tldr: Mint card came with multiple large undisclosed indents, seller did not want to go through G&S due to taxation, blocked me after I tried contacting for a resolution.
Hello! I’ve always been lurking around the forums and reading up but never had any online presence or made an account till recently, where I got scammed by a user (goldstarlugia) probably for that very reason of being an easy picking. I’m not new to the hobby having collected cards since years ago, but made the mistake for the first time of not doing G&S, mainly because it was for a card I really wanted.
I came across a Japanese Torchic Gold Star over ebay which I had seen before on Instagram (my favorite gold star, so always on the look out)- and contacted the owner over Instagram. I was not overly fussy about condition as I already have my own graded copy, but I asked if the card had any scratches/indents, as well as if it were mint to which I was replied with “yessir” and “it is really clean”.
Picture of the back as provided by the seller:
Picture taken after receiving the card (more indents on the bottom left and middle but you get the idea):
Asking if the card had indentations:
Asking if the card was minty:
Wasn’t expecting a 10 as the centering looked off in some pictures, but if it were otherwise minty, that was good enough. When talking about payment however he only offered F&F and cashapp instead of G&S as he wanted to avoid tax. Up to this point, I had done transactions multiple times over G&S and decided to give an alternative (bank transfer) a try for a first time.
Fast forward to receiving the card, the front looked good but the back had multiple large indentations. I immediately contacted the seller over Instagram to reach some sort of resolution but had to wait over a week for a reply, where I was blocked immediately after. Among the things mentioned in the reply was that the card was shown to me to the “best of his ability”- which was an obvious lie considering the state of the card. Even after getting blocked I messaged again to try to resolve things, whereby I send back the card and receive a partial refund such that any monetary loss is incurred by me alone, but after over a week without reply yet again, have decided to share this incident over as many platforms as I can.
No reply:
Finally replied (over a week after receiving the card), but I was blocked immediately:
Part of my reply (beginning of March) trying again, to work out a resolution:
It is my first and probably last time buying without using G&S, which I was less wary about as the seller has a good looking ebay account. All good feedback was one factor as to why I felt a little safer not going by G&S. Definitely no straightforward way to recovering my money at this point, but I hope this serves as a warning that some still try their hand at this occasionally even with good feedback. It is a no brainer that this could happen to anyone regardless of the circumstances, but I do hope that this makes it more real that G&S taxation will be used as an excuse, as well as that references aren’t ironclad and foolproof- feel free to message me if you want more information for whatever reason. Especially thankful to fourthstartcg who has helped me thus far for weeks prior as I tried to contact the seller.
Here are some of his (goldstarlugia) other accounts:
Hopefully this will serve as a lesson to others not to send money through unsafe methods to randoms.
How would he feel if someone did that to him?