This is just a PSA for collectors buying modern product, this isn’t a feel bad for me post or to really put anyone on blast.
Full disclosure, the seller has been nothing but professional with quick responses, full refund, and taking some corrective action on their listings.
I opened everything on video, forgive the poor video quality since I just got off a 10 hour night shift, and wasn’t planning on documenting this for anything other then easing my mind.
Here goes; I bought a Burning Shadows booster box from ebay for $97.99 the other day, the images were stock photos, and the seller had over 2,000 positive feedback and I had virtually no reservations. Purchased the item, and was delivered to my doorstep within 3 days. I got home from work, opened the mailer, and held the booster box. The booster box itself checked out, all font was good, no blurriness in the images, correct text on the box, pokemon logos on the wrappers, everything. But, I looked at the top of the box and saw there was glue across the top, from left to right, and the wrapper was stuck down to it. I was going to open this box anyways, so I decided to sit down and crack into it to verify the contents. I was going through the packs, and they seemed off, there was either damage to packs, or the crimps seemed weird, or they felt real fragile. I opened 10 packs, from different positions of the box and each pack the rares were removed and were replaced with multiple energies, extra code cards or random commons. In one pack I got 4 code cards, no rare. There were some packs where the cards were in proper order, and other packs where the cards were in completely the wrong order. I stopped opening packs at around 11 or 12 I think, contacted the seller explained the situation and they were fully cooperative.
The seller refunded me entirely, but they told me they bought close to 100 of these boxes from their distributor and all their other boxes had similar glue on the tops. I told them basically the boxes are worth bulk prices at around $25-30 ish a box (based on $.03 / common / uncommon bulk rate). The one problem I have is that the seller is still continuing to sell these, at a drastically reduced rate as being bulk lots essentially. However, the selling is going to continue to ship the boxes fully intact with the reseal. I am just concerned that these boxes are going to hit the market from not so trust worthy people, or the actual loose packs inside will be resold to unsuspecting buyers.
Images;
Youtube link where I open the box and inspect it. Sorry its recorded vertically!!; Resealed Pokemon Card Burning Shadows Booster Box - YouTube