For every negative feedback you leave: IT GOES AGAINST YOUR ACCOUNT! For every complaint you make against someone else: IT GOES AGAINST YOUR ACCOUNT! For every non-5-Star feedback you get as a seller (regardless if it's warranted or not): IT GOES AGAINST YOR ACCOUNT & YOU PAY HIGHER FEES! You cannot win on eBay no matter what you do anymore.
As I stated before I'm permanently physically disabled with a rare form of Muscular Dystrophy & I cannot walk more than a few steps anymore at age 45. So I don't have the luxury like almost all of you do to go to shows or card shops anymore since 2005. So eBay is my only real choice to buy cards cheap.
I got four bad hobby boxes of 2011 Topps Allen & Ginter from Dave & Adam's Card World or DACW (the biggest buyers of illegally obtained cards in the USA for MANY years). They were all missing the third hit per box. And all I got out of four boxes was (8) common sports jersey/bat cards. I did not pull any beard cards, flower cards, or anything other than inserts that were more than one per box. There are several 1:144 & one per case (12-boxes) insert cards making the overall odds one per box. I GOT NONE OF THOSE IN FOUR BOXES!
The price difference between hobby & retail is HUGE with most Topps products these days. Retail boxes yield one hit if you are lucky, but hobby boxes are supposed to have three. Hobby boxes are supposed to have an autograph 1:63 packs, and retail are 1:200 packs. With all the common autographs & the doubnle printing of those common autographs they should have been one per box in hobby boxes & one in every other retail box. Anyway, hobby boxes average $75.00 a box, and retail were down to $30 a box, but are back up to around $40 a box now. I strongly suspect that DACW knowingly bought bad boxes from Topps yet sold them at no discount which they often do. If you ever see any recent boxes on DACardWorld.com for less than half of what they are selling for everywhere else- don't expect to pull the cards you are supposed to per box! Plus you are NEVER guaranteed that the card company will help you either. But after many e-mails, Topps did make good & they sent me an unripped rip card, a few Flora flower cards, a Bazooka back card & a common autograph. The same week I bought one retail box & pulled a Shawn Michaels ($175 in Beckett) autograph redemption card!!! I'm sticking to retail boxes to complete my mini master set that I decided to make after this fiasco.
I need to further explain "bad boxes". Since I worked as a Senior Manager for a big card company, I know things that none of you will ever hear elsewhere & I never lie or exagerate which is why
I have never been sued after fighting fraud & never holding my tongue in this hobby for over 15-years now online alone & 20-years total. Bad boxes occur when the card company has orders for more boxes than they have inserts for. So they keep making boxes after certain inserts run out. They always purposely make an overage of up to 20% of the entire print run to have extra inserts for replacements. But these are usually pulled FIRST & are NEVER used to put in boxes. When card companies sell the bad boxes they usually discount them greatly & let the buyer know they are bad boxes, but that's only if the printer tells them they did this which is not always the case.
<<<<<NEARLY ALL CARD COMPANIES DO NOT MAKE THEIR OWN CARDS!>>>>>
They use big printing companies that have no connection to the card company at all! If this is news to you, then you've been relying on Beckett for your hobby info for TOO LONG! The Dallas/Ft.Worth, TX area is a hot spot for hobby elitism. Beckett is there, so is Panini (formerly Playoff), Heritage Auctions, and the printing company that prints & packages nearly all the cards in the hobby: Great Western Inc.. I took a late night peek at their entire card production area (all the way in the back next to the freight train tracks) in 2002 and thought it was quite interesting that nothing but Jamaicans were printing our cards. Now please don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with Jamaican people. It's just when was the last time you saw a Jamaican card collector? I'm of the opinion that at least one person in the room making our cards should know almost all there is to know about our hobby. Even the boss was Jamaican. I stayed there behind their industrial sized shredder where no one could see me for well over an hour. A couple of employees even took pot smoking breaks on the loading dock- who's door was wide open! Maybe this is why there are so many screw-ups in card boxes!!!
I even pulled many cards out from under the shredder. I pulled a 2001 Fleer Flair Drew Henson partially completed RC - this card never existed according to Beckett!
I also pulled a Press Pass football Draft insert of Julius Peppers that was different from the ones put in packs- I still have that card. You would think they would do a better job destroying these cards- BUT THEY DON'T! As far as I know Great Western still prints almost all the cards in the hobby.
Be extremely careful on eBay, many sellers have hidden HIGH shipping fees, sometimes they don't send your cards if they don't sell for enough (because all you can do is get an immediate refund from them & then you won't leave negative feedback in their minds), and stay away from sellers with multiple bad feedbacks like tntnorthnj. Just lpook at his feedbackl, he averages (50) negative/neutrals EVERY MONTH!
Probably for the last time (because of my illnesses) I donated over 40,000 cards to Toys For Tots in December. I made 400-count boxes for each child sorted by sport or subject with all stars & most indserts included. Plus every box had at least two Certified Autographed Inserts & every other box had a autographed Diamond King card by the artist: Dick Perez. Every year I'd write to a couple of famous people and always got 50+ by mail autographs to add. This was the 22nd year in a row I donated at least 30,000 cards a year. I wanted it to go to The Leukemia Society which was the charity that I started donating to after being inspired by my friend Gary Carter in 1989, but they told me "hospitals aren't accepting loose cards anymore because of the terrorism climate". I'm sorry, but that's one of the stupidest things I've ever heard! For starters I was speaking to the person who knew me for 22-years & I won a National Award from them in 1991! What was I going to do put a bomb in a 4X6 inch box!
Always fighting for collectors for free for you, & sometimes at my expense!
James McCay
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