I have been thinking of selling a few of my more expensive cards on eBay but am a bit nervous to do so. I think the most expensive item I sold on eBay was a green-winged base booster box (around $2200) which the buyer opened a case on me not long after saying “tracking shows item arrived, but I never got anything”. I was already nervous to sell the box on eBay knowing how much they take buyers sides and how easy it is to essentially scam abusing their system. Thankfully I paid for signature confirmation and the case was closed right away when I called because he claimed “it never arrived” even though he signed for it. But I know if he were to claim “item is different from pictures” he would have an actual case and could get a refund and then ship me back some garbage in return. I’m pretty concerned about something like this happening. I’m wondering if there are any precautions I can take when selling expensive items on eBay to avoid myself getting scammed as a seller. Or how I would go about handling a case where a buyer would claim they got a different item or something. Any help would be appreciated.
There will always be some risk involved. You definitely want signature confirmation and I would advise only selling to buyers with good feedback/references.
If you don’t want to risk selling to some random dude on ebay with 1 feedback, then maybe make best offer listings with a crazy high BIN and see how you do. You at least get to choose who you sell to regardless of the amount offered.
If it’s a private sale, F&F is probably the way to go. Offer the buyer you will pay full insurance in case the package goes missing and you shouldn’t have any issues.
You can limit your risk selling to a well known collector/investor, but obviously you might earn a little less than on the open market. That’s up to you.
You can also record each step of you packaging the item and dropping the package to the post office, though I’ve heard paypal/ebay don’t really see that as proof if a case was opened so make of that what you will.
Well my highest valued card is my psa 9 1st edition shadowless charizard which i’ll probably sell eventually. But even others above $1500, I definitely wouldn’t want to take a hit like that lol. And I live in Canada.
You could use pwcc to sell your items. Usually nice cards like a psa 9 1st edition base charizard will bring the correct market value if not more in a pwcc auction. The fees you pay pwcc would be less than if you were to have someone scam you a couple thousand over a card.
I’ve always wondered: what happens if someone scams PWCC? Do they mediate the dispute through Paypal/eBay or do they just put the loss on the customer?
Follow eBay guidelines, don’t ship to areas where they don’t offer full tracking. I haven’t found a place where I can’t get signature confirmation yet, I do have to use other postal services for different places. Don’t lower the declaired value, unless you’re willing to risk no insurance on the package. Don’t send the item without receiving payment, really basic stuff.
Do the above and you will be fine. I’ve never been scammed, with well over $300,000 in transactions. I don’t care what feedback the person buying my items has, often times people create account just to buy things, you’ll have no issue with them. The only worry I have is if their paypal address and their ebay address don’t match, or they’re sending red flags like offering me more money than what I’m asking for, requesting that I hold off shipment; without holding off their payment, etc.
It’s really not as bad as people make it sound. The most hasstle I have is annoying people messaging me about how overpriced my items are and non paying buyers. I posted the last scam attempt I’ve had somewhere on the forum, and eBay messaged me the day after warning me about it and giving me instructions on how to get my item back from the mail carriers, had I sold something (I didn’t because the paypal address and ebay address were different and the person was offering me more than I was selling the item for, they wanted to go off ebay). That was one person in years of selling (there’s another person abusing the buyer protection system, but I didn’t lose any money from it). I could tell you other stories, but none were scammers.
eBay is fine just do all the things cullers says. you have eBay protection and make sure you are fully covered thru usps such as full insurance and sig and tracking. and with PayPal I wouldn’t use ff cause they can always just pull their card. I would send them an invoice and you write in the description EXACTLY what they are paying for.
Thanks for the advice and reassurance. I’ve never been scammed before but have dealt with many unsuccessful attempts as well. I’ll make sure to double check the ebay/paypal addresses as well as I never thought of that before. Thanks!
I’d imagine taking in 5/6 figure plus through F&F would raise some suspicions and end up getting you a call from Paypal though?
I was pretty near to 5 figures F&F but as a percent of my total intake it was under 5% so I wasn’t too awful worried and I never heard from them. If you took only $50k in payments and then something like $100k in F&F wouldn’t they shut that down? It would be nice to keep everything possible off that 1099-K though for tax evasion err reasons.
