On Wednesday of last week someone forwarded me an email with a link to an eBay auction of someone selling a fake Babe Ruth signed baseball. I did a screen grab of the auction and it is posted it above.

With only a couple seconds left in the auction the ball was at about $800. Now that isn’t a ton for a Ruth ball, but a lot to pay for something that is worthless. I kept watching it and with ten seconds left in the auction it doubled in price.

The crazy thing is it had a full PSA/DNA letter included. Problem was the photo of the ball on the PSA letter was of the fake ball. The crook Photoshopped it in there or something.

Usually blatantly fake auctions similar to this get pulled from eBay immediately, but this one actually ended. I am guessing it didn’t get pulled right away because it had the PSA/DNA cert.
The thing that disturbed me most was that it was a real PSA/DNA letter (real cert number included), but when I went to PSA’s site and typed in the cert. number, there was no photo downloaded.
I am guessing PSA is so backed up they don’t get around to downloading all the photos for certs they write.

Now, I am not bashing PSA because I love its service, but I will say that a cert is pretty much worthless if it doesn’t download the photo onto the site. Anyone trying to deceive a buyer could use a real letter and import a photo of the fake piece onto the real one and have a fake cert produced.

This story does have a happy ending. I emailed the person who won the item (I am sure I wasn’t the only one who contacted the buyer) and the item was removed from eBay’s database and I assume the buyer was saved.

Also one little side note. I checked out the other auctions the seller had up today and he was selling something, meaning he wasn’t kicked off eBay. I assume his account was hijacked and he never even knew about the Ruth ball.



********************

I have an update on my Paypal account that was shut down last week.

Well, it is still shut down. I had to confirm my phone number, change my password and confirm my address. The phone number and password have been taken care, but I am still waiting for Paypal to send me a confirmation code to my home address. I can’t confirm my address until this happens.
This is turning into a pain. The stress that came from this hassle escalated when my automatic payment for eBay fees (set up through Paypal) was bounced back to me because of the Paypal account being shut down.

I ended up paying for it with my credit card, but this is still becoming a little stressful and I can’t do anything with my account until Paypal sends me that confirmation code.
Hey, doesn’t Google offer a payment program similar to Paypal? Maybe I should just start using money orders again.

Stay tuned.