Despite my feelings on the awful abomination that is Triple Threads baseball, there is a new scam that has been making its way around eBay. Basically, a scammer pulls one of about ten thousand shitty cards from the product, and they get very angry with their wasted money/life. Then, they take out their rubbing alcohol, wipe off the autograph of the crappy player, and re-write an auto of a good player. They call it an “error,” leading uniformed people to buy it thinking its real, and that Topps made the mistake of putting the wrong sticker on the card.
In this example brought to my attention by Jeff from New Card Smell (a great blog – go check it out), this person has altered a Blake DeWitt to look like an error of Albert Pujols’ sticker on the card. As you can see, the auto is a bag of fail, and the guy’s other auctions are filled with other obvious fakes.
This has been going on for a very long time, but usually people are smart enough to avoid any purchases. Regardless of how obvious it looks, it still bears repeating to those of you who see them.
Remember, in all cases, check a sellers’ previous auctions before bidding on a card you find suspect in any way. Usually these arent isolated incidents, and the sellers have a history of horrible fakes. Also, if a card has a red flag, just walk away. You cant get hurt if you don’t buy.