I’m a noob to this hobby and just had my first terrible ebay experience with a buyer. I have a big stash of OG theme decks, boosters and blister packs that had been saved away from when I was a kid back in '99, and have recently started selling some of them over the past month or two to help pay for a honeymoon trip to Japan. I don’t have much experience or knowledge about buying and selling cards, as I kind of lost interest in Pokemon as I grew older (sorry!), but I have tried to educate myself as much as I can and still find all the ins and outs pretty esoteric. I listed a 1999 blister pack with the venusaur art as “heavy,” included a picture with the pack being weighed as 34g. Now, I don’t remember where I had originally seen that 34g was heavy for a blister pack, but I was under the genuine impression that it was considered heavy. I come to find out later that blister packs are unreliable for weighing, but I included the weight in the listing and figured if it’s wrong then someone will correct me. A buyer purchased it at $1400 and immediately on delivery starts a INAD return request and messages me telling me it isn’t heavy because he opened it and there was no holo. When I responded to his message telling him I never made any guarantees of getting a holo he said “Thats what a “heavy” pack is lol” and told me “dont list things innacuratly.” Then he left me negative feedback calling me an “irate child” and “ebay worst seller.” Long story short, after a month of going back and forth with ebay I was just now able to get them to close the case in my favor, but I’m wondering what I need to do to protect myself in the future, or if it’s even worth it to sell on ebay. Seems like they take the buyer’s side in almost every situation, and I was just lucky that it was my first time contesting a case like this. So, obviously I’m a dummy for not doing my homework, but I feel like this guy was trying to scam me as well by abusing the INAD policy. I definitely won’t be listing things as “heavy” in the future, but now I’m nervous to even list anything else. Any recommendations?
I mean some people will take heavy as an implication there is a holo inside but there is never a guarantee. That’s probably why eBay ruled in your favor. The buyer was also probably newer and was under the impression heavy meant a guaranteed holo so they were upset when they didn’t get one. Don’t be shy selling on ebay. In order to avoid problems like this in the future, just make sure you have lots of photos on your posts and any disclosures in the description section. Scratches, dirt, blemishes, etc. Would you mind linking the original listing as well?
I’d keep selling on ebay. But don’t include details like weight, description as heavy, etc. To me heavy means guaranteed holo, so although you didn’t state it, I can see why someone would think its implied.
You are just opening the door for INAD by adding those extra details
Both you and the buyer are at fault here but I’d say you’re more at fault than the buyer.
The crux of the issue is not that the pack didn’t have a holo, but that you made a claim in the listing that you couldn’t back up. As you admit, you had no point of comparison for making the heavy claim, and indeed didn’t have any independent research to support that the blister was indeed heavy. A charitable interpretation of your actions would be that you were ignorant. A less charitable interpretation, taken by the buyer, is that you were attempting to scam someone. If you try to sell items you don’t have knowledge of, you shouldn’t be surprised when it bites you in the ass.
The buyer is correct that generally when packs are listed as heavy, that means they contain a holo. However, packs are really only “heavy” in comparison to other packs within a box as weights can and do vary. There has been some effort to determine pack weights across sets but even a cursory look through demonstrates ranges of values which overlap. Adding a blister makes it even harder, as the mean difference between light and heavy is only about 0.4g. However, you’re using these correct points to retroactively justify your actions rather than disclosing them in the listing from the start.
That being said, the buyer is certainly at fault as well: buying a heavy pack does not guarantee a holo, and they should have educated themselves about pack weights and risk before making such a major purchase.
For sure, the listing is here:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/377254319364
He definitely wasn’t new, he’s been on ebay since 2017 and seems to run a shop selling collectible cards. I was pretty surprised to see he has a perfect 100% feedback rating with almost 500 items sold. Although, he mostly seems to be selling sports memorabilia so maybe he wasn’t super familiar with pokemon stuff?
So what would have been the correct way to list it? I’m not trying to scam anyone, the heavy vs. light stuff is so confusing and seems totally subjective to me since it’s based on a range of weights rather than a standard definition. Definitely I will not be including “heavy” in any descriptions in the future, but I want to get an accurate idea of what my cards are worth. Is it even worth it to include a weight in the description?
Absolutely do not state “no damage to the cards” Cards can be damaged from the factory inside the pack. I just opened up some more Korean VMAX Climax the other day and a ton of holos had roller damage
I didn’t even consider this, thank you!
I don’t think you were trying to scam anyone, but I hope you can see how someone could interpret your listing in that way based on the facts. Best thing to do for selling single old sealed packs is to list them as sealed and disclose the weight. If you think it’s heavy then price it accordingly, but don’t mention anything other than the confirmed weight in the listing. People can do their own research and determine whether or not to purchase based on their idea of what the pack might contain.
That way, you’re making no claims about the contents but providing buyers all of the information they would need to make an informed decision.
The weight shouldn’t influence the price unless a buyer is willing to pay a premium for the offshoot chance there is a holo inside. Just look up comps for everything you have to sell and work from there. Don’t be shy to talk to prospective buyers beforehand if they message you. The more info the better for both sides! I do think your post was a little unintentionally misleading, which is normal, you’re newer and want to get the most out of your products. Best you can do is keep going with the new knowledge you gained and don’t give buyers any reason to contest the sale later down the road.
Selling vintage packs can be difficult. If you claim “heavy,” expect a buyer to anticipate a holo when opened. That’s how the terminology works these days. Educated buyers understand that there’s a spread of probabilities by weight, but most believe it’s conclusive.
If I were to sell these packs, I would go the auction house route: list the weight only and let the buyer gauge the heavy/light probabilities from that number.
If you have a few of them you can compare against each other. Blisters are even harder than loose packs but if you have a good sample size of the same item you can accurately weigh most older packs/single blisters to some level of confidence
selling sealed on ebay has always been an issue
now imagine ur a modern “pokeinvestor” who only bought that crap because “sealed only goes up” and now cant even sell it 
thats way underpriced for a shadowless blister nowadays (even short crimp) so you can be attracting the wrong buyers that way. typically when ppl buy blisters they wont open them (since loose packs are way cheaper) so price accordingly
While being more careful about the descriptions is definitely recommended so that you don’t make claims that you can’t back up as fourthstar said, tidal is right, your buyer got a pretty good deal even for a light shadowless blister pack. There are differences with the base set packs that you should probably be aware of before listing each with different corresponding values:
Damn so youre telling me it was shadowless?? I thought I had checked that guide before and it wasnt…what would a more appropriate price have been?
Pack weights seem randomized, but are typically based on unrecognized print runs of the cards. 99.9999% of collectors have no insight into this phenomenon so the data aggregated seems sporadic.
Heavy is between 20.5ish and 21.5ish for Base depending upon which type of pack.
I don’t know all that much about Base Set packs and blisters, but from the guide linked above, it seems like you had a potentially shadowless blister pack (short crimp, “Tradable”), which the article says has a chance as low as 50% of being shadowless.
Looking up recent sales by auction, similar blisters (short crimp, “Tradable”) were sold at about $1,600 (first two sales listed here), so your sale doesn’t seem too far off.
Venusaur sale listed below:
Looks like regular unlimited blisters go from anywhere between 1.3k-1.8k, around what you had listed. The shadowless ones seem to go for a greater difference in range, anywhere between 2.3k-3.5k by the looks of it. This is just me taking a quick glance over ebay solds that i pulled up from my query. And of course there have been some that slipped through the cracks, and the price tends to vary dependent on the exact artworks as well. A regular shadowless charizard pack went for 2k so it seems about right.
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=pokemon+tcg+shadowless+base+set+blister+pack&_sacat=0&_from=R40&rt=nc&LH_Sold=1
But yeah, looks like yours was the #3 variation that is listed (might be the #2 version, hard to tell from the angle you had the first photo at). The unlimited switched the text at the bottom to ‘11 Additional Game Cards’ vs the shadowless ‘11 Tradable Game Cards’. Shadowless also has the ‘Trading Card Game’ logo at the bottom with the card symbol on the top right of it’s corner. Although, tbf, I’m not sure if the cards are guarenteed to be shadowless even with those signs.
it’s 100% a short crimp shadowless pack. Loose packs have a “50/50” chance of being shadowless. The short crimp in blisters seem to be more like 25/75, or much less likely to be shadowless.