Sports Card Scams You Need to Know About

Around the world, sports enthusiasts love collecting sports cards. For some, it may be a hobby, however, many are passionate about collecting memorabilia. For them, it’s like an honor or an award that recalls thousands of memories.

With the significant increase in people’s interest, sports cards have become widely accessible, and readily available in chain stores like Walmart and Target. However, this easy access is starting to cause a major headache for zealous collectors.

The recent trends have shown massive scams with sports cards. People have found ways to make instant fortunes out of sports cards. For us, ardent collectors, this is quite frustrating. Also, most of us don’t even know that we’re being scammed.

This article is close to our hearts and we’ll share our limited, but valuable experience of how these scams work. Being a victim of such activities, we don’t want you to fall into such traps. So, without any delay, let’s shed light on how sports card scams are working:

1. Pack Searching:

Spending time searching for a pack is acceptable. But have you noticed some people spend an excessively long time in the card aisle at Target or Walmart?

They’re called “Pack Searchers”. What they do is they search every pack and feel for the hits. Doing so enables them to find out rare items that might be missing in other packs. As a result, they get all the treats and leave behind the worthless stuff.

You may have noticed, but this practice has become widely common. We guarantee that there’s not a single shelf that goes unsearched by the pack searchers.

Large box sellers and group breakers will “weigh” boxes to determine which ones to sell to you, and which ones to keep for themselves.

2. Online Shopping:

Searching for sports cards within your range can be a hefty task. However, eBay has a lot of collections ready to be picked up by the collectors. However, the chances of scams manifold with online shopping.

Many people take the bait of scammers. For them, we, the ardent collectors are easy prey. Most of us don’t get what we pay for, the package never gets shipped, or the quality is poor. All these risks are attached to online shopping.

However, there are some antidotes to such scams. One option is to ask the seller to video call you. See if it’s worth the price you’re paying. But for that, you may need a remarkable connection. A connection that won’t degrade the video quality while you’re on the video call.

So, we recommend a connection like Spectrum. A top-notch connection that ensures seamless video quality. Also, you can live stream matches from anywhere. With millions of free hotspot zones around the country, you can do anything on the go.In addition, they’re catering to Spanish customers in their native language too! To speak to a representative, you can connect to numero de Spectrum for Spanish customer support.

3. Fake Bidders:

Another scam that mostly happens online is shill bidding. You may have noticed some cards or packs have unusually high prices. It makes us question how and why would someone buy such expensive cards that are readily available. The answer is simple, to scam the authentic collectors.

Many scammers make fake online profiles and bid for their cards. When bidding starts, they keep on bidding until a specific point and sell them to fake IDs, owned by them. This creates a history trail that someone bid so high to get the pack or cards. As a result, people fall into the trap and end up buying overpriced cards.

Several large sellers have been busted for shill bidding including PWCC and Mastro Net Auctions.

4. Hobby Shops:

Some hobby shops are also involved in such malicious practices. We’re not saying every hobby shop does this, but there are more than a few involved in this.

Some stores weight their hobby boxes, take out all the packs, collect the hits, and sell the packs with non-hits.

5. Frail Card Companies:

We, as buyers or sellers don’t hold the copyrights of sports cards. The companies rolling out such cards have the rights. And it makes them accountable to take action against such fraudsters.

However, it seems that such companies have only focused on producing cards, rather than their safety. They have all the power and authority to go after such scammers and fraudsters. But, their inability to do so ingrains more confidence in such people. They know that no one would take any action against them and who can, won’t bat an eye. So, they keep on looting people in one way or the other.

Closing Up

Frequent scams are pushing ardent collectors not to go after such memorabilia. Without a doubt, it’s not a cheerful sight. However, with solid actions and awareness among people, such scams can be identified and halted.