Since I was scammed for a Snap Koffing beginning of this year I am very suspicious with any cards offered on Mercari. Today I saw a raw Snap Bulbasaur that is offered for 7.5M Yen:
https://jp.mercari.com/item/m29961799316
What are your thoughts about the card? It looks quite real to me but curious for your thoughts
Cheers
Martin
Could be, but the seller also has sold listings for fake cards.
Tread carefully.
When a seller posts a very high priced card & claims they’re in a rush to sell, chances are it’s a scam. That’s how they justify the low price to potential victims.
Buy it via PayPal if you decide to go for it. Their buyer protection is amazing.
This right here
The listing description mentions that the seller needs the money so they are selling, but the listing heading mentions a deadline for 3 days until 3/18. For me these are classic techniques to create FOMO. Also if you look at the other proxy cards on their listing they usually feign ignorance.
The seller with the snap koffing also had almost perfect ratings.
Please be cautious.
Cheers!
The colors on the back look off to me. I would think that it is fake. Be careful.
there really is nothing more to say than this
Don’t get scammed twice my brother. The negatives outweigh the positive. Best of luck on your search.
When it comes to this kind of money, I stop trusting the listing and start vetting the seller instead.
Personally I wouldn’t trust this person:
Lowest quality provenance: The “I got it from a friend” is incredibly common among mercari scams. It’s also the laziest excuse in the book. Demand better provenance.
Low effort to get things authenticated (1): Reading into the comments section of their extra battle day Lillie listing - The seller allegedly tried to sell the card to 3 different shops. Mostly generic second hand shops rather than TCGs specialist shops. The seller then cited that they wouldn’t buy the Lillie because they couldn’t afford it or that the card wasn’t a fit for their risk profile. Should have taken it to one of many specialist card shops who actively are looking to buy this card, then?
Low effort to get things authenticated (2): Keeps saying they’re listing these high value cards cheap seeing as they’re “unauthenticated items”. Get it authenticated then? It’s been enough time since the Lillie listing sold.
Dodges the truth: allegedly, the verdict of the shops was - “they won’t buy it because shop X has this situation” this doesn’t mean it’s authenticated.
The person is full of excuses and disclaimers such that there’s no reliable substance to rest on, IMO.
I also came to the conclusion that it has to be fake. The art of his listing match to the fake snap koffing that I bought so I will keep distance to this for sure
I think a good take away for you, who has already fallen prey to these sort of listings, is to remember the golden rule, “If it’s too good to be true, it probably is”.
I also think the color looks off. Too unsaturated and not bright whites on back which is odd
So I just found out that mercari do have a feature where you can have it shipped to their third party authenticator after purchase. Costs ÂĄ1700 to get it appraised. Will require the seller to enable the option from listing options.
The company is FAKEBUSTERS｜Sneaker and Apparel Authentication Site｜Home
You’ll be refunded if the item fails authentication. Issue is, who knows how knowledgeable they are. Magi appear to be one of their clients, though.
If the seller wanted money fast and didn’t care about getting a lower price then they could’ve gone to any Book Off or wherever and done a deal there.
If you’re looking for a Snap Bulbasaur, there is one on RareCandy for auction. Not sure if you’re able to bid unless you’re in the US though, might need a middleman.
Hello, thank you for posting this. It was fun to see where the conversation went. You mentioned having been scammed on Mercari for a Snap Koffing, and - if I may ask - how did that turn out?
I am quite interested how Mercari resolves issues for high-end cards. For small things, I have always worked out discrepancies directly with sellers (I am based in Japan), but the waters as of yet are murky enough that I do not want to wade out into high-end territory.
Regardless, thank you again for the original post!
EDIT: See pfm’s response below on why we can’t assume that all snap cards are from the same sheet.
Without even looking into provenance or the seller or anything like that you can look at the way it was printed. Since only 20 of these were printed, they should all be from the same sheet, meaning all of their backs should be identical. As you can see from the below photos, the Mercari one is completely off-center and does not match known authenticated ones.
This is the back of the Mercari listing:
This is the back of a legitimate one graded by PSA:
I don’t agre that it’s a valid assumption that we know how many cards there were per sheet or how many sheets were printed.
The video posted by Akabane suggests it could basically be one copy per sheet Did Akabane reveal an uncut Fan Club Gyarados? - #3 by pfm
It’s possible that is just a test sheet but the point stands that we don’t really know
Welcome to the forum!
Here is the snap Koffing story: Experiences with Buy it Now on Mercari - #9 by Mussundwerdich
The difficulty here is that when buying from overseas, we have to rely on middleman services. It is very difficult to get a refund from these services.
Many of the Mercari scammers know that and they target overseas buyers like this
So most of us do not have the experience of buying from within Japan. I believe the buyer protections with Mercari are much stronger if you do
