Sad State of the Hobby

[Orioles1954]

My personal policy is I do not buy or sell items more than $500 unless it's through an auction house.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by Orioles1954

My personal policy is I do not buy or sell items more than $500 unless it's through an auction house.

I'd have 10 percent of my collection at best if I did that. And have never consigned. Different strokes I guess.

[Natedog]

Funny, a similar thing happened to me on eBay. I purchased 6 sets off a guy contingent on them all being sealed. First he said they all were, then after looking again he said one was not. I tried to work something out so he could refund me what he felt was fair for just the one set, but instead refunded me for all, while also adding that he can instead sell them separately and "make extra money".

[mintacular]

This is not a complicated situation. The seller put cards up for sale and accepted the buyer's offer. The seller then decided not to honor the sale and backed out with an excuse. To add insult to injury, the seller then resold the cards for a higher amount to a different buyer. Judge Patrick rules in 100% favor with the original buyer, who started this thread.

[Mark17]

Originally Posted by mintacular

This is not a complicated situation. The seller put cards up for sale and accepted the buyer's offer. The seller then decided not to honor the sale and backed out with an excuse. To add insult to injury, the seller then resold the cards for a higher amount to a different buyer. Judge Patrick rules in 100% favor with the original buyer, who started this thread.

Your sister, who doesn't know much about baseball cards, tells you she sold a card on ebay for $500. Curious, you ask for the link and when you look at it, at first it looks like a reasonable deal - an ungraded T206 common in very nice shape for $500. But you look a little closer at this Joe Doyle card and notice it has the N.Y. Nat'l designation behind his name.

Does Judge Patrick:
1. Get on the phone immediately and tell his sister not to ship that card, because it is worth something north of a million dollars?
2. Tell his sister she just threw away a million bucks, but what's more important is, she maintained her integrity?

[griffon512]

Originally Posted by Mark17

Your sister, who doesn't know much about baseball cards, tells you she sold a card on ebay for $500. Curious, you ask for the link and when you look at it, at first it looks like a reasonable deal - an ungraded T206 common in very nice shape for $500. But you look a little closer at this Joe Doyle card and notice it has the N.Y. Nat'l designation behind his name.

Does Judge Patrick:
1. Get on the phone immediately and tell his sister not to ship that card, because it is worth something north of a million dollars?
2. Tell his sister she just threw away a million bucks, but what's more important is, she maintained her integrity?

Two people make a verbal agreement on a deal for $1,000, but nothing is written down. Another person hears of the deal before payment is exchanged and offers $50,000 for the same card. The buyer at $50,000 needs confirmation right away that the deal is done. The seller reluctantly says yes, thinking they will pay the original buyer at $1,000 an extra $5,000 to satisfy them despite not getting the card. Upon promising an extra $5,000, the buyer says it is not enough and wants an extra $20,000. The seller says there wasn't written agreement in the first place so the $5,000 is generous. Who is right and who is wrong?

One can think of increasingly unlikely scenarios and debate that question until the end of time. It's not very relevant. The point is, a verbally confirmed deal should be a deal with extremely limited exception, the OP is right to be upset how this went down and shouldn't be vilified for either pursuing a very good deal, or doing a small amount of research to see who screwed him over and lied about it for some extra bucks in a rising market.

[Jim65]

The seller is wrong for lying about the reason, he should've admitted he made a mistake.

OP is wrong for getting so upset, when there was no money lost. You left a negative feedback, move on.

[ASF123]

This is an interesting thread. For those arguing that the original buyer was “taking advantage” of the seller - how far does that argument go? Does a buyer have an affirmative duty to contact a seller and say “Hey, your price on this is way low - let me give you 2x” or whatever?

[Tyruscobb]

Originally Posted by ASF123

This is an interesting thread. For those arguing that the original buyer was “taking advantage” of the seller - how far does that argument go? Does a buyer have an affirmative duty to contact a seller and say “Hey, your price on this is way low - let me give you 2x” or whatever?

I think it all depends on the mistake's nature.

For example, if a seller made an obvious patent or typographical error (e.g. forgetting to add an extra zero to the price - $100.00, but meant to type $1,000.00) when listing the item, I think a buyer should show mercy.

However, as a buyer, it is not my job to price another man's merchandise. It is also not my job to do your homework. This is 2021. Information is readily available at everyone's finger tips. There are internet searches, price guides, prior sales data, etc. So, if you underpriced an item that is on you.

[cardsagain74]

Originally Posted by ASF123

This is an interesting thread. For those arguing that the original buyer was “taking advantage” of the seller - how far does that argument go? Does a buyer have an affirmative duty to contact a seller and say “Hey, your price on this is way low - let me give you 2x” or whatever?

I've always noticed that there's a fairly stringent efficient market type of expectation here among many (that I never would've expected or rarely saw when I was dealing in high school during the junk wax era).

Well beyond what happened in the story here. Some seem very uncomfortable when an $850 card sells for either 700 or 1000, as if that was some sort of major screw job to either the buyer or seller.

During those dealing days, I had to find ways to make it worthwhile. One of them was raiding quarter and dollar boxes at the local shows right after the new monthly Beckett came out (and looking for cards that had just shot up). Was this taking advantage of the seller? Am I supposed to point out that he didn't bother to take a (now) $5 card out of the dollar box? Most of them would've looked at me annoyed and said something like "if it's there, that's what it costs"

And as some have mentioned, everyone has ample resources to figure out what something is worth nowadays. Unless it's something really egregious (or one party is purposely misdirecting info to the detriment of the other), this taking advantage concept about selling price gets taken too far sometimes.

As far as this spot, I think a $2000 deal to sell cards that were worth maybe twice that (we don't even know since they weren't graded) should have been honored by the seller. He was in the wrong for reneging to get 3200 elsewhere