TOPIC: My charms for your $$

Brad Mortensen wrote: +1

Many good scams starts with someone apparently "suffering through something," otherwise nobody would fall for it. Greed, fear, or altruism are the necessary factors for an effective con.

A couple of years ago, walking out of ICC, a guy came up to us and said he had a flat tire, no money, needed to get out of parking, blah blah blah. Gave him $20, he said bless you, etc and then it struck me: this exact same scenario happened to me two years before. I'm getting old, and my remembery isn't what it used to be, but it was him. The first time I only gave him $10.

There's a woman who used to beg outside of Origins for money to make PBJ sandwiches for her kids. Every year. I've seen her in Indy, same story. I wonder how many other places she goes, year after year.

Someone asking for money is the first sign to watch out for.

Someone willing to accept a meal is someone else.

At Origins I purchase a meal for a homeless person sitting outside Barkleys. I let them order what they wanted off the menu. They thanked me.

edwin wrote:

Brad Mortensen wrote: +1

Many good scams starts with someone apparently "suffering through something," otherwise nobody would fall for it. Greed, fear, or altruism are the necessary factors for an effective con.

A couple of years ago, walking out of ICC, a guy came up to us and said he had a flat tire, no money, needed to get out of parking, blah blah blah. Gave him $20, he said bless you, etc and then it struck me: this exact same scenario happened to me two years before. I'm getting old, and my remembery isn't what it used to be, but it was him. The first time I only gave him $10.

There's a woman who used to beg outside of Origins for money to make PBJ sandwiches for her kids. Every year. I've seen her in Indy, same story. I wonder how many other places she goes, year after year.

Someone asking for money is the first sign to watch out for.

Someone willing to accept a meal is someone else.

At Origins I purchase a meal for a homeless person sitting outside Barkleys. I let them order what they wanted off the menu. They thanked me.

When I was a more active smoker .. I used to just give out cigarettes. If they were really homeless .. those were just as good as money .. even if they didn't smoke. If they were not homeless, it would just piss them off.

Brad Mortensen wrote: To be fair, "Nigeria" was from Henwy, not Chad. Your analogy is non sequiter.

Sigh...

lazlo_hollyfeld1985 wrote:

henwy wrote: I'm interested, but only if you're a prince from Nigeria. No Zimbabwean dukes need apply.

I am starting to agree with you on this

If you read the thread you'll see that I did not mention or call out Chad. Chad responded to my call for moderation with some thoughts, and then we engaged in discussion. Discussion about whether slinging insinuations was appropriate. Chad advocated the "pro" side of that conversation.

I rest my case, there is no winning this one I can see.

TJRat wrote: How would getting into a spat with money-obsessed sellers with skewed priorities be helpful?

I can't possibly know.... why did you bring it up in the first place?

...the value of my collection is based on its use in the game; not in some vague and easily manipulated cash value assigned by those out to make money.

Sigh.... I'll stipulate that the value of your collection to you is made of unicorn kisses and elderberry wine, or whatever units you find convenient.

The MONETARY value of all of our collections is related to the level of trust that exists in the secondary market. Trust you are eroding, to unclear purpose.

The secondary market needs to remind themselves that they are supporting the community, not leading it. Decisions about the game should be made for the good of the game, not for the profits it may bring someone.

Ok? Did I miss the part of this thread where any decisions about the game were made?

Steve wrote: I almost don't want to get involved in this conversation, but I almost feel like I have to at this point.
There is a lot of blood in the water, and I get it, but it is unnecessary.

First : I was very skeptical. I sent the guy a message, got an .. odd .. reply. After a few messages I was pretty convinced he was trying to run a con, and posted a REALLY snarky response to this thread.

Then I looked at what I posted, and deleted it.

Afterwards, I asked myself WHY I felt the needs to be publicly .. crappy .. with my opinion. And the cold hard truth of it was that I got greedy. I saw a decent deal on some tokens, that I thought wasn't going to pan out, and my ego made me cop an attitude. I reassessed where I was mentally, and approached my conversation with Jay differently.

Clarification :

Jay is a real person. I know this, because I drove 90 minutes to meet him in a game store near his house.

His tokens were real. They were even orange and green backed.

He wasn't quite what I expected, but after a few false starts we came to an agreement that we were both comfortable with.

He said he has been playing a number of years but didn't get to go to GenCon consistently until the last few years; He didn't think he would be able to go for a few years after GenCon 50, which also weighed into his decision to sell.

He was able to list off the full stats for all his and his friends builds off the top of his head. He was able to (and did) list off every ebay purchase that he made, including the seller, and the price, off the top of his head.
He had an almost encyclopedia like knowledge of the rules. All of these things were a little impressive, and once I realized *why* he was able to do these things our conversation went much smoother.

He received a lot of offers. He got several in the hour or so we spent talking. He showed me several of them as negotiation points.

I'm going to assume the car accident was real too, as he asked me to drive him home afterwards.

I'm not going to go into the particular details of our deal publicly. Anyone who has traded with me before knows that, as a general rule, I don't usually publicly talk about trades. [In the art world, if you do that, you quickly discover your clients vanish.] In this case I'm making an exception, because I'm not convinced Jay might pick up on some of the .. expected .. social interaction around such deals.

I'll say that Jay knew the value of what he had, was a persistent negotiator, but was very motivated to sell. He got more than his initial asking price. If he wants to disclose what we agreed to .. I give him permission to do so.

What Jay didn't know, is that I had reached out to several folks down in his area that I know play, to ask if they, or anyone they knew, recently 'lost' some tokens. No one had.

And I don't think a check like that, to make sure I'm not purchasing stolen goods, is paranoid or suspicious. In Maryland knowingly buying stolen goods of that value is a felony. Buying them unknowingly means you are out the money/items you exchanged for them if the real owner can reclaim them.

I've had several opportunities to buy full collections from ex-players over the last few years, and I've done this same 'network check' every time. That is just due diligence to make sure no one is getting screwed. No different than verifying that someone who trades for a group if they have the authority to trade someone else's tokens.

Thanks for helping clear that up.

I'm glad that Jay struck a deal, was not a scammer, and had multiple competing offers.

I'm also glad that you were able to discern, as neatly as could be imagined, that these tokens were most likely not stolen, to head off yet another potential calumny.

Matthew Hayward wrote: I'm also glad that you were able to discern, as neatly as could be imagined, that these tokens were most likely not stolen, to head off yet another potential calumny.

Well .. a few years ago (cough-cough) I owned a game/hobby store. One day a kid came in with a collection of magic cards in a box, maybe 300-400 cards, sleeved. He said his mom wouldn't let him play magic anymore and he wanted to sell them. He was asking $100.

I flipped through them, saw there was some I could resell pretty easy, and gave him the $100. I put the cards under my counter to sort through later when it was less busy.

About six hours later a cop, and another kid come in. This kid had his cards stolen out of his car, and what do you know .. HIS name was inside the box. (And he was able to list off cards that were in there.)

So I was out $100. (Which, at the time, wasn't chump money for me.) if I had looked, all the warning signs were there.

So now, I check

Matthew Hayward wrote:

TJRat wrote: How would getting into a spat with money-obsessed sellers with skewed priorities be helpful?

I can't possibly know.... why did you bring it up in the first place?

Because I was asked to. Glad to see you agree with me.

...the value of my collection is based on its use in the game; not in some vague and easily manipulated cash value assigned by those out to make money.

Sigh.... I'll stipulate that the value of your collection to you is made of unicorn kisses and elderberry wine, or whatever units you find convenient.

Thank you, drama queen. I'm SooOo0o happy you've granted me the right to enjoy my tokens how I see fit!

The MONETARY value of all of our collections is related to the level of trust that exists in the secondary market. Trust you are eroding, to unclear purpose.

Nonsense. My suggestion supported the position of many on this thread that buyers should be careful. It does nothing to erode trust. If a bad deal is prevented by caution then trust will increase.

The secondary market needs to remind themselves that they are supporting the community, not leading it. Decisions about the game should be made for the good of the game, not for the profits it may bring someone.

Ok? Did I miss the part of this thread where any decisions about the game were made?

Don't care if you did. Believe it or not, I don't require your permission to post opinions on this forum.

Druegar wrote: Keep the door closed and offer to call 911 for him.

Correct. Keep the door closed! My friend made the mistake of opening the door and immediately had a gun to his head and 5 intruders enter his home, zip tie his hands and feet, duck tape his mouth, and performed the same restraints to his sister before robbing the place blind. Fortunately other than scars from the tip ties, nothing permanent happened to them. It could have been much worse..

Always exercise a degree of caution. I wish we didn't have too, that everyone was decent, but that's not realistic.