WhatNot Seller Screws Me Out of A $5,000 Comic Book

Welcome back to Cards and Comics, guys. Today I'm going to be talking some about something a little different. Um, I'm not usually involved too much drama in the hobby. Just, you know, give my opinion, talk about my collecting. Um, you know, just try to have fun. And the hobby, you know, right now is be selling itself on a myth. And the myth is really around the idea that, you know, around the get-richquick gambling mentality, such as you can get into box break and hit a Paul skins, you know, debut patch worth, you know, six figures, right? You can go on uh an auction, you know, house or on whatnot or go into eBay, win a auction, uh because auctions are supposed to be high bidder wins and you get the item and let's say it goes for 20% of what it should go. Then you've possibly can make money on that item. You could turn that item into something else that you collect, right? That is sort of what fuels this hobby. this kind of idea like hey you know if I get into a break if I participate I might get lucky one of these days and then something will pay off and then you find out really it's rigged you know that a lot of times the sellers won't sell you the cards the breaks are rigged so only the friends of the dealer or the the breaker gets those cards that you know all these things happen you know hits are held back not shipped you know like all these things happen that just show you the hobby is kind of rigged and and even if you do hit the big card, even if you do get a great win, even if you hit a buy it now on a book, you may not get it or or a card, right? So, here's a situation I want to share with you guys where um I um uh won an item on Wattnot. That was the first first issue is Wattnot. And uh before actually before I get here, I'll just show you the video that way. We'll start there. So we'll go back to to just my face. It's probably the worst. But here's the item. It's hard to show with all the glare from my computer and everything, but invincible number one CGC 9.8. I'm just scrolling through um you know, scrolling through whatnot like you normally do. And I ran across this auction. The guy was auctioning off a CGC98 Invincible one. This book goes between4 and $6,000. Right now $5,000 is a good price. So I'm like, that's kind of crazy, but it's an auction. Who knows what happens? And so I'll just throw some bids in and just see where it goes. When it gets to like a couple thousand dollars, I'll just bow out and and see, you know, move on. And, you know, hopefully someone gets it that wants it for the collection. if they pay four or $5,000. If someone gets a good deal on it, hey, you know, they can flip it. It's great for them. And uh I won the auction and I won it for a crazy price. $83. I'll show you the uh the video here. You go. >> Let's get it, guys. >> See, it's graded. It's a 98. says exactly what it is on the front of the comic, so there's no confusion here. >> Cards comics. Amazing. Amazing firefight right there, guys. GG. GG. >> I get the Death Star blowing up. Got a great deal. Crazy deal. So, what could what could go wrong, right? What could go wrong? Well, this is the hobby day. Well, your order was cancelled. Order was cancelled. No food for you. Nothing for you. You are a degenerate gambler who went on our website and tried to to to to steal a comic book from AC Comics and they said, "Look, we thought this was a fact assembly, guys. We oopsi dupsied and uh we thought it was a new stand." doesn't make sense because I guess there is a variant comic and a new stand. But I mean, come on. Like, it was graded. Uh, you know, we'll throw a, you know, we'll throw in a free foil for the inconvenience. Okay, that sounds super fair, right? You know, yeah, you you uh you know, win a uh uh $5,000 book and we'll throw you a foil that's collecting dust in the back corner of our comic shop. Yeah, that's fine. You know, that's that's that seems fair. Uh, no, I don't think it's fair. So, so I complained, which I think I had a right uh to complain a little bit that hey, this doesn't seem fair. Um, and so here's all my correspondence uh with uh whatnot over this issue of something where I felt like I was kind of screwed out of um because you know in reality um it's an auction. You should honor auction prices and bids. So I have a couple of things I think about this. you know, for one, um, they should just honor the deal, right? That would be the simpler thing for everyone involved. Um, you know, now, should a dealer take a $5,000 loss? I think there's been dealers that have taken much bigger losses in all kinds of formats. In fact, didn't Babe Ruth car just sell at a $4 million loss recently. Um, so that idea like, oh, you can't expect anyone to take a loss is pretty dumb. Like that's not the world we live in. You you you gamble and on both ends. You gamble, it's going to sell more or you could gamble or you could lose the gamble and it sell less. But I do think just in general, whatnot could actually do something about this. They could actually try to split the middle. They could try to protect their buyers, right? They could have a policy or some kind of insurance plan in there. Maybe offer sellers a little bit like, hey, you know, you pay a little bit more per transaction and if something like this, you oopsy dupsied and uh you took a big loss on an item on a fair market value, we'll kick in half of the difference between the a fair market value and what you sold it for. That way you don't take a full bath. You you lose some but not all. Right? They could do something like that. They make millions of dollars. They could they could help their sellers out, but they're not going to do it because they don't have to. There's no laws protecting anyone in this whole rigged system. And that's, you know, I want to get to a little bit is why do I think it's rigged? Well, I mean, this is a great example of playing the game, doing what you're supposed to do, going on whatnot, looking for deals. Um, they want you to do that. They talk about in their advertising. You know, you get good deals. You know, you go on here, maybe you get a couple steals. um find the stuff that you want cheaper. Okay, great. You do that and the seller just says, "Ah, not gonna not going to honor it. Not going to do, you know, the fair transaction that was agreed upon." Um and and Wadnot says, "Yep, that's perfectly legal. We don't care." And when you read through their uh correspondence with me, you'll see exactly that response here. uh you know the first they say we're sorry about the cancellation but the you know and how disappointing frustrating but the one thing I want to point out here is they say I can see you won this auction fair and square fair and square like there was no trickery I didn't like fool them or I didn't do something to to to make this auction go lower than it should have. Um, and so they understand, hey, like seller cancelling is dumb and and not good and we shouldn't allow that, right? That shouldn't be something they can do. Like, and sometimes unfor unforeseen circumstances like damage to an item could be a reason, but that's not this case. It was a graded comic book. It was in great shape. 9.8. It's not a not a reason. Um, so, you know, they made sure I got a refund and uh what they're doing. We take this very seriously, guys. We're going to super super hard uh you know uh glower at AC Comics and and uh maybe slap them on the wrist a little bit and send them a strongly worded email saying don't do this again uh because we care about our customers, right? They don't care. No, they they if they cared, they would do something more than what they're doing now, but they're not going to. So, um, I wrote back saying, "Hey, I just want to point out that this was a $5,000 item that was cancelled, uh, and the product was graded." So, the idea that they claimed that it was uh not a real item or that it was a mistaken identity, not very not very um trustworthy when later in that video uh that I shared with you, the guy says, "Hey, you know, deals happen a lot of the time because the chat's going nuts saying like, I can't believe some guy just won this book for $83 and that's crazy. Are you guys going to honor the deal?" And the guy says in the video, which I've tried to find it, well, not videos are hard to like search. You can't show them on a screen on a computer. You can only see in the app. Can't share it. You can't transfer it. It's really they make it hard as heck. They play music in the background. So, I'm probably going to get, you know, like a strike here for just showing the video. Um, but you know, everyone's going nuts in the video wanting to know what's going to happen. And the guy's like, "Well, steals happen all the like, you know, I hope he gets the comic book, you know, like, you know, like it was an auction. Like, it was just it was in the pile. I ran it. There was nothing on the book that said not to run it. Um, you know, I ran it like a normal auction and he won it for the price. And I, you know, and I hope he gets it. That's And then they say, "Oh, no. We thought it was something else. Oopsy dupsy, guys. Something else, guys." I mean, okay. So, we're we're not honoring the deal. So, when I complained, uh, I did say, "Look, I don't want to put this on my YouTube channel because this is not what my YouTube channel is really about. Um, you know, it's not, you know, I've changed a little bit. You know, I'm more collecting content and, you know, but this is just so freaking frustrating when this happens." Um, and I pointed out that this is not the first time that something happened on Wattn's really bad like this all time happens on Wattnai. It's literally whatn not's mo is for people to get screwed over all the time. And Pokemon and cards and comics, it's like it's a daily thing, right? This is like not the first time. So like, hey, like this, you got a chance to like prove that you can have some rules. You can kick these guys off. You can um force them to offer restitution that gets closer to the the amount of money that I theoretically screwed out of. Okay, none of that happened, but they could have done something more than just this. Um, so I offered that uh say, "Hey, I don't want to talk about this on my channel, but I will because collectors need to know like what happens uh when you win an auction like this." When you do where you're supposed to go on these auctions, bid and bid and bid and bid and you get a great seal, they don't have to honor it. Like that's just lame. This was heritage. They would honor. I guarantee they'd honor, you know? So, like it's just because it's whatnot and they want to be, you know, I hate to say it. Well, you know how you say it. They're they're basically a flea market for collectibles. They're not a established great auction house. They want they want to like shoot the middle. They want to be like, "We sell amazing high-end items and and and dollar cards and everything's on the up and up." No, no, you don't. No, you don't. You are the flea market of of the auction world. you're not uh one that stands behind what you do. Otherwise, these kind of things would happen so often, right? So, they're going to investigate the claim. Um, and then I I was concerned that I saw nothing on my reports. Like, you can report issues and I didn't see a report. So, how will I be updated on the resolution if there's not a report? And they say, "Well, since your order was cancelled, um, there's no further resolution needed because we're done." and quit emailing us, please. And I say, "Well, just so I understand because I wanted to hear it out of your mouth that I get nothing else out of being screwed out of a $5,000 island, right? Just say it. Just say it." And they said, "Okay, we'll say it just to provide you clear closure because you're being such a whiny baby. After a thorough review, we must reiterate for the 40th time that your order does not meet the criteria for high value loss because this only applies to cards game specific game formats such as bricks, spice sets, or pool games. What the hell is a pool game? Since your purchase fails within comic books, it is not eligible for mark for market value reimbursement. Oh, okay. I guess I should have known that comic books are so different than every other collectible that it would be excluded for being for being reimbursed when you're screwed over. Oh, that's obvious. Yeah. Okay. Well, I guess comic books aren't in blind bags or sold in polls or you get a number and they they reach in and grab something or there's a duck race or there's something equally dumb. A wheel spinning around where you can win something. None of that's covered because of comic books, right? Comic books are just, you know, they're like even I guess comic books are beneath whatnot for to determine like look, you collect comic books like what you what you doing, dude? You don't we don't honor any of that crap crap for comic books. We, you know, if it was Pokemon, we would we'd be talking. Okay, Pokemon, the Charizard, you get, you know, you get that screwed away from you. We're talking. It's comic books. Invincible, we don't give a crap. That's sort of what they say. They don't care. They don't care and they they don't want um you know and and the one I I like best the last sentence here, right? Because they're perfectly like we don't care. But if you have any other concerns unrelated to this claim, we're here to say like like quit quit talking to us. Like, we know you're unhappy, but but please, please quit bringing this up because your $5,000 loss is not a concern, and you keep bringing up like a whiny baby, guys. You didn't deserve what you what you won for one thing. You shouldn't have got it. You know, you the seller clearly made a mistake and uh we don't care. And so, yeah, we're here. We're here now having this discussion. So, you know, again, this is the frustrating part of the hobby is this. Again, I talk about you do everything you're supposed to, but it's just it's because it makes the hobby not fun. And it's the one thing that what's causing the biggest issue right now in the hobby is us that, you know, between the escalating costs of raw or ungraded or sorry, uh, packs, you know, and boxes, the escalating cost of breaks, the fact that you can get screwed over in breaks, the fact that, um, even if you get a great card, you get it graded, you get up charge in PSA that maybe you can't afford. Um, you know, so even grading cards is is stressful. It's like everything is stressful. Like every every single thing you do in the hobby now feels like there could be a point in time where you could be screwed over. You could be shield bidded on an auction. You can have the seller not honor the deal if it's too low. You can have eBay, you know, like uh not eBay, you could have PSA damage a card while it's being graded and just go oopsy dupsy. Uh yeah, you're screwed out of that card. And uh I don't care if you have before and after pictures, not evidence, so we're not giving you any money back. Like all this stuff happens. Um, you know, you get a card graded and for some whatever reason it's a it's a four and then you regrade it's an eight. Like all this stuff happens in this hobby and then we go like, "Oh, that's all just normal. This is just what you This is what it takes to collect in this hobby is it's all normal to have things happen where you get screwed over where people don't care. um companies that make millions of dollars could care less about customer service uh about their platform having any sort of bad reputation like whatnot and [clears throat] uh that's where we're at. So, you know, obviously, you know, my fault for using whatnot to begin with. I should have known that if anything ever became any sort of, you know, questionable issues, I was going to get screwed over. Like, that's the message I want everyone to take away from there is that on whatnot, if there's anything that can go wrong that's going to screw you over, just be certain that whatnot is going to side with the person screwing you over. and they're not going to take any ownership or do anything to the people that did the screwing part. So that's the lesson. And they've done it so many times in so many categories that you just it's like believe them. Like this isn't like a madeup thing where it's just oh like you know you know you're just whining. No, this is their way of doing business is to screw people over and it's you know and it's our fault. It's my fault for being on the on on there trying to buy, you know, a $25 variant comic that I didn't want to go to NYCC to to in person to buy. It's my fault. I was scrolling through and I just saw this auction. I thought, hey, I'll throw some bids in. I want it. And and here we are. And that just makes the experience just like not fun. So, you know, going back into my collecting comfort zone of of buying pre-war cards and Ken Griffy Jr. cards. You know, that area is still, you know, not safe, but at least I don't have to deal with this crap cuz most of the time that stuff's not on there, so I don't have to worry about it. And I know all the pre-war collector buddies of mine are going like, "What the hell you doing on whatnot, you idiot?" Like, "What are you doing? This is this is what you get." And that's the problem is like that's sort of what do people will kind of think like you expected a $5,000 book for $83 you stupid idiot. And why are you even on whatnot to begin with? You stupid idiot. Like you should have known this is going to happen. And that's where we're at. And I guess I am a stupid idiot for going on whatnot and buying and winning an auction. That's it. That's what I feel like. I'm just a dumb idiot who went on whatnot thinking that I could win an auction and get what I paid for. So that's it guys. So, that's the video. Hope you liked it. I don't know what else to say. Just frustrating. All right. See you next time. Bye. [music] [singing]

@RattlePokemon @SportsCardsNonsense @SportsCardInvestor @TheSportsCardDad @NEO_Cards_Comics @ZiggyNo