Apologies if in the wrong section I’m still getting used to navigating the forum.
I’ve been spending some time familiarising myself with the TCG market. I’ve already read articles and posts about the market being at all time highs and pokemon trading cards attracting short term speculative investors/flippers.
This ebay listing of a 1st Edition Charizard looks to sum up the current state of affairs.
Its already at £205 and it clearly states the card is a proxy in the description.
The same seller also has a shining Zard currently at £80.
I see this pretty regularly on eBay UK. I’ve always assumed the bids are either from kids, people who don’t know what “proxy” means or people who don’t read the description. Likely a mix of all three.
Either way it’s really scummy because the mention of proxy is almost always omitted from the title. Seller is trying to pull a fast one.
Totally agree extremely scummy!
I guess whoever’s wins the auction will naively be expecting the real deal then realise it’s not the real deal, it’s not even a holo for a start.
Not sure where they would stand as it does actually say in the description it’s a proxy so how could someone argue it’s not as described?!
Would ebay side with the seller then?
When returning an item on eBay, one of the options you can choose is “received counterfeit goods” which is what this would fall under.
In the UK you don’t need a reason to return something you bought online (not sure if it’s the same in the US? Interested in knowing if it’s similar), as you are protected by “distance selling regulations” - HMRC have a page on this if you care to read about it. You can return an item without giving a reason within 14 days.
The US has no such laws or protection for online purchases AFAIK. It’s all left up to whatever policies the business or website you’re buying from has set up. So in this case it would be Paypal/Ebay’s return policies being all you have to go off of.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong but I’ve never heard of such nice laws here
Report the listing everytime you see something like this. It usually gets removed by eBay. I’m sure they just relist it but it’s good to at least try to get eBay to notice bad sellers. Edit: I reported the seller and messaged him letting him know it’s against eBay selling policies to sell counterfeits. Hopefully my effort does something.
When I started in this hobby I did not know what proxy meant and when the card came I was very dissapointed (now I can spot fake cards without it even being stated of course). But nonetheless it is probably someone starting in the hobby and thinking they struck gold not knowing what proxy means.
Again, scammers…
The seller has been responding to me defending his counterfeit goods. How can I show eBay our conversation to prove he is selling counterfeit goods? The story is he bought the card on eBay. So he thinking it’s perfectly fine to flip it on eBay.
It’s now bidding at £290 at time of writing. I also sent a message to the seller in regards to the current bid price and the fact he has it described as a proxy. Kind of hope he gets the hint and takes the moral high ground with it. It’s just wrong!
If you guys would like to see screenshots of the conversation I had with the person earlier it wasn’t pleasant. He defends the fact he originally bought it on eBay that it’s ok to sell proxy listings. And he says the real version is worth $20,000 so he is saving them money… I also reported him. It’s just frustrating. I know for a fact the people bidding either A. Want to resell the proxy for more money passing it off as the real zard. Or B. They think it’s the real card and want to buy it not knowing it’s fake.
