Opening The $375,000 1st Edition Pokemon Box (Gone Wrong) 0

[comicwiz]

How to not get scammed out of $375,000 by a bunch of crypto guys salivating over their next meal ticket:

 

Edited October 27, 2020 by comicwiz

[comicwiz]

The bald guy was still mic'd up talking to whoever he was talking to on his phone.

No way I'd be buying anything else from these guys. Period.

Edited October 27, 2020 by comicwiz

[Mosstastic_22]

wow

[aardvark88]

This is like Pokemon card collectors peaking in on a krazy debate about a Cgc 9.8 vs 9.9 $$ value on a rare comic book.

[wombat]

I assume the guys selling the box knew it was going to be opened in front of them. If they were trying to scam them it was not a very good effort. 

[shadroch]

The thing I noticed was they were saying how rare this was and there were so few on the market but as soon as the deal went bad, it was no problem to replace that box with another one. I was tracking an online auction this weekend and two pokeman binders went for well more than I expected. Is this something worth learning about? I see lots of binders but have never noticed any sealed boxes.

[WolverineX]

5 hours ago, comicwiz said:

The bald guy was still mic'd up talking to whoever he was talking to on his phone.

No way I'd be buying anything else from these guys. Period.

Agreed. get your money back and buy from someone else.. wtf.  

[aardvark88]

1 hour ago, shadroch said:

The thing I noticed was they were saying how rare this was and there were so few on the market but as soon as the deal went bad, it was no problem to replace that box with another one. Is this something worth learning about?

Seems like Hulk #181 Cgc 9.8 is the Charizard of the bronze age of comicdom.

[comicwiz]

10 hours ago, wombat said:

I assume the guys selling the box knew it was going to be opened in front of them. If they were trying to scam them it was not a very good effort. 

It didn't appear that way as the "live" event progressed. Initially, I recalled the dumb money guy setting things up around the 21 minute mark, where he mentions they were going to keep it for a year, wait for the pandemic to clear, then do a live event opening with all money going to charity. Then (and I'm not sure if the experts had a signal worked out with him) it very quickly changed in the 23:00 minute mark when they said they were gong to open it. Because there are three camera views at that point, you can see the body language of Jake "Crypto King" is seeming very different, I would even say panicked. All I know is this. If someone has a $400K item, the last thing you want to do is use the word fake, you should be exuding confidence in the seller. Instead, what you hear from him is a set-up basically of how he determined it was legit, BUT if you listen carefully, he concludes that the only way to know for sure is to open it. That to me was when I knew something was really off. In the 30 plus years I've been collecting in multiple collecting categories, I've never once seen a sale happen contingent on a sealed item being opened to confirm it's legit. And that could well just be that this guy had little to no experience and took someone else's word on how to authenticate a box he bought, OR he knew it was a reseal. One of the things in the back of my mind when I began seeing this unfurl is wondering whether this was intentionally done, not with the dumb money guys knowing, but an elaborate way to stick it to the seller Jake/Guru got it from with a reseal where the packs were swapped out with junk. Funny enough, Jake/Guru was selling packs from a 1st edition box on feeBay within a few hours of this live event, take from that what you will.

Edited October 28, 2020 by comicwiz

[wombat]

Thanks for the clarification. I don't know anything about this world, but found it interesting to watch. 

[comicwiz]

10 hours ago, shadroch said:

The thing I noticed was they were saying how rare this was and there were so few on the market but as soon as the deal went bad, it was no problem to replace that box with another one. I was tracking an online auction this weekend and two pokeman binders went for well more than I expected. Is this something worth learning about? I see lots of binders but have never noticed any sealed boxes.

There's a lot of questionable stuff going on right now. But the main thing this shows is the pitfalls with the speculative side, particularly when crypto guys move in on a market to create this hype. It can bottom out faster than it would have otherwise if it grew through straightforward, primarily honest dealing within the community. Look at some of the comments in that video chat, they were alerting them on these guys while this live event was running. One "Toby" asks "why are you dealing with these scammers?" I feel for the guys who really were into this for nostalgia, guys like this can create a pretty far and reaching ripple effect with this sort of thing, but for the most part, their valuations were deemed out to lunch (and this box, deemed fake) by people who have been in the market for longer period than these guys.

[bob jr]

thanks , it was interesting to watch .                                              It reminded me of a domain auction I watched online years ago that turned out to be a disaster