May be I am wrong, and blew off a nice guy, but...

I blocked this guy right away, lots of red flags, I dropped a line to Robin on this one as well.

Scam red flags:

- No history, no profile, no forums use, no collection info, no references, 4 yrs on Pinside with default profile for everything
- Willing to send money via paypal asap, shipping details to be worked out later given a story about carpet?
- Has a house in New York City?
- No indication how shipping would work, sketchy on even when it would occur
- Won't give phone number, only willing to use my Google Voice number on my Pinside business profile (easy for buyer to spoof nbr calling me)
- Says uses only pre-paid credit cards for online transactions (may be 10 yrs ago, things have matured a lot since then)
- Only wants Paypal - friends & family may be, except no offer to try something else other than what I proposed, escrow.com would be my next offer

I cut it off and blocked after not being willing to share a phone number, not worth the time to keep going to confirm scam. I am waiting for someone that is actually interested in the game (it is a bit unique) and who has at least some Pinside history.

If I was going to sell to this guy, I would pack up the game, drive it to the mall parking lot during the busy time of day and meet his "shipper" there...

scam pinside_PM (resized).png

Yep, I blew off a nice guy. Happy ending to this story is that I unblocked him after a week to see if his pinside log on was still being active. He reached out again with more info. Turns out he and I were both spooked by the worst case outcomes people have shared. He saw my post here as well...

He shared more about why he was interested in this unique game, I shared my online album of restoration pictures for it. He also provided a referance that I checked in with on Pinside. In the end we used pinside to continue chatting and we both got comfortable meeting up. He ended up coming out to CA to meet me, take delivery of the game in exchange for cash and then handed off to the shipper he sourced.

I packed it up securely with blankets, cardboard and stretch wrap plus I had a pallet with some tie downs. It turned out to be a good setup over all

Not sure what to advised after this, except don't jump to quick conclusions, feel out the situation, get a reference. Over all I have been super fortunate to have had only positive buying and selling experiences that have left me new contacts and people to network with. Of my 13 games, only 1 came from a dealer.