I bought a moderate play 1st edition base set advertised from someone’s instagram and paid G&S PayPal. Upon receiving the cards I noticed many were inked, so I went through one by one and found 24 of the 102 cards were inked (many holos including Charizard) all which account for 60.7% of the set’s value. I would like to keep the remaining 78 non-altered cards and return the inked ones for a refund of 60.7% of what I paid, however the seller says he “would rather not split the set up” and wants to do a full refund. It doesn’t sit well with me keeping these altered cards together with moderate play cards as a set. I believe this seller would try to resell them as a moderate play set as evident by him telling me “altered, to me, is deliberately doing something to the card to improve condition, fix damage or changing the artwork. There is no way someone would alter a card that is already going to grade poorly”. I’m hesitant to return them as the seller does not believe the cards are altered, and returning them as a complete set especially doesn’t sit well with me. Does anyone have experience with this type of thing?
This seller has an ebay store with 27/27 100% positive feedback on buying and selling over the last 12 months.
That’s a difficult situation. As it is, I see it as they have the right to not want to split it up since it was a single purchase. While it would be better off for both of you to reach a compromise as you stated (refund the altered cards for that percentage), if they aren’t willing to compromise, I believe you’ll eventually have to decide to either keep them all or do a full refund for the entire collection.
If it was down to multiple purchases, I’d say you have more leeway. As it is, they were sold as a bundle, the seller isn’t willing to split the bundle up for a partial refund, you’ll most likely have to choose to be all in or return it all.
While I cannot comment too much on the altered aspect, I feel like it’s reasonable for the seller to issue you a full refund to get the entire set back. It’s really a difference in opinion; the seller believes in his interpretation of MP and since there’s a disagreement, the fact that the seller is willing to issue a full refund shows that he’s not trying to scam or pull a fast one on you. In my opinion, it also depends on how damaged the card is…if the charizard for example has no creases and it’s just been inked by the sharpie, I can consider that MP and honestly if I paid MP prices for a NM charizard that has ink on the sides, it wouldn’t bother me that much. I feel like this is more of a difference in opinion.
Edit: Was a few minutes too late, I think AzulRyu explained it clearer than me.
