Saturday, December 9, 2017

At least we tried

Today's post is a quick follow-up to Wednesday's piece about the blatant counterfeits that I came across on Sportlots.

I never receive a reply to my initial message regarding these counterfeits from Sportlots, however, Fuji (who, after reading my post, decided to try and help rid the site of these fakes by sending a message too), did receive a response, and was kind enough to post it in the comments section of the previous post. For those who might not have seen it, here you go:

"I agree, these all look very suspicious. I struggle what
I can do if I don't know for sure and don't want to accuse
them without better proof.

Thanks for the info.. maybe I will just put out an fyi to
them just to let them know I'm keeping an eye out.


***** Update from the seller *****

In 2006 I bought out a closed baseball card store to
turn it in to a computer shop , these cards were left
behind due to illness , they became my property due to a
court order , I then sent many to Heratige Auctions in
Texas to be pieced and none came back reprints or fake .
I also a year ago sold many to Dave & Adams Cards on the
internet , they too bought every one I sent . I will
refund any payment of which a customer isn't happy with
for any reason , but I don't think any or many are fake
and I'm not a card guy and wouldn't know anyway , if
there are any complaints I will stop selling immediately,
just let me know . I will send them to the experts like
you suggested."

First things first, the reply from Sportlots is very disappointing, but not overly surprising either. In a world where greed is king, Sportlots obviously isn't interested in losing it's percentage of whatever this seller's cards end up selling for, just for the sake of protecting it's user's from these "very suspicious" cards.

Secondly, it's absolutely astounding how many red flags I see in the seller's response! Since I'm trying to keep this short, I will say that the "I'm not a card guy and wouldn't know anyway" line, is the one that stuck out the most... as that's one of the most common ways people selling fake's try to distance themselves from any first-hand knowledge of fraud, which will often be proceeded by something like "I found these cards in a box that I bought at an auction" or "I found an old shoebox full of cards in the attic of a house that I'm renovating". I will also quickly say that it's curious that they're supposedly selling these everywhere online except for eBay, you know the one place where you will most likely receive the most money from selling your highly desirable vintage cards.

Since there really isn't much else that can be done, and I won't be bringing this up again (at least when it comes to Sportlots), I figured we might as well take a look at a few more of hock2015's "very suspicious" offerings:








This is the one I really don't understand, I mean why are there even counterfeit Post cards out there? There's no shortage of the original's, and for the price that this one was currently at the last time I checked, you could easily buy an authentic one.

This Pete Maravich rookie is especially lame, as EVEN if someone were to try and explain how all the cards shown in these last two posts were somehow stored in such a way that only the corners ended up getting rounded (without any wear to the rest of the edges), then how would you explain a tall boy occurring the exact same wear pattern? If they were in a stack, Pete would have suffered considerably more damage!

So I guess the only way to wrap this up is to say that I feel bad for all the people that are going to be ending up with these cards, but at least we (thank you again, Fuji) tried to help them out. And to anyone who may be buying cards on Sportlots from this point on, just be mindful that the site is now apparently okay with seller's listing counterfeits "very suspicious" items.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

19 comments:

  1. Here's something that occurred to me. An unscrupulous person doesn't even have to create the cards. There are a number of sellers on ebay selling unmarked reproductions as such and at appropriate prices. Anyone out to make a quick buck could buy them cheap then artificially age those cards and offer them as originals. SAD! ;)

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    1. Yeah, it really upsets me that a-holes can get away with selling counterfeits just by calling them "reprints that aren't marked as reprints." The card industry and eBay really need to crack down on that. It's ridiculous that I got in trouble for selling customs that are obviously "cards that never were" for fun, not real cards, yet these counterfeiters have no problem making bank polluting the hobby with fakes.

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    2. Hackenbush: Those people making and selling those unmarked reproductions have to know that at some point someone is going to be trying to pass them off as authentic. If they really cared about some future person not getting cheated, they would mark their reproductions in some way to identify them as such.

      Gavin: eBay won't crack down on it, because they're not about give up any of the money that they've making off of the sales. And I really think the major card companies don't really care about anything other than their current products. And I did think about the problem you had with your customs a while back, and you know something? It still doesn't make a lick of sense!

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  2. It's funny how every card is a star player. No commons

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    1. There's probably not a lot of money to be had from making fake commons.

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  3. What are the odds all having the same rounded corners, and all are stars. Good for you for calling BS.

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  4. I checked out the listings from the seller-you have got to check out the 1956 Topps Football # 72 Jim Mutscheller, rounded corners, some "creases" but the best thing is he is taking pictures of the cards on some sort of tray on his lap and you can see his naked leg and his shorts!

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    1. I had missed that "skin pic", real classy!

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  5. There is a Unitas card with "creases" and rounded cards and not the Mutscheller card-

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    1. That Johnny U. card is clearly from this same batch of fakes, as it has the exact same rounded corners, although someone must have thought that adding some creases would make it look more authentic.

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  6. I hate the "I'm not a card guy" response. Such a cheap cop out.

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  7. I was really disappointed that the auctions were pulled down. All of these cards should be rounded up and stamped counterfeit or straight up destroyed, so that nobody else gets duped.

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    1. I couldn't agree more! It's just unfortunate that more can't be done, as this seller -- along with all the other shady one's that will probably start showing up once they realize that the site is ok with them listing their counterfeits -- is going to keep taking advantage of a lot of people. After the response you got from the site's owner, and his lack of wanting to take action to keep his site clean, I'm kind of hoping that this ends up being the beginning of the end for Sportlots.

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  8. If he is "not a card guy", how would he have found Sportlots to sell on instead of ebay? If I had an auto part, or some rare piece of electronics to sell, and I was neither of those, my first thought would be ebay. Cuz I have no idea is some sub culture site exists that you can sell such items directly to the hobby market you seek.

    So yeah - I'm calling this douche a liar.

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  9. Circling back to this - I totally just found this dude's eBay page. I was checking to see what a poor 57 Mantle goes for (because I love the '57 set and wanted to know what I'd have to shell out sometime in the future for a filler) and this guys "AGED REPRINT" popped up in the completed listing. What BS.

    https://www.ebay.com/usr/79-ee

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    1. I don't know if it's the same seller or not, but it is obviously the same style of fakes. This is a very common technique, which is why I was able to spot them so fast on Sportlots, and was also why I was surprised at Sportlots initial reaction to being told about these on their site.

      These kind of cards keep showing up more and more, and most of these sites don't seem to care. For this seller that you brought up, they would justify not taking the listings down, by saying that the listing say "aged reprint", so therefor he's not trying to deceive anyone... but that doesn't help when someone buys one of these and then tries con someone else by telling them it's real. Just having these kind of cards around is dangerous, and very bad for the hobby. I feel like if we as collector's could all unite, we could probably bring some sort of change to the practice of selling these, but the first step of bringing everyone together would probably be a little difficult, as it seems like people are just conditioned these days into not coming together for a single cause.

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