Classifieds scams?

[naddy]

What do we know about scams targeting potential buyers of classic HP calculators?

You'd think scams would involve iPhones or such, and vintage HP calculators are way too niche, but I'm starting to get suspicious. For the past few weeks, I've been watching eBay and Kleinanzeigen (Germany) for HP Pioneer models. Yesterday, an offer for an HP-42S popped up where the images seemed familiar, but I wasn't sure where and if I'd really seen them before. Today a different offer for an HP-42S popped up on Kleinanzeigen that was clearly copied from a running offer on eBay, seller in a different country, different price. Whatever the details, this one has to be a scam. (I reported the offer as suspicious and Kleinanzeigen removed it within minutes.)

Watch out!

PS: That earlier offer from yesterday is also copied, I found the original on eBay again.

[carolinahomes]

Business idea of the day: Certified-used HP calculators.

It may come to that; when you pay for a calculator and it first gets shipped to a third-party verification service like they do for watches.

(11-06-2024 04:00 PM)naddy Wrote:  What do we know about scams targeting potential buyers of classic HP calculators?

You'd think scams would involve iPhones or such, and vintage HP calculators are way too niche, but I'm starting to get suspicious. For the past few weeks, I've been watching eBay and Kleinanzeigen (Germany) for HP Pioneer models. Yesterday, an offer for an HP-42S popped up where the images seemed familiar, but I wasn't sure where and if I'd really seen them before. Today a different offer for an HP-42S popped up on Kleinanzeigen that was clearly copied from a running offer on eBay, seller in a different country, different price. Whatever the details, this one has to be a scam. (I reported the offer as suspicious and Kleinanzeigen removed it within minutes.)

Watch out!

PS: That earlier offer from yesterday is also copied, I found the original on eBay again.

[gentzel]

From there it's a short trip to comics-like "slabbing" of calculators, where they're forever encased in acrylic to be looked at only and never touched.

[Namir]

I am with you AS LONG AS HP ITSELF CERTIFIES THESE CALCULATORS ..... :-)

And don't hold your breath!!!!

:-)

Namir

[John Garza (3665)]

(11-07-2024 09:23 PM)gentzel Wrote:  From there it's a short trip to comics-like "slabbing" of calculators, where they're forever encased in acrylic to be looked at only and never touched.

This has long been the standard in the numismatic world.
However, both sides of the coin can be enjoyed while slabbed.
A comic can not be read. However, you may not want to handle valuable ones anyway.
HP calcs though certainly could not be operated. And should be hermetically sealed to keep out humidity and oxygen.

And there are other scammers out there. Sometimes you see a rare HP for sale at an extreme price. Maybe someone is hoping to hook a gullible person (or a desperate one). There recently was an HP-9100 in Budapest going for roughly ten times what it should.

-J

[Idnarn]

(11-08-2024 05:14 AM)John Garza (3665) Wrote:  And there are other scammers out there. Sometimes you see a rare HP for sale at an extreme price. Maybe someone is hoping to hook a gullible person (or a desperate one). There recently was an HP-9100 in Budapest going for roughly ten times what it should.

-J

This is the way of the world. As long as they're selling something legitimate and not square root of a negative bridge, if the buyer gets what they want and pays the quoted price, it's not a scam. You are right that the buyer may be gullible, or may want the object so much that they're willing to pay the quoted price anyway. But it is no scam if the buyer gets what he ordered.

Gold ETFs quote gold at the same price as physical gold. There is no way every buyer can ever get physical gold for it - there is just not enough gold above ground for the exchange traded gold. It is paper gold. Are buyers gullible? (It's a larger market than physical gold.) Could be. Is it all a scam? No. The buyer gets exactly what they bought - paper gold.

https://www.bullionstar.com/gold-univers...-mechanics

[emefff]

(11-07-2024 09:23 PM)gentzel Wrote:  From there it's a short trip to comics-like "slabbing" of calculators, where they're forever encased in acrylic to be looked at only and never touched.

I am halfway there! I put them in freezer bags, hahahahahahaaaaaa,

emefff.

[John Garza (3665)]

(11-08-2024 06:20 AM)Idnarn Wrote:  

(11-08-2024 05:14 AM)John Garza (3665) Wrote:  And there are other scammers out there. Sometimes you see a rare HP for sale at an extreme price. Maybe someone is hoping to hook a gullible person (or a desperate one). There recently was an HP-9100 in Budapest going for roughly ten times what it should.

-J

This is the way of the world. As long as they're selling something legitimate and not square root of a negative bridge, if the buyer gets what they want and pays the quoted price, it's not a scam. You are right that the buyer may be gullible, or may want the object so much that they're willing to pay the quoted price anyway. But it is no scam if the buyer gets what he ordered.

Gold ETFs quote gold at the same price as physical gold. There is no way every buyer can ever get physical gold for it - there is just not enough gold above ground for the exchange traded gold. It is paper gold. Are buyers gullible? (It's a larger market than physical gold.) Could be. Is it all a scam? No. The buyer gets exactly what they bought - paper gold.

https://www.bullionstar.com/gold-univers...-mechanics

This only works if all parties know the true market price going into the deal. Which may not be the case for newbie HP collectors with heavy pockets and super-rare machines.

It also brings to mind several 'American Picker' TV episodes where savvy junk/collectible dealers snag valuable items for pennies on the dollar from unsuspecting senior citizens. True, the sellers agreed to the price - but they were uninformed as to the true value. And IMHO, they were 'scammed'.

-J

[Maximilian Hohmann]

Hello!

(11-08-2024 12:15 PM)John Garza (3665) Wrote:  It also brings to mind several 'American Picker' TV episodes where savvy junk/collectible dealers snag valuable items for pennies on the dollar from unsuspecting senior citizens. True, the sellers agreed to the price - but they were uninformed as to the true value. And IMHO, they were 'scammed'.

That is probably a matter of jurisdiction. In my country (Germany), an arts dealer who gives 1.500 Euros to a senior citizen for a real Van Gogh worth 50 million Euros will get a jail sentence without parole because this is clearly a case of fraud. If the deal is done between normal persons it might be different, because the buyer can always say that he didn't believe for a moment that the painting was real.

Regards
Max

[Idnarn]

(11-08-2024 12:39 PM)Maximilian Hohmann Wrote:  That is probably a matter of jurisdiction. In my country (Germany), an arts dealer who gives 1.500 Euros to a senior citizen for a real Van Gogh worth 50 million Euros will get a jail sentence without parole because this is clearly a case of fraud. If the deal is done between normal persons it might be different, because the buyer can always say that he didn't believe for a moment that the painting was real.

Regards
Max

Let's not bring senior citizens into the mix to skew the subject. There are all sorts of scams targeting senior citizens because they're (a) gullible because they're not savvy of today's world, and (b) are vulnerable. Agreed.

Will an art dealer who sells a painting he originally purchased many years ago for 5 million euros to a 40-year old buyer for 50 million euros get a jail sentence?

Will a DNS domain owner --- who registered a domain originally for $35 and then sold it later for $2 million to a buyer who was willing to pay that money for that domain --- go to prison for it?

These things ordinarily happen and I very much doubt the examples are illegal.

This calculator is decades old and a rarity - there is no maximum retail price. It's not someone who's purchasing a HP 12C today and then selling it on.

I know it is bitter for someone passionate about a subject who wants something but it's priced out of their pocket when another who has no clue about it owns that object and offers it for an exorbitant price to make a large profit. But the market adjusts automatically. If it's not worth that price, the seller would have to lower the price or it would not get sold. You can't call a seller a scammer for asking for some price - it's his property and his to part with at whatever price he likes. In life when you're buying something you have to do your research on whether it's worth that money. Go into a car dealership and buy a new car and drive out with it and it's already not worth what you paid for it.

Even brand new, a gadget's cost price including design and development may be 10% of its distributor pricing. Is the company pricing it with a 90% markup scamming customers?

Edit: An insulin dispenser may cost 1000 times more than it's worth in a certain country. In that case I agree it's a scam - it's necessary for diabetics to survive, and there's also no scarcity for the price to be so high.

An old calculator is similar to a rare bottle of wine, a watch, a comic book, a postage stamp. It may have cost $2 in 1980. Today it is "priceless", or at least, sold at some high price that someone somewhere is willing to pay and that's all that the seller cares about. It's not essential to survival.

I live in Singapore and the average house on a 2400 square feet plot of land costs about $6 million now. Some citizens bought their land in the 70s and 80s perhaps for as little as $70,000 and are making a huge profit on it. Why does it cost $6 million today? Because of scarcity of land, and because someone is willing to buy at $6 million. Because that's what it's worth. If some plot of land that the buyer thought was special was sold for $60 million, it would look suspicious and probably be investigated for money laundering, but would it be investigated that someone was getting duped?

[Maximilian Hohmann]

Hello!

(11-08-2024 01:46 PM)Idnarn Wrote:  Will an art dealer who sells a painting he originally purchased many years ago for 5 million euros to a 40-year old buyer for 50 million euros get a jail sentence?

He will probably not go to jail, but if the seller - or rather his lawyer - can prove that at the time of the sale the painting was already worth much more than those 5 millions he has a chance of getting his share of the 50 millions. There have been some similar cases before court, the result of course depends a lot on the judge and jury.
Usually arts dealers are recognized experts in their field (in German: Sachverständige). If you as an ordinary "uneducated" person, at least in the field of valueing pieces of art, do business with such an expert you must be able to rely on his word.

(11-08-2024 01:46 PM)Idnarn Wrote:  Will a DNS domain owner --- who registered a domain originally for $35 and then sold it later for $2 million to a buyer who was willing to pay that money for that domain --- go to prison for it?

Probably not. But again (talking only about Germany) in the early days of the internet there was a certain Wild West attitude regarding these deals. People registered BMW.de or Mercedes.de to themselves, hoping to sell these domains to the companies with a huge profit. Courts quickly ruled that unless your own name was "BMW" or "Mercedes" you had to reliquish these domains to the rightful owners of the brand names.

Regards
Max

[Albert Chan]

With eBay (30 days) money back guarantee, how does the scam even work?

[John Garza (3665)]

To summarize, the article of contention is not that market prices fluctuate. We all know they do. It is that someone with knowledge of true market value can use that information to fraud/scam someone who does not have that information. This is along the same lines as 'insider trading' in the stock market.

-J

[Ren]

[quote='John Garza (3665)' pid='195070' dateline='1731042862'
And there are other scammers out there. Sometimes you see a rare HP for sale at an extreme price. Maybe someone is hoping to hook a gullible person (or a desperate one). There recently was an HP-9100 in Budapest going for roughly ten times what it should.
[/quote]
Sometimes, I think some of those outlandish prices are just a form of money laundering.

[HPing]

This is why I purchased an HP 50G from Namir.

He is a calculator enthusiast with a reputation here and on TAS. Plus, he was responsive to my questions.

So I knew this would be a low-risk transaction. The HP would be fully tested, properly described, professionally packaged, and promptly shipped.

Namir sent me a blue 50G which was:

- In much better condition than described. I would guess it was used for a few days and put away. It was very clean and showed virtually no wear. All the buttons felt great. The battery contacts showed shiny chrome. I spent 5 minutes "detailing" this and would be hard-pressed to distinguish it from new.

- Fairly photographed. The calculator and the slightly-worn black leather case photos were true to life.

- Professionally-packaged for shipping (oversized new box, plenty of foam and bubble wrap, new seal-able anti-static bag).

This experience contrasts with the prior 50G I purchased on TAS:

- Very clean but 3 buttons did not work. Inside there was a lot of debris, 2 keys physically broken, and the rubbery key mat had 3 holes punched in from use (causing the 3 keys to not register).

- Fortunately the seller issued a full refund and ate the shipping charges. But that was a lot of time and stress invested in the auction search, teardown, and refund request.

[Maximilian Hohmann]

Hello,

there was another one this morning on german eBay classifieds. A seemingly nice HP-19C for a too-good-to-be-true price. I contacted the seller through classifieds and he quickly replied that he only accepts "PayPal for friends and family", i.e. PayPal with no buyer protection, but of course he will send the calculator in an insured parcel. A few hours later the advert was gone, either because someone reported it or because he felt that he had collected enough money by selling the same nonexistent calculator dozens of times...
I hope that no one from this commonity feill for it!

Regards
Max

[AndiGer]

I saw the HP-19C yesterday in the evening.
Thought must be a scammer.
So I asked him today to send me a picture with the current date displayed and a picture with all 8 in the display. Half an hour later I received the message that the seller was blocked and the offer deleted.
I am always suspicious when a seller just opened the account as it was with this one. Yesterday opened the account and only the HP-19C advertised. And no real name ...

EDIT: Looked on different ebay country sites and on ricardo.ch but couldn't find the original offer.

[AndiGer]

Today again …
One „seller“ of HP-19C and Compucorp 326. Both sold on ebay.com
Second „seller“ of HP-15C LE NIB. Also stolen from sold item on ebay.com

[John Casper]

I think a list/thread must be prepared for fare price of Vintage Calculators depending on its condition (new/used/damaged/for parts),so that it may help the newer users.

What would be a good price for a used HP 42S (not damaged)?any idea?

[Ren]

(11-18-2024 11:10 AM)John Casper Wrote:  I think a list/thread must be prepared for fare price of Vintage Calculators depending on its condition (new/used/damaged/for parts),so that it may help the newer users.

What would be a good price for a used HP 42S (not damaged)?any idea?

As a bottom feeder, the prices I pay are pretty low, and the condition of the calculators reflects that.

B^)

Ren
dona nobis pacem