Someone Selling My Digital Art, Not Cool Round 2

Once again the guy who had stolen my digital image of my What If? Billy Ripken bat knob card is at it again and selling the card again. When I contacted him on January 4th about it he ended the auction and while he gave me a shtick about why I should allow him to sell the card he did agree to not sell it. I have made it routine to check every so often and last night I came across the same guy selling the same card using my image to make a profit for himself.

I tried to contact him through the question link in the auction but he apparently has turned off the "Ask a question" link for his auctions. I am guessing he probably gets plenty of complaints and won't face up to his actions. I had saved his emails from our conversation in January so I sent him an email regarding him selling my image and how I am done being polite. I submitted a report to the eBay VeRO department regarding him using my intellectual design to make money, I also made posts on Blowout Cards forum, Beckett forum, the Trading Card Database forum and the Sports Card Forum.

Most people would respond the first time it was brought up and stop selling the card totally, scrap the image and move on but not this guy. Where a profit is to be made I am sure he is set to sell everyone else's work as his own.

EDIT 4/6-
Here is the guy's store link: mr.0ddball420

All of this could have easily been averted had he just stopped using a design I posted back in January but apparently the $14.99 he got from the couple of cards he sold was too much to give up. Now because he had to turn this in to a big blow up and continue to claim his friend own the rights to the card and if I pushed him to stop selling the card he was going to hunt me down and turn his friend's lawyer on me I decided to go all out to stop this guy from selling his cheap copies.

I contacted Topps, Upper Deck and Beckett because he is selling cards with their logos/watermarks on them and I already have gotten a response from Upper Deck and they are getting involved.

Someone Selling My Digital Art, Not Cool

Last night I was reading a post on the Blowout Cards forum about a collector being reunited with a graded 1989 Fleer Billy Ripken card that he sold a number of years ago. I took a quick look at eBay to see what kinds of variations there were for the card and I came across an auction of someone selling a copy of the card I created using the Billy Ripken card for one of my What If? posts back in 2014.

Here is the link to my post from 2014: http://packwar.blogspot.com/2014/01/what-if-billy-ripken.html

Here is the auction: http://www.ebay.com/itm/BILLY-RIPKEN-RC-F-F-1988-ERROR-VERY-COOL-CUSTOM-MADE-ODDBALL-CARD-READ-/182408538536?&rmvSB=true

I sent him an email asking politely that he end the auction because I created the image for the blog and only for entertainment, not to be sold. He did eventually respond and did end the auction but he has been hounding me to allow him to sell the card saying that if I had no intent of selling it than he doesn't understand why I wont let him sell it. He has even gone on to claim that his friend owns the rights to the Billy Ripken card and I should allow his friend to sell copies of the card.

Annnd We're done...

A quick follow up to yesterday’s post. After I posted on the blog I sent him one last message letting him know that I had left negative feedback and why I left it. Surprisingly he responded rather quickly with his explanation

“Every single one looked the same. I have been out of town a lot and have a ton of emails coming in. I was under the impression you were returning the card as you said you were and once it was received back you would get a refund.”

 

I had to respond to him regarding this. I pointed out that he had multiple Suzy Hotrod autographs for sale with each auction having a different autograph and the crappy autograph was cheaper. And asked how the picture was posted to his auction if he didn’t have that specific card. I also pointed out that I had cancelled the return on Saturday and had even emailed him after I cancelled the return explaining why I decided to keep the card (It would be stupid to pay to return the card to get my money back and just go and buy another card that looked exactly the same) and that I only wanted the card he posted.

 

I don’t expect him to respond, I caught him in a lit about them all looking the same, plus he obviously did read through his emails if he knew that I had requested a return/refund. I am done with this seller, nothing he can say will change the way that this unfolded and I definitely will not be purchasing anything from him in the future. Though I wouldn’t be surprised to see him posting the Suzy Hotrod autograph for sale at a higher price before to long.

A Bad eBay Experience

On September 26th I came across one of those opportunity purchases, this was actually my first opportunity purchase this year, and even though I set a goal of cutting these types of purchase out completely I didn’t listen to my inner voice.

 

While searching through some Allen & Ginter’s autographs a recommendation for various Goodwin Champions autographs appeared so I decided to take a look. One of the suggestions was a 2013 Suzy Hotrod autograph and for some unknown reason I found myself interested. I used to watch roller derby all the time but it just doesn’t show up on television anymore but to be honest if it was on T.V. I would watch every chance I could. It is just the ultimate sport; roller skates, physical assaults and a scoring system that nobody seems to understand.

 

So I got caught up in finding out about Suzy Hotrod and once I was that deep I just had to buy an autograph and of course once you buy an autograph you have to add a relic too. I looked through the autographs and Suzy Hotrod has a rather messy autograph so when I came across this solid signature I hit the BIN for $4.99 plus $2.95 shipping. The price was about a dollar more than what most of her autographs were selling for at the time, the same seller had one of her regular signatures for $3.49 BIN but I wanted the better looking autograph.

 

Next up was the relic. There are base relics and multi-colored relic cards so I decided to go with a dual-colored piece from one of her red Gotham Girls traveling team jerseys. This one was $2.99 plus $2.95 shipping. At the time this was about average for her relic cards so I felt I got a good price.

 

After I purchased the cards I realized they were from the same seller so I emailed him to ask if he would be willing to combine shipping for both cards. His response to me was essentially “Tough” and that once items are paid for he cannot combine shipping, which is B.S. because I did it just a couple of weeks ago and it was a situation where he didn’t want to take the extra 30 seconds and it meant an additional $2.45 in his pocket. But, none-the-less I can accept this because I did pay for them separately and life goes on.

 

Days go by and the tracking number is not showing that it was even shipped and I was a bit concerned. It finally shipped on October 3^rd, seven days after I paid. OK, I am now wondering if the seller was just being a jerk and making me wait because I asked for combined shipping.

 

I get the cards on October 6^th and I open the relic card first and it looked good, I opened the autograph card envelope and notice the autograph is Hotrod’s regular crappy autograph and not the beautiful autograph that I purchased. I double checked the auction to make sure that the description didn’t say something like “You will not receive the card pictured” but nothing like that so I emailed the seller explaining the mistake. When you email a seller regarding an issue a case is automatically opened through eBay so I figured it would get the seller’s attention. I sent a follow up email with a picture of the card I received to show the difference between autographs. I waited and wasn’t surprised when he didn’t respond so three days later I expanded the claim to get eBay involved. They attempted to contact him and they didn’t get a response so they offered me the option to return the card and get a refund using the aBay Buyer Protection or keep the card. I emailed the seller one last time hoping it was just a mistake that he seriously missed, and waited until Sunday before cancelling the refund option and just leave negative feedback.

 

The card on the left is the card that was pictured in the auction and the card on the right is the card I actually received. What led me to purchase this card was because the signature lines were separated and she actually wrote "#55" where she normally signs "Hotrod#55" all together and the "55" usually looks like anything but "55"

 

 

In the end I decided to keep the card instead of accepting a refund and buying a new one because for some reason Suzy Hotrod’s autographs have doubled in price in just two weeks, even her relics have jumped 50% too.

 

I am really disappointed, the autograph on the card I purchased is very unique compared to her standard autograph. It got me thinking about what happened and I figured it was one of four reasons from the seller. When considering the options I am betting on is either #2 or #4.

 

 

1. He used an image he found on the internet for the auction not realizing there was a difference. But this one seems less likely because he was selling another Hotrod autograph with the crappy signature for less money so he obviously knew there was a difference.

2. He accidently switched the packaging and sent the nice autograph to the other buyer. This seems like a possibility and he wasn’t responding out of embarrassment knowing he couldn’t get the other card back from the other buyer to correct the mistake.

 

3. He didn’t send me the card to be a jerk because I asked for combined shipping. This is a possibility but most people are not this vindictive, especially when you consider this guy has over 17,000 feedback with 99.9% positive. If he got upset and jerked over everyone who had any sort of after sale request I am sure his feedback would be much lower.

 

4. He saw the rapid price increase in the week before he sent out the card and decided to hold the better looking autograph figuring he could get a significant premium over what I paid so he sent out the crappy autograph and is ignoring my/eBay’s messages expecting negative feedback anyway.

Instant Collection, Just Add Wasted Money

For the up and coming collector I found the deal for you, 1.2 million collectibles for the low low price of $20,000 plus shipping (not listed). For the price of a car you get an amazing collection that breaks down to only 17 cents per item. These items are part of a closing store’s inventory, if this is the type of product the store attempted to sell I can understand why it is now closed.

 

The collection is made up of junk wax complete sets, boxes, hand collated collections, singles, Starting Lineups and other collectible items. Toss in some “hits” like Brian Griese jersey relics and Travis Wilson autographs, vintage cards form the 1970s and 80s (vintage?), rookies from amazing players like Brady Quinn and on and on.

 

About the only thing of true value is a Barry Bonds autographed baseball and a couple of pucks signed by Mike Richter and Adam Graves. The collection might be fun to look through and some items could be useful to player collectors but in all honesty there is very little value, despite the fact that the seller lists Beckett values up to $40 for various cards. The seller, who has 100% positive on 151 feedback, has only 2 feedback in the past two years and has not sold anything since 2011.

This is the type of listing that belongs on Craigslist.

Delusional Sellers

A couple of years ago one of my favorite blogs was Bad Wax run by Mike Levine, also known as Chemgod on his blog (He was a chemist). One of his long running popular serials was “Craigslist Idiots” where he contacted people posting card related items for insane prices on Craigslist. Too often people responded to him negatively because they always claimed to know best.

 

I don’t pay much attention to Craigslist but I do keep an eye on strange eBay postings, what I call eBay toads. The other day I came across a seriously overpriced lot that included an Ultra 3-ring binder, nine 9-pocket sleeves and 129 cards. The cards were all 1990-1992 made up of Upper Deck, Score and Hi-Pro Marketing. There were big named players at the time like Griffey, Ripken, Gwynn and Rickey Henderson plus an Ivan Calderon autograph. All for the unbelievably low price of $250 or best offer.

 

I emailed them and being as polite as possible I let them know that the prices are well over valued. I gave them a rough estimate of what they could realistically expect (@$25-30) and explained that most of the cards can be found for .25-.50 cents each and that the binder was the most valuable item in the auction.

 

Here is the response I received
“I appreciate you letting me know. I did take a lot of time researching, and let's not forget it is "Or Best Offer" so the price is not $250. But due to the time I took to research them all, I am keeping it the way that it is.”

 

I love how people equate their time in to value, I was trying to help someone who doesn’t deal with sports cards and I get a “No help needed” response.

It Is Now All Over For Aaron Hernandez

Aaron Hernandez was arrested today, not for obstruction of justice as originally stated but for First Degree Murder in the execution style murder of his friend Odin Lloyd. Police were able to piece together the clues and tie him directly to Lloyd’s death.

 

At 2:30 am, Monday June 17^th, Hernandez and Lloyd were seen leaving Lloyd’s house in a silver Nissan Altima. At 3:22 am the security cameras in the industrial park where Lloyd’s body was found showed the Nissan Altima entering the area. Overnight workers heard multiple gunshots between 3:23 am and 3:27 am. Minutes later Hernandez’s home security, which the police were able to repair, shows Hernandez entering his home with a gun in his hand. Besides the gun not being found it seems like a pretty straight forward case against him.

 

The Patriots cut Hernandez immediately after it was announced that he was arrested for murder, he was ordered held without bail. Of course the eBay Toads have begun to jump on his notoriety and there are roughly 75 new postings and I would expect more as the news spreads.

 

A completely senseless crime.

In an unrelated story, that is just as bad for the NFL, Cleveland Browns rookie Ausar Walcott was arrested today and charged with Attempted First Degree Murder, Second Degree Aggravated Assault and Third Degree Endangering An Injured Victim after attacking a man outside a bar in New jersey Sunday night.




6/27 UPDATE-
 To add to the devistation that has become Aaron Hernandez's world, the police are now working to link a double homicide from July 2012 to Hernandez. A silver SUV that Hernandez was renting at the time is linked to the scene of the double murder in Boston. No other additional information about the connection has been released but considering his current circumstances I would not rule out anything.

Another eBay Toad: Mike Zunino Custom Card

As a Mariner’s fan I try to pick up cards from some of the younger players before they make it to the big leagues when their prices tend to increase. Even though I know that Michael Zunino has limited options right now, a 2008 Bowman AFLAC card and a card from the Everett Aquasox team set, I still keep an eye to see if one is posted at a reasonable price

 

I came across this beaut tonight. I am just going to let this settle in before I go any further…

 

It has a $79.99 BIN price and is being advertised as:

MIKE ZUNINO 2012 ACEO # 1/1 ROOKIE Teal Variation (1 of 1) 1st Mariners Card

 

I shit you not, here is the link to the auction: AUCTION LINK

 

This is what happens when you hand someone the keys to MS Paint (or GIMP) who has big aspirations and not an ounce of talent.

 

Let us begin with the obvious; this is not an ACEO card. ACEO by definition is an art card and unless I am blind as a bat this card is not sketch, paint, pencil, charcoal or any other art medium. Though you may have an argument for a collage.

 

You can see that another card was used as a template, I am not sure if the additions were added on and then printed out or if someone printed out a bunch of elements and pasted them on top of another card. You can actually see the border of the original picture underneath Zuninio’s image. I like the use of a baseball to cover up the Topps logo in the upper right corner and the original player’s info on the bottom left. There appears to be a Kanji character on top of the ball in the upper corner, it looks like the “artist” attempted to cover up what was on the ball with the addition of the character.

 

So let’s see, they used another card, most likely a licensed card (looks like a Topps card), they pasted in a draft pick’s image and then added a baseball here and a baseball there (hey, at least it fits the theme right?), toss in some floating elements including Topps’ “#1 Draft Pick” logo, the old MLB Rookie Card logo that has not been used since 2009 and a Seattle Mariners logo and you have a perfectly legit rookie card.

 

But wait… there is more…

If you buy the card now you also get an equally well designed card back.

So there are more pictures of Zunino including the one along the top that is clipped a tad, using more than 3 fonts, using an overly ornate (and illegible) font for the player’s name, an uneven background image that makes the card appear to be an angle and the piece de resistance… stats cut off at the edge. My favorite part is the little “TM Suicide Squeeze 2012”, with this much copyright infringement there is no question that the designer is not really trademarked.

 

I did not know whether to laugh or cry about this card but I decided to send the seller a head’s up about the copyright laws that are being broken with the card and let him know that he is representing the card as legit so he can be sued if anyone brought it to a legal situation. Let’s see if/how he responds. What is sad is that the seller has 100% Positive Feedback with over 2500 responses, he has 100 auctions currently and everyone one of them, except this one, is a licensed card. I don't know if he bought it off someone and is trying to recoup his losses, I went through his recent purchases and everything that he has bought has been legit so he didn't buy it through eBay if he did buy it, or if he created himself trying to make a few extra (or $80) bucks or if he is helping someone out but I know that the card companies do watch auctions, as was obvious with Topps' NFL Opening Day fiasco, so he could get dinged in the end.

Mars-Sanity Takes Control!

Normally I do not get involved with “Hot” packs, I have heard some horror stories and depending on the product you can almost guarantee that the pack has been opened and resealed but when I came across an auction for a 2012 Heritage Mars Attacks! pack that was guaranteed to include a sketch card for a dollar I figured I would toss my hat in to the ring. The 2012 Topps Heritage Mars Attacks! series is a 50th Anniversary tribute set based on the original 1962 Topps Mars Attacks! release.

I always got a kick out of anything that involves Mars and aliens. I can almost guarantee that I was the only kid in my neighborhood to have a cassette tape with Orson Welles War of the World original broadcast, I have seen every adaptation spawned from Welles work too. I am standing here today to acknowledge openly that I am a Martian addict. I will even begin my 12-step program by admitting that not only did I see the 1996 Mars Attacks! movie but that I loved it and own a copy on VHS and DVD… I may now hang my head in shame.

So, now with the back story out of the way I can get on to the reason we are here today.

So, I came across a hot pack with a guaranteed sketch card in the pack, they actually come one per box (24 packs per box) so it is not really a huge thing to find one but it was sitting at 99 cents and 2 days left so I tossed up a bid for $2.01 and figured the countdown would come soon enough. Packs run $2.08 at Target so my bid was well within reason and hell, if I know I am getting a sketch card why not pay the pack price right?

Then apparently stupidity took over and my bid was blown away, not like a simple little increase but blown away as if the Miami Heat played the local Jr High basketball team type of blown away. After a flurry of bidding the winner walked away paying a hefty $20 for the pack. Considering that a sealed box only runs about $45, which includes 24 packs and one sketch card, why would anyone pay that much for a single pack?

I have picked up a couple of packs and will most likely end up buying a Hobby box to break, I will post something up shortly about my first impressions hands-on.

I just want to end this with some pure Martian awsomness. This is one of Joe Simko's sketch cards, he has worked with Topps for a number of years with his work appearing in Garbage Pail Kids and Wacky Packages and his most recent work is with a company called Wax Eye in their Cereal Killers stickers.

eBay Toads- Sammy Sosa Would Not Even Buy This Card

I am at a loss for words. This auction for a 1990 Topps Sammy Sosa card has to be listed in the “Are You Fu**ing Insane?” category.

To make things worse he lists it in a way that would make you think that it is a graded card and even listing subgrades when it is obviously not graded.

But wait… there is more…

A 1990 ToppsTiffany Sammy Sosa

A 1990 Topps Frank Thomas

A 1992 Topps Draft Pick Derek Jeter

I honestly do not know if this is someone who is so oblivious to the market or is an eBay toad hoping to catch that one juicy buyer who is ignorant of pricing for these cards. He has a zero feedback and registered just a few days ago.

eBay Trolling The Walter Payton Way

The other day while I was checking up on the Wayne Gretzky Parkhurst Masterpiece that I wrote about I came across an interesting auction for a 2008 Upper Deck Masterpieces Walter Payton Black Border parallel.

A normal 2008 UD Masterpiece Payton sells for a couple of bucks while the various parallels can all be had for under $10 but does anyone else feel that $2000 for an uncorrected manufacturing error is a bit too high? The black border is mis-cut, if anything this card should be cheaper.

I can not tell if he is trolling or trying to find a sucker. The guy buys and sells a significant amount of 2008 Masterpiece border parallels and has 100% feedback on 205 deals so you would expect him to have an understanding of true prices on this set.

eBay Toads- Preying On The Babe's Good Name

Sometimes while searching eBay you come across items that are being sold by someone who is either delusional or just plain trying to rip people off.

 Today while searching for Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth cards I came this listing for a 2001 Upper Deck Legends of New York Babe Ruth card supposedly containing “a piece of game worn hat REAL!” but the card pictured (which you see above) is a base card from the set. If you are not familiar with the 2001 Legends of New York release, Upper Deck created this set highlighting the teams of New York both past and present. It includes the Yankees, Mets, Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants. On the front of the card the team’s logo is made up of felt using the team’s colors. His card is even in pretty bad shape with multiple creases across the front. Most base cards from the set in mint condition sell for only a couple of bucks.

What leads me to believe that this guy is attempting to rip someone off is his claim that the card came with a Certificate of Authorization, which he mistakingly threw out when he got the card. This is a lie because Upper Deck marked the back of these cards as authentic, not on a separate certificate.

I opened a box of this product and was fortunate enough to get pretty close to an entire set plus I pulled a Dave Winfield bat card and a Joe Pepitone jersey card. As you can see the base cards look very different from the memorabilia cards and all of the base cards contain the same felt around the logo. I even have the same exact Ruth card #126 along with other Yankees cards.

I did email him pointing out that his card is actually a base card and that you can find it for a couple of bucks. I guess we will see what becomes of this listing. Another situation of “Know what you are buying”



On a separate note, you will see that the dates for Winfield are 1951-1972. Considering he was born in 1951 and he played for the Yankees from 1981-1990 I think this is just a mistake. Pepitone’s dates are incorrect too, he played for the Yankees from 1962-1969. Now he did play for the Astros, Cubs and Braves between 1970-73 so I am not sure if the dates are his full career or if the dates are supposed to be their time with the Yankees.

Perception Or Misconception?

Does perceived scarcity affect the price of a card? When a card is numbered we know exactly how many are out there floating around the universe but when a company releases a card with no numbering all we can base numbers on is what we see, hear or read about.

Case in point, the 2007-08 Chronology “The LeBrons” Blue Bordered card. There are currently 6 of these cards up for auction on eBay ranging from $4.99 to $800. Between May 24th and June 21st 8 of these cards had been put up for auction, some selling and some not. The highest card to sell was at $31.00 and that was in early June. Now there is one that has hit $46.00 on 18 bids and there is still 2 hours left on the auction.

After I pulled the card 2 weeks ago I began researching it, reading through a number of hobby entities including Upper Deck and Beckett’s Facebook pages and blogs, various sports card blogs and forums I came up with roughly 50 posts of varying degrees stating that they have this card. This would lead me to believe that we are looking at probably 100 or more of these cards out there, and considering that UD is inserting them in to 2009-10 UD Basketball Blaster Boxes I expect it to be even more common then what I have found.

I laughed when I came across the guy selling one for a BIN of $800 and even claiming that people have told him that there are possibly only 10 of these. He posted a couple of the questions submitted to him, one guy states that there may only be 2 of these and another guy claiming UD told him there are probably less then 10 around. We all know that is BS considering UD does not make a statement on the print run of any card that is not serial numbered.

I was hoping to shed a bit of light so this seller would be informed; I contacted the seller on 6/21 with my findings, which I have posted here. The seller’s response was to add another sentence to his posting: “It has come to my attention through some eBay members that there are under 10 of these cards in existence. This may be possible but I cannot confirm or deny this information as of yet.”

To add to the horror, the guy actually received an offer that is awaiting approval. Hopefully it is a levelheaded collector who is making a mockery of the posting and not an ill-informed person buying in to the perception.

Right now the hobby is running amuck with Strasburg cards selling for insane amounts, do people just arbitrarily believe what is being told to them? If I hold up a card and say this is limited will people toss money in my direction?

What Drives Some Dealers?

What is wrong with people? Apparently no matter what oddball card you have, if it is graded a 10 with a population of 1 the card is apparently worth twice its weight in gold.

Is this Ken Griffey Jr 1989 Starting Lineup card really worth $7,500? Even being the only PSA 10 out there I find it hard to cough up the dough for this one. You can walk in to any number of card or toy shops around the Seattle area and still find a 1989 Griffey SLU hanging on the wall selling for less then $75-100. But I guess there are some collectors out there that must complete their collection no matter what the cost.

I can come up with a number of options I would opt for before I laid down a dime for a graded SLU card. Just a few random selections: A Game-used Autographed Away Jersey, Game-used Autographed Shoes and the ULTIMATE Ken Griffey Jr Autograph card. This card is the shit; it is the autograph to have no matter whom you collect. Griffey and Mantle together, does it get any better?

When the card came out a friend offered me the single-signed Griffey version of the card for $50 but I was holding out for the dual-signed card, I kick myself now.

So, in the end the choice seems obvious… a game-used auto jersey, game-used auto shoes and the Gold Crown of Griffey & Mantle autograph cards with well over $2500 still left over. Being a Griffey collector the choice is easy.

To Bid or Not To Bid...

I am selling off a portion of my collection and decided to break them up in to lots to sell on eBay. So while looking through other collections that are being sold to get some ideas on how to present my auctions I came across this wonderful offering.

I am speechless; I believe this may actually top some of the delusional Craigslist Idiots.