysteria and watched the value of cards increase more quickly than they have ever increased and reach heights that many normal people could never justify. People who bought in are willing to wait as long as it takes - which you are right that it is their right to do - leaving hobbyists to just sit and watch.
This is where the newfound animosity comes from. Groups that used to coexist with some tension are now at fundamental odds. You demonstrate this yourself. The purpose of business is to make as much money as possible off your products. Why shouldn’t a business person sell for as much as possible? They have every right and incentive to do that. That’s why they’re here. But that money doesn’t come from nowhere and the person paying that money is probably going to have some strong feelings about how much they’re spending and why. A lot of would-be buyers see the current prices of Pokémon as exploitative and unnatural, a bubble waiting to burst. People feel the hobby has been taken advantage of and they’re the ones paying for it. I think as much as people are entitled to sell things for as much as they want to, people are equally entitled to their opinions over the money they are personally spending.
You are also right that Pokémon is not a right, it’s a hobby. People do not have to buy Pokémon cards. But I am sure the feeling of being rapidly forced out of something you’ve been doing for much of your life because all of a sudden it’s a playground for speculators and investors does not need to be explained. It feels bad. People are entitled to their opinions about that too.
I have listed things I didn’t want to sell but would sell if I got an amazing price for it. I have taken advantage of being the only one for sale at the time to try to get someone to cough up the asking price. I don’t feel bad doing it either because I know this is what it takes to raise money to put back in to my incomplete collection. This is the reality now. I don’t blame anyone for how they contend with this reality. But I don’t blame anybody for finding it, as a whole, really distasteful. I know that I do.
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