Reputable Trustworthy Unopened Pack Sellers on eBay and Amazon

[statbirt]

Has anyone documented eBay handles and/or Amazon sellers with whom you've experienced transactions that showed evidence of trustworthiness? In other words, if you purchase an unopened value pack of Topps Chrome from an eBay seller and it indeed looks factory sealed AND you pull a color parallel or an auto that's on the typical thicker stock, that card weighs more than a base card, which means that the seller did not use a highly sensitive scale to search the pack. If you have had such good experiences with eBay or Amazon sellers, please document the sellers here so that we can all benefit, and so that those honest sellers can benefit from the repeat and referral business that they deserve. Blowout, D&A, and the other major sellers don't always have the inventory needed, so when we must turn to eBay, with all the fraud out there it would be nice to have a list of sellers here who have earned trust. Thanks for any help anyone can give to this end.

[whitesoxfan3579]

Check feedback on eBay. Cross reference with untrustworthy buyers outed in BO and elsewhere.

/ thread.

[chezball]

Honestly don't know why anyone would buy packs off ebay.

[statbirt]

Originally Posted by chezball

Honestly don't know why anyone would buy packs off ebay.

Say you have earned eBay Bucks or have eBay credit card points and can get some packs for free. Despite being free, still would be nice to have a legit chance at hits. Or, say the main resellers have no inventory of the unopened product you're looking for.

[statbirt]

Originally Posted by whitesoxfan3579

Check feedback on eBay. Cross reference with untrustworthy buyers outed in BO and elsewhere.

/ thread.

Feedback on eBay is often suspect. Disappointed buyers are sometimes afraid to leave bad feedback for fear of backlash. Sometimes disappointed buyers even leave positive feedback because they want to receive some positive vibes themselves. There's nothing like real world experience of receiving legit packs or boxes and pulling hits to show evidence of an Ebayer being honest. There's a place for this info being shared among people who care about integrity in the card community.

[chezball]

Originally Posted by statbirt

Say you have earned eBay Bucks or have eBay credit card points and can get some packs for free. Despite being free, still would be nice to have a legit chance at hits. Or, say the main resellers have no inventory of the unopened product you're looking for.

You can frame it however you like, the risk outweighs the reward.

[statbirt]

The point of this thread is not for people to try to convince me that I should't have created the thread. Thanks for your input though.

[whitesoxfan3579]

What’s to stop people who are friends with the seller and did not even purchase a pack or box from that same seller from providing positive feedback here on BO or elsewhere?

[ThoseBackPages]

www.blowoutcards.com

[chezball]

Originally Posted by ThoseBackPages

www.blowoutcards.com

So you missed this part.
Blowout, D&A, and the other major sellers don't always have the inventory needed,

[ThoseBackPages]

Originally Posted by chezball

So you missed this part.
Blowout, D&A, and the other major sellers don't always have the inventory needed,

then best to skip it. eBay is not the way for wax

[trmpetyjo]

I can tell you this much, I know there is a seller in Michigan ebay name pooltannewt that has made a business selling hot packs, but every single one of them are opened and resealed. After twenty years you get good at it too. Are there decent hits? yep, he puts them back in the packs, but the huge hits are never to be found.

[smanzari]

I wouldn't buy boxes, much less packs from eBay (many hit a banger then just sell the rest)

[actionbryan]

I bought a lot of 2020 Topps chrome retail off eBay over the summer .

Pulled the expected amount of color and autos . And that’s one of the easiest products to weigh .

You can also play it safe and just keep sealed and watch the value inevitably soar . That seems to work

[statbirt]

Originally Posted by whitesoxfan3579

What’s to stop people who are friends with the seller and did not even purchase a pack or box from that same seller from providing positive feedback here on BO or elsewhere?

I agree with you, and thought of that too, so I absolutely validate your point, but for me that's not reason enough to just throw up my hands and declare it impossible to reach out and see if we can get just a few good leads.

I refuse to believe that every single pack seller on eBay is pack searching or filtering. Even if 95% are doing that mess, the leftover 5% is who I want to find out about. While it's inevitable that some of the 95% might find this thread and nafariously pump themselves, BO is a community that's collectively worthy of higher respect than just plucking people off the street and asking them for an honest car dealer. On top of that, within the BO community, many of you "know one another." I'm new here, but I participated in a break around the turn of the year, and when I occasionally stop by I notice that the BO community has a way of sniffing things out. In time I think we all catch on to that scent. If I saw someone from the BO community with a long history here who seems to be well respected say that they've purchased multiple orders from eBay seller handle xxxyz and pulled nice hits, that's going to mean something. In fact, someone with a nice history here on BO did reach out to me in a PM (not sure why they went private, but I respect their wish to be discrete) as a result of this thread and mentioned they've had good experiences with a particular seller, and they gave the handle to me privately. I checked out the eBay store, looked at their rep (for what little that's worth), and even reached out to the seller to ask them how they operate when it comes to unopened. Their response had "the ring of truth" if you know what I mean, so they will probably be someone I try for a few free packs and see how it goes. I realize it's no guarantee, but it's a lot more than nothing. If I pull a nice hit, now I'm really getting somewhere. No one piece of reference is an assurance that I've found a trustworthy seller, but when you start adding it all up together...a referral from a respected person on BO (two or more BO participants corroborating the same seller would be even more powerful), long history on eBay, positive reviews, good direct pre-sale communication from the seller that has the ring of truth...there's no denying that that scenario has a better chance of a transaction with integrity than just a random pluck of a pack on eBay.

I understand that it's far easier to just make a personal resolve never to purchase unopened on eBay, and I respect that resolve, but it is a personal one. For those willing to do a little networking to sniff out just a few eBay sellers that are on the up and up, I think that could be rewarding given the right scenario.

Break parties among friends are fun. BO and D&A don't always have desirable inventory to supply those breaks, or they might only have a certain product in a very expensive hobby box that's above my price range. Nothing wrong with trying to ID a couple more suppliers as backup or when some free eBay Bucks are ready to deploy. Also, I host an annual break among friends with the amount of cards each person receiving being determined by their playoff bracket picks, and me and one other guy supply the cards at our own cost, no one has to pay anything to enter. So it's nice to be able to find some individual legit packs on an exciting product instead of dropping a huge chunk on hobby boxes that might not be available anyway.

Regarding the eBay seller that I was given in a PM yesterday, I'd post it here, but I hate to do that because I don't want anyone to accuse me of creating this thread as some pumper. To the user who reached out to me with that referral though, I thank you very much! My ideal purpose for this thread is for everyone, not just me, to benefit from these referrals so ideally they're public and then it's up to each of us to sniff that referral out the rest of the way, but I get the feeling that lots of folks are so ready to accuse others of pumping on BO that I see where discretion has its place. Maybe there will be a few who are unafraid of that accusation though, so hopefully we can get a few public referrals. I can't imagine any of us would pay a whole lot of attention to pumping accusers if the referral comes from a long time respected member here at BO. As the creator of the thread, and being pretty new here, I probably can't publicly refer any myself at this point. If I start to have really good experiences with a couple sellers though, it's going to be hard not to share my finds with all of you but I probably won't just for the sake of the rep of this thread that I hope can be long term, and can maybe even include a recurring summary of eBay handles / Amazon sellers who've been publicly referred by long term respected BO users and verified with hits opened from their packs.

Just to be clear for anyone who might misunderstand. I am NOT looking for hot packs with guaranteed hits. Just to get that out of the way.

I do appreciate everyone's input thus far. I know this is a unorthodox endeavor (most of mine are lol).

[statbirt]

Originally Posted by actionbryan

I bought a lot of 2020 Topps chrome retail off eBay over the summer .

Pulled the expected amount of color and autos . And that’s one of the easiest products to weigh .

You can also play it safe and just keep sealed and watch the value inevitably soar . That seems to work

Thanks for that feedback! Did you keep track of which sellers sold you the packs that had heavier thick stock hits? If so, would you be willing to share those eBay handles here so that we might judiciously look into them ourselves?

[HarryLime]

I think you're getting the feedback you're getting because legitimate individual pack sellers don't sell individual packs on eBay. There's no benefit to doing it. It's so much easier to just sell sealed boxes/cases. I know you're operating under the assumption that, of course, SOMEONE on eBay has to be legit. And, of course, you must be correct, just by the sheer number of sellers.

But what can get posted in this thread that will make you 100% confident in the suggested seller?

"I hit the best auto ever from this guy." -- How do you know who is giving you this info, if it's true, and if they have a relationship with the seller they're suggesting?

"I opened X amount of packs and got Y amount of "thick" cards." - Aside from the above, why couldn't these just be "hot packs" that the seller isn't describing as hot packs? Just packs they resealed with a junk thick card inside.

Another possibility is just that you're buying leftover packs after the box's hit has been pulled. My point is, there are seemingly no end to the number of reasons to why you SHOULDN'T buy individual packs on eBay and I can't think of a single reason why anyone would benefit from doing it if they were legit.

Don't have the budget for a full box? Buying a few packs at a time and paying the shipping fee for each will really add up.

I'm not saying all of this because I'm trying to convince you you shouldn't have created this thread. I'm saying this because as someone who has collected unopened from the 1960s to the present day, and every single era in between, learning all the little idiosyncrasies that authentic material has that resealers get wrong, and having seen what is available on eBay, the math is so, so far against you.

The amount of bad unopened product on eBay dwarfs the amount of good. There's nothing worse than paying decent coin for unopened, imagining what you might pull while waiting for it to arrive, only to find out that you bought resealed junk. It really sucks. It sucks even more if you don't realize you were buying resealed junk until months later and there's nothing you can do about it.

You sound determined so I'm simply going to say do as much homework as you possibly can and be vigilant about who you buy from. Learn about what you're buying and learn to detect resealed product yourself. Those skills will always be useful.

Arthur