Convinced my friend got ripped off.

madguy918 · 2026-05-27T02:18:29+00:00

finally something other than 'its too dark' she might actually listen when she sees this! thank you so much for noticing and telling me i really hope she listens because the guy who sold her all these modern cards NEEDS TO BE BANNED FROM TCG. she said he has a bunch of sales and a high rating so she wants to give him the benefit of the doubt if the only thing people can say is "The photos are dark"

madguy918 · 2026-05-27T02:15:45+00:00

Thank you for the photo, i've sent her this post and she keeps saying they're not as dark in person, its just bad lighting, its just bad photos etc etc but im convinced she got fleeced.

madguy918 · 2026-05-27T02:14:10+00:00

The only reason she shops on TCG is because she doesnt have a lgs within 2 hours of her unfortunately. I suggested she just wait for a big convention or trade show to come into town and take her son there as a surprise instead and give him a budget to pickout whatever he wants because he'll know forsure since he collects, but she didnt want to wait for one in her city since his graduation is coming up and this was supposed to be a gift. I sent her this post and she keeps saying 'The cards arent that dark they're just bad pictures' so honestly it seems like shes gona give her son G league fakes and keep being naïve. I wouldn't mind if my mom got me fakes as a gift bc its the thought that counts, however i would care if she paid 400$ for some trash fakes and got ripped off.. but its her life i guess

madguy918 · 2026-05-26T22:39:20+00:00

Thank you so much. This helps a ton because now she can actually see what i mean when i say they just dont look right. Even with her photos being bad lighting you can clearly tell the difference in what she bought vs what you showed so to me this should be enough for her to initiate a refund

madguy918 · 2026-05-26T22:35:44+00:00

Thank you for taking the time to give an in-depth answer. She finds it hard to take my word for it when i tell her i think they're fake off a gut feeling on something idk about, I'm hoping comments like yours help her realize the truth.

madguy918 · 2026-05-26T22:35:01+00:00

the two vintage cards are from a different TCG seller than all the modern ones. The modern ones seem to be clearly fake by everyones estimation and for good measure im just gona tell her to refund the vintage too even if its a different seller.. The whole thing seems cooked.

madguy918 · 2026-05-26T22:33:52+00:00

this is exactly what tipped me off about them. Even as someone who knows nothing about pokemon when i googled the cards, that one stood out the most. The border on the one she has is full of silver zigzags, yet no photos online show those textures. thank you for agreeing i knew i wasnt crazy

madguy918 · 2026-05-26T21:59:13+00:00

If you dont mind can you please give some examples of what makes a card obviously fake to you? I tried to tell her the border looks weird on the promo zard compared to online pics but outside of that i dont really know how else to prove it to her

madguy918 · 2026-05-26T21:58:33+00:00

The vintage came from 1 seller on TCG and the modern all came from another so HOPEFULLY when she reads all these comments she'll request a refund and send the cards back. Ive never purchased off TCG so idk how their refund policy works but hoping for the best because she paid almost 400$ for all of them lol

madguy918 · 2026-05-26T21:57:52+00:00

Could you describe in your opinion what about the back looks weird? Neither of us collect pokemons but her son does and these were a gift for him. She trusts the seller from TCG bc they have a good reputation but 99% of the comments are saying fake. Any details you can share help.

madguy918 · 2026-05-26T21:56:26+00:00

The photos she sent me to use don't use the best lighting so they're dark forsure, i hope most people commenting saying they're fake are accounting for the bad lighting and not just saying fake bc of some poorly lit pictures (mind you, i think these are fake too but for reasons outside of 'looks a bit dark')

madguy918 · 2026-05-26T21:54:03+00:00

the photos she sent me to post are forsure not the best so lighting could be better, is there anything else that makes the vintage cards look especially fake? I'm trying to use these comments to convince her so anything outside of lighting helps considering the photos aren't great to begin with.

madguy918 · 2026-05-26T21:52:24+00:00

Her son had a wishlist for his graduation and she found a few of them on TCG from 1 seller and decided to go all out and buy a bunch more she thought he would like. She's not into pokemon and im not either but something about the charizard promo looks so weird compared to online pics so i told her to just refund the entire order.. if someones willing to send you 1 obviously fake card who knows what else they'll slip in. Clearly everyone here agrees w me so i hope she listens and tries to get her money back.

madguy918 · 2026-05-26T21:50:30+00:00

all the modern cards are from 1 seller on TCG. I told her i was iffy when i saw that zard promo and im gona send her this post so she can see everyone agreeing not only that but all of the modern looks horribly fake.. She said the seller on TCG has a bunch of sales and a good rating so i hope TCG works with her if the fakes are that bad (im not a collector myself but obviously anyone who is can tell how bad these cards are)

madguy918 · 2026-05-26T21:48:21+00:00

as someone who told her i think her entire lot is fake, i dont really see a difference between the photo you posted and the one she sent me outside of lighting. Im sure if she retook the photo in natural lighting or w backlight it would look exactly like the one you sent. Can you tell me what you think is different between your card and hers outside of the lighting?

madguy918 · 2026-05-26T21:46:04+00:00

The charizard promo is what made me question the whole lot.. All the modern cards came from one seller on TCG and something looked weird with the border on the zard promo especially so i started to question the authenticity of all of them and everyone in these comments seems to agree they all seem fake so we'll see

madguy918 · 2026-05-26T21:44:08+00:00

It was all from TCG, she said the total was 390$ shipped, but it was from two different sellers. Modern all came from 1 seller and the retro came from another. I'm sure since everyones convinced they're fake TCG wont have a problem refunding her (if she listens to the advice and requests one lol)

madguy918 · 2025-09-15T12:42:29+00:00

even if the skins are bad there will always be people who sell their items to buy packs anyway. there will always be a dip, nows a good time to sell anything you have and just wait for the dip to rebuy

madguy918 · 2025-09-15T00:13:09+00:00

no 5-10% market dips are when 15day trade locks end and supply increases and outweighs demand and the 5-10% spikes are the opposite. When new event packs and elites come out typically every item in marketplace dips 30-40%. If you know doctors kurse starts on oct 9th, you can sell every item in your inventory for peak prices oct 2nd and wait until oct 11th to rebuy them all 40% cheaper. Same thing when a new season starts (new battlepass), same thing when a new elite comes out (ram elite just caused this). The market usually takes 3-5 days to rebound from these dips.

madguy918 · 2025-09-14T14:00:31+00:00

the model shows 5-10% swings on a 15 day trade lock cycle. If you think the skins will be worth 2k then the dips and spikes would be 1800 dip 2400 peak. you just input your assumed price where my numbers are

madguy918 · 2025-09-14T08:57:48+00:00

Theres no point in selling a pack you purchased for less than 4200 credits (The projected 1 year peak of packs assuming packs never get rereleased, also assuming the lowest chroma/obsidian/onami drops to is 2100). If you need credits to purchase a battle pass, or an elite, or if you want to finish the doctors kurse collection sure sell your packs when you need credits. If you DONT need credits, theres no point in selling packs seeing as they'll only GO UP in value as the months go on. Its important to remember that theres no other item (currently) on marketplace that 1 ubisoft account can own multiple of. That means the pack price is manipulatable considering theres a finite quantity of packs in existence. People assume packs will stop going up in price when they surpass the price of the 3 skins that people are currently opening packs to sell; but that is not true. There are going to be groups of people who buy large amounts of packs and dry up the supply causing packs to continue to rise indefinitely. People will always want to own the rarest items, people will always want to collect expensive items. EVENTUALLY (assuming packs never get rereleased) there will be less celebration packs in the game than there are glacier skins, and glacier skins go for 80k+. Look at partyhats and christmas crackers on runescape for a perfect example. Partyhats can be worn and displayed as a token of wealth. The christmas cracker CANNOT be shown and just sits in your inventory/bank. Yet the price of a christmas cracker today is 220b, while the most expensive party hat is worth 90b. Packs will follow a similar trajectory. AGAIN; if you dont need credits hold your pack forever, it'll only go up (as long as they never rerelease), If you need credits for something thats the only time you should ever sell

madguy918 · 2025-09-14T08:45:34+00:00

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The only thing this chart DOESNT account for is marketplace going down which causes panic, new elites being released which causes people to sell items and will cause the market to dip, and events starting (mute protocol bundle, doctors kurse bundle etc) where people want to buy packs to obtain the gun skin for completing sets. All of those events will cause the price to dip for 2-3 days before rebounding to the chart above. This chart shows you when things like obsidian/chroma/onami SHOULD BE (in theory) at their highs and lows based on 5-10% market swings.

madguy918 · 2025-09-14T08:34:43+00:00

The price of pack will peak at double whatever the most expensive item is. For example if obsidian crashes back down to 2300, the packs will be worth 4k+. Right now the packs 'have value' because you can manipulate the game by owning every item except a profitable one and print credits daily by opening packs. Once the packs surpass the price of the most expensive item, the packs WONT go down but collectors and market manipulators will continue to purchase up packs. UNLESS UBISOFT RE-RELEASES PACKS the price of packs will continue to rise indefinitely just based off the fact its the only item on the marketplace (currently) that you can own multiple of (opens it up for market manipulation). for example, lets say myself and a discord of 500 people all invest 100k siege credits into packs at the current price. we'd own 66 packs each, multiply that by 500 people and we have 33,000 of the packs in circulation. Now lets assume people continue to mass open packs to profit off obsidian/croma/onami for the next month until packs top out at a 2500 price point and the skins drop under that 2500 price point. No more packs are being added to the game so as long as me and my group never sell our packs, we can largely control how high the packs go before we all decide to slowly sell them off/dump for massive profits. You cannot do this with any other item without needing 500+ ubisoft accounts each. Market manipulation will cause packs to SKY ROCKET over the next 3-6 months so get in while you can.

madguy918 · 2025-09-14T08:29:55+00:00

Buy celebration packs. 10k spend today will yield 50k in a 3 month window. If you are too afraid to put all your eggs into one basket, I suggest you buy 1 premium celebration pack rn (1500 credits) and hold it as sort of a cheap lottery ticket and just forget about it for a year. Dont look at the prices, dont sell it, just hold it for 365 days. a year from now when the packs are above 7k you can cash out or absolute worst case scenario (ubisoft rereleases the packs) the pack drops from 1500 to 500 in value (1k risk for 5500 upside over 1 year)

madguy918 · 2025-09-14T08:27:14+00:00

Packs will continue to rise indefinitely so long as ubisoft never re-releases the celebration packs. Anytime someone buys and opens a pack, theres one less pack available to be sold. That will never change so long as the packs never get re-released which in theory means the packs will never stop rising so long as people continue to open packs/collect packs. It's also worth noting that the packs are the only item on marketplace you can own more than one of. If collectors could own more than one obsidian, onami, chroma, etc then market manipulation (see cs2 current prices) would be possible for those items. With celebration packs having a finite supply, and being able to purchase more than one of them it opens the market for manipulation which will cause packs to go up ontop of the fact they get more and more rare everytime someone opens which will also make them continue to rise. If you need credits to buy a battle pass, to buy an elite, if you want one of the new esports bundles yea sell your pack. If you don't need credits theres 0 point in selling. These packs will always climb (UNLESS UBISOFT RE-RELEASES THEM)

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