Buyers don’t get scammed on eBay, so I don’t really understand the point of doing this, in the end these “scammers” are paying shipping both ways to annoy someone.
The point is to stop the bots and scalpers from purchasing the items. I just looked on eBay at over 10 listings on the first page that says “this listing is for bots and scalpers. This is a printed picture real people do not buy”.
If a regular person does buy it then it’s their fault. It does suck if that happens to someone but it takes a few seconds to read a eBay description. It clearly states it’s a printed piece of paper. Same when the PS5 and Xbox Series X was released. This was everywhere.
How does this stop bots and scalpers other than tie up their money for a couple of days?
The nerd in the background running the bots now has to spend real life time getting refunded for it.
More or less just a temporary middle finger to the bot people
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Losing a couple of minutes and dropping off a return versus negative feedback, covering shipping both ways and risking your eBay account doesn’t seem very productive. I think the nerds in this case are the sellers trying to be smart doing this sort of shenanigans instead of focusing on running an actual business.
Bots monitor sites that stock product for msrp/retail price, not the secondary market. Likely, the only people getting caught up in these “bot traps” are actual buyers thinking they found a deal.
Tin foil fedora theory
They’re just actual pea brained scams shrouding themselves in an anti bot veil.
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I got this exact same message word for word, told the guy instead of me making him a list of cards that fit his criteria he needs to send me a list. Told him why should I put all the work on me when he’s the one trying to initiate the deal.
Also, I told him that no way am I gonna sell for 80% of the lowest sold on eBay, which is what he’s using. Or Card ladder or some other price chart that people try to use to pretend this is like the stock market.
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Pretty much this. It’s meant to cause as much disruption as possible to them. I hope they aren’t getting money back seeing as the description makes it perfectly clear they are getting a piece of paper with the image printed. Idk why eBay would refund their money when they got what they paid for. Literally!
Try selling on eBay, you’ll quickly see how none of this matters whatsoever.
Like @BMOE3366911 said, most people getting caught in this are actual buyers which can be a lot dumber than bots, sellers doing this are actually doing a disservice to the space in my opinion but I’m sure they think they’re being really witty at best, actual scammers at worst.
I could careless one way or the other tbh. It’s wrong on the sellers part.
100%! I don’t know who the target audience is for those offers. You can just dump the items in auction and get a better price. Also the price sites they were using for comps had some items at half my previous sales.
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Couldn’t actually send the message due to the mention of another platform but you get the jist of it 
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It’s always the low value listings…..
I’ve decided to start trying out lines from the Japanese playbook 
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Stop lying, Josh. PSA 7 Alolan Vulpix Build-a-Bear promos are constantly being counterfeited.
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Like every boom, the buyer pool get worse and worse. Newer account made in late 2020, so clearly came in during the last peak hype. Mind you I sent an offer to 18 watchers and did not enable the counter offer option because my offer was already the lowest I would take.
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The sneaky double negative compliment. I think he wants to be friends.
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I almost want to start putting up more eBay listings just so I can message these bozos 
Fake Blaine’s Charizard - the “G” had been fixed in the Gem mint but wrong font in Gym. I like they took lots of photos proving how bad it is
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A bit of a sillier one. This listing certainly has an interesting title. It’s like referring to a piece of art, like “Beauty Looking Back.” (And not sure where the infamy of the card comes from 
)
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