Notorious high stakes gambler David Oancea, who is better known as Vegas Dave, has been making waves in the sports card world. He’s reportedly been throwing around big money buying high end graded cards.
Update: In May 2018, Vegas Dave reportedly purchased a Mike Trout Superfractor for $400,000 on eBay.
Update: May 2018 – Vegas Dave did an interview with Steel City Collectibles where he talks about the Jordan situation. Starts at 16:30. Recap posted within this article.
But perhaps not everything in Oancea’s life is what it seems.
On June 1, 2017 Vegas Dave boasted about this PSA 10 Michael Jordan rookie card on his Facebook and Instagram pages.
Several weeks after the Vegas Dave brag post about the PSA 10 Jordan, another post surfaced on social media stating that Vegas Dave sold the card for $18,000. Kicker being the card and PSA holder were both fake.
The owner of the card brought it to the 2017 National Sports Collectors Convention to get it “re-slabbed” by grading company Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA). Soon after he got bad news.
PSA said the card and holder were both fake. The company even held onto the card for a short period of time to draft a letter explaining their conclusions. The letter was posted on a Facebook “Card Scammer” Group.
PSA writes that the label on the Jordan card was copied from a legitimate one. Secondly, a PSA hologram was cut from another label and added. Lastly, the white strip on the back of the label containing a barcode and certification number were also applied fraudulently.
The Jordan rookie card itself was also concluded to be counterfeit by PSA.
Neither the owner of the card or Vegas Dave have made a statement about the issue either publicly or on social media.
UPDATE May 2018: In an interview with Steel City Collectibles
Vegas Dave says he originally bought the Jordan card through someone who contacted him through social media. Met in person, did the deal. Paid $15K-$16K.
After posting the card on his own social media, bragging about the card (pictured), Vegas Dave says he didn’t read the comments and didn’t know people were telling him it was fake.
Vegas Dave then says the Jordan card was apart of a large trade to a collector, David Park, for a Mike Trout card. They had done deals before in the past for other cards.
After Park was told by PSA the Jordan was counterfeit, he contacted Vegas Dave, who said he was in a meeting and would get back to Park. Vegas Dave said Park continued to contact him during the meeting. Eventually Vegas Dave gave Park the information of the original seller of the card.
Park continued to contact Vegas Dave after the National, apparently not able to get ahold of the original seller. Vegas Dave then ghosted Park and blocked his number. Vegas Dave claims that Park was slandering his name across the sports card community.
It’s not known to Sports Card Radio if David Park has responded.
Vegas Dave has a roller coaster lifestyle. He won $2.5 million from a $100,000 bet when the Kansas City Royals won the 2015 World Series.
But he’s facing huge legal issues. On April 12, 2017 a federal grand jury indicted him for using phony Social Security numbers to open player betting accounts at Las Vegas casinos and sportsbooks.
9 days later on April 21, 2017 Vegas Dave was back in court facing domestic violence charges.
A seedy Las Vegas gossip blog, The Dirty, suggests Vegas Dave pleaded down in the domestic violence case. Receiving a suspended jail sentence of 90 days, 6 months of domestic violence counseling, 100 hours of community service or pay a $1,000 fine, and no contact with the victim.
He asserts to being banned from Las Vegas sportsbooks for winning too much. Although that conflicts with a recent Facebook post where he admits, “Even when I was posting $100,000 winning tickets online years ago I was losing overall.”
Vegas Dave took a big hit on July 10, 2016 losing $1 million on a bet that UFC fighter Miesha Tate would retain her bantamweight championship against Amanda Nunes.
11 months after the huge Tate loss, Vegas Dave stated the banishment from Las Vegas sportsbooks (for winning too much?) drove him to invest in high end sports cards.
His Instagram feed shows him mainly living in the Las Vegas fast lane. Multiple pictures of women, famous athletes, betting tickets and wads of cash.
David Oancea is a man, who I personally know. She is much more than this.
At a local card store in Santee, Ca. Heard about a “trimmed and fixed” 1969 Topps Lee Alcindor is being submitted to PSA by someone in San Diego at a Las Vegas convention. Watch this card be graded by PSA and given a 9 or 10.
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