So, for those who buy cards from eBay, you may have noticed thousands of listings of gold star cards, shining cards, and basically premium cards. Here is how it goes: a seller with 0 feedback miraculously pops up with 10 copies of shining gyarados, say each for $90. If someone buys it, and receives the card, and does not realize it is a fake, seller gets the money and eBay collects a commission, and the buyer gets conned. If the buyer recognizes it is fake, and files a return, seller accepts. However, they give the buyer a fake USPS label to ship back the return. The fake USPS label - it is delivered to the buyer via eBay’s platform with “time to ship” message!!! Since it is a fake USPS label, the return never reaches the seller, who has a different address from the seller who sent the card. In that case, seller keeps the money and eBay keeps the sales commission. This is great for the scammers and great for eBay - they both make money, while the buyer gets scammed. And those pop-up sellers with 0 feedback - the moment they sell 1 or 2 cards, the account is closed. But the same listing with the exact same listing pic now appears in the name of a new seller on eBay’s platform. And this cycles continues … across thousands of fake accounts on eBay constantly opening and closing. Absolutely stunning how this is now happening at scale on eBay’s platform, and of course, eBay has zero incentive to contain it or do something about it, because they directly benefit from this scamming scheme. Has anybody else noticed this? Before, you had a few scammers on the platform - now it is in the thousands and thousands …
Do you have any item numbers to hand for these sales?
Sounds interesting, though not entirely sure i understand. I am a self confessed Timmy.
Just search for “Japanese pokemon holo -psa -cgc” on eBay with “buy it now”, "location US only, and price greater than $50. You will see 100’s of examples. Here is an example: want to buy a Japanese Slowpoke McDonald’s promo for $82.50? Look for ebay item # 287293565322.
Want a Japanese Coro Coro Mew for $84.20? Some sucker already bought one … item # 287293560395
Noticed this with a Sylveon card lately. Seen dozens of listings of the card obviously being fake, for a really low price, all by new accounts
There are thousands and thousands of such listings … it’s an industrialized scamming scheme being perpetrated at scale …
Don’t return labels get auto generated by ebay when the seller initiates the acceptance of the return?
The only way this scam works is if the seller would email a fake label to the buyer. How is the buyer getting the fake label?
Yes that is how it is supposed to work. I got a fake - the listing pic showed a real card, not an obvious fake. Got the return label via eBay’s platform with “time to ship” message. I printed it and then then had to enter the tracking number from that label in manually on eBay! I have photo evidence of all of this. I wonder if this is an eBay insider who came up with this entire scheme design. The fake card was shipped from NY. Return label address was in Arizona. The origin account holder - based in Washington DC, And for a moment, the tracking for the card originally showed Seattle, I live in the East Coast. Surreal!
Why are people buying a card at 1/100th of its price from a 0 feedback seller?
With the Pokemon boom going on currently, there are thousands of new buyers who do not know the difference between a real card and a fake one … lot of the pics on the listing are from real cards (so not always obviously fake) … also, scammers are getting better with pricing fakes close to market … so unless you really know what the heck to look for, yes, you will get scammed …
This just seems odd to me. If you printed the label ebay provided and its marked as delivered to the address on that provided label, why is the buyer out the money? The return is complete, right? Having to upload the tracking number makes zero sense, that isn’t how it works.
This is exactly why people should be limited to buying anything over $100 until they really know what they are doing. How many questions do we see of “is this $50k 1st Edition Charizard that is listed for $8k real?”
greed
I shipped. But if the tracking number is fake, USPS will have no history of it being shipped. That means it will never be delivered with proof of tracking. Do you understand now the depth of this scam? Over many thousands of purchased on eBay over the last 11 years, I have certainly dealt with 2 bit scammers here and there - they ship from let’s say Ohio, get caught and have the item shipped back to Ohio. Not this - seller “based in” DC, ship from NY then Seattle, then NY again, with a return label to Arizona. This is interstate level, large scale fraud.
If you take it up to the shipper and they scan it, it’ll show it’s fake, yes? At that point, you can lodge a complaint with ebay and have it on record at the very least. From there, pressure builds.
I just dont follow how you get a fake label in the first place. As a seller when you issue the return label, you don’t generate it yourself. It all goes through ebay. Did you get an email or picture sent from the seller instead of following ebay’s procedure?
Yeah none of this makes sense. I could see the seller using a fake return address, but that would still be a real postage label and would have verified delivery tracked on ebay.
Sorry, but you can’t just start policing what people can and can’t buy. What if a new buyer knows exactly what they are doing and wants to purchase a completely legitimate $200 card? eBay is just supposed to block the purchase until the buyer “proves” themselves?
I am not actually suggesting policing anyone. It was a joke. Just see it every day where people get scammed buying a card for 10% of its real value thinking they got a deal, when it takes less than 1 second looking at the photo that it is fake.
If a friend started getting into any hobby, not just Pokémon, my biggest advice would be start small so you know what you are doing. I bought several Japanese maples last year and a lot of them did not do so well. I should have started with just a couple to learn how to properly take care of them.
It was delivered via eBay … said print label now … I printed it. Then, I had to type the tracking number on that printed label by hand into eBay for tracking!!! As I said repeatedly, I have never seen anything like this on eBay before, Like that army loafer on Polymarkets, this feels like an inside job from eBay …