Horrible Week In The Hobby
by
, 02-13-2013 at 05:41 PM (2032 Views)
This has been an absolutely horrible week in the hobby for me. Between the big snow storm we got delaying the delivery of our Upper Deck NHCD packs, scams and rip off stories I am so angry I could explode.
First we got an email saying that Upper Deck in an effort to discourage National Hockey Card Day items being delivered early (so crooks and cheats could sell them on ebay) the distributors weren't supposed to ship until Thursday for Friday delivery and Saturday giveaways. I voiced my concern that if something should happen to delay the shipment we wouldn't have them in time but that concern went for not and low and behold we get hit with the biggest snow storm in a decade and our packs don't arrive till the following Monday . Now we spend Saturday apologizing to people who drove to our store but couldn't get packs. We gave away packs from last year, 10 card sets of Biography of a Season from last year and some Crosby NHCD bonus cards from last year as well to try and lessen the disappointment. Plus we took addresses down and will be shipping this year's NHCD stuff to everyone. BTW...we heard from people that this year's NHCD singles were being sold on ebay as early as Thursday .
Now on to the scammer story which caught me off guard as the product came from DAC in the States. We ordered a Blaster Box of 2010-11 Upper Deck Series 2 for a customer who came in and picked it up. On top of paying duties on the item making the price higher then expected (shipped to us by UPS...big mistake as the item was never opened by Canada Customs but that is another story) the shrink wrap had NO Upper Deck logo on it. The contents yielded packs that had been obviously resealed, were missing cards and no inserts or young guns rookies. I gave the customer back his money but my first thought was that I had heard about this scam from Wal Mart and Zellers stores but did not think getting this product from DAC would be a problem. Even though DAC gave us our money back for the product we still lost money because of the shipping and customs costs that we paid
Now for the rip offs and while there were a couple this week the worst one was from a local flea market hack. A guy comes in with a box of cards to sell and you say I will give you twenty-five dollars for it. He says no thanks it is worth more then that so you tell him to let you see what he has. You quickly grab six vintage o-pee-chee cards and tell him you will give him ten bucks for them knowing full well that they are worth a heck of a lot more and he takes it. The six cards in question included two Gordie Howe cards booking at two hundred and fifty bucks. You are a f%&king crook and should be shot at close range several times starting in the lower body area. Things like this are why this hobby has crapped out over the years and why I scratch my head in total amazement
Anyway, this has been a tough week but we will struggle on trying to keep the hobby safe and honest despite the inconceivable number of con artists and crooks out there.