RangerWickett
Legend
I decided to get some Magic cards from eBay, since a new expansion set had been released. Mostly I had fun with it, spending a bit too much on some, getting stuff silly cheap on others.
One seller sent a note in my package of cards. This seller had been selling lots of cards from the new set, and he said that in the process of fulfilling the orders people sent in, he managed to open 4 copies of an expensive card (Blood Crypt) in foil. Basically a single Blood Crypt foil is worth $20 or $30, and 4 is the maximum number of a given card you can have in a deck, so having 4 foils is quite a coup.
He said that he wanted to reward customers who bought from him by giving them a chance to win these foil Blood Crypts cheaply, so he was going to take nine 4-of sets of cards he didn't sell, plus the 4-of set of foil Blood Crypts, and hold a repack auction. You basically bid on a 10% chance to win the cards you want, and if you lose you still get something dinky.
Repack auctions are inherently sketchy because it's hard to prove if someone lies, but I figured what the hell, I had fifteen bucks I could blow. So I bid, and won two auctions. I got the cards about a week later (yesterday), and went to do some research on eBay and verify the seller actually, y'know, gave one of us the promised cards.
I've got logic and evidence supporting my theory that the seller is lying to us.
[sblock]Of the 10 auctions, four people had been winners. I got 2 auctions, one guy got 2, another got 5, and the last person, who we'll call Mr. X, got 1.
I conferred with my fellow winners to see what all cards we had gotten, and everyone but Mr. X replied. Of the 9 auctions we got, none were the Blood Crypts. We did a little more digging, and discovered that the seller who was offering the repack auction and Mr. X were from the same town in Kentucky, which according to internet research has a population of 6000 people. This is suspect.
However, in my mind the most damning evidence is just one of logical extrapolation. Because of the rarity in the set, you have a 1/65 chance of getting one non-foil Blood Crypt in a given pack. Foils are, according to WotC (the publisher of Magic) about 70 times more rare, so realistically, this seller who have had to open 4000+ packs of cards to have gotten 4x of this foil card.
This seller has 30 feedback entries from buyers. Since most of the auctions he sold were 4-ofs, this implies that either a truly massive number of people have not left feedback, or that he only sold a total of about 120 cards (and since they're rare, this equals 120 packs). He claimed 'I had to open so many packs to fulfill the orders that I managed to get 4 foil Blood Crypts'.
Either this man is the most stupidly lucky magic dealer ever, or he B.S.ed the whole thing, and used an alt or a friend to make sure he didn't have to pony up for items he didn't have in the first place.[/sblock]
So there's my 'evidence,' such as it is. How do you think I should proceed?
One seller sent a note in my package of cards. This seller had been selling lots of cards from the new set, and he said that in the process of fulfilling the orders people sent in, he managed to open 4 copies of an expensive card (Blood Crypt) in foil. Basically a single Blood Crypt foil is worth $20 or $30, and 4 is the maximum number of a given card you can have in a deck, so having 4 foils is quite a coup.
He said that he wanted to reward customers who bought from him by giving them a chance to win these foil Blood Crypts cheaply, so he was going to take nine 4-of sets of cards he didn't sell, plus the 4-of set of foil Blood Crypts, and hold a repack auction. You basically bid on a 10% chance to win the cards you want, and if you lose you still get something dinky.
Repack auctions are inherently sketchy because it's hard to prove if someone lies, but I figured what the hell, I had fifteen bucks I could blow. So I bid, and won two auctions. I got the cards about a week later (yesterday), and went to do some research on eBay and verify the seller actually, y'know, gave one of us the promised cards.
I've got logic and evidence supporting my theory that the seller is lying to us.
[sblock]Of the 10 auctions, four people had been winners. I got 2 auctions, one guy got 2, another got 5, and the last person, who we'll call Mr. X, got 1.
I conferred with my fellow winners to see what all cards we had gotten, and everyone but Mr. X replied. Of the 9 auctions we got, none were the Blood Crypts. We did a little more digging, and discovered that the seller who was offering the repack auction and Mr. X were from the same town in Kentucky, which according to internet research has a population of 6000 people. This is suspect.
However, in my mind the most damning evidence is just one of logical extrapolation. Because of the rarity in the set, you have a 1/65 chance of getting one non-foil Blood Crypt in a given pack. Foils are, according to WotC (the publisher of Magic) about 70 times more rare, so realistically, this seller who have had to open 4000+ packs of cards to have gotten 4x of this foil card.
This seller has 30 feedback entries from buyers. Since most of the auctions he sold were 4-ofs, this implies that either a truly massive number of people have not left feedback, or that he only sold a total of about 120 cards (and since they're rare, this equals 120 packs). He claimed 'I had to open so many packs to fulfill the orders that I managed to get 4 foil Blood Crypts'.
Either this man is the most stupidly lucky magic dealer ever, or he B.S.ed the whole thing, and used an alt or a friend to make sure he didn't have to pony up for items he didn't have in the first place.[/sblock]
So there's my 'evidence,' such as it is. How do you think I should proceed?
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