My Darwin Barney Deal

So here's how I ended up getting a great deal on the Heritage Darwin Barney Error card:


My winning bid was $74.57, plus $2.50 for shipping, and as I always do, I paid for it right away. Well, the next day I get a message from the seller thanking me for the purchase and telling me that he would ship the card as soon as I pay for it. My heart raced as soon as I read that. I don't usually buy high-priced cards, and now I thought I might have bought one from a scammer.

I immediately checked my Paypal account and it showed that the payment was made. It also listed the payment as "unclaimed." I didn't know what that meant, but at least I knew I made the payment. I messaged the seller and said that I made the payment the night before, as soon as the auction ended.

He responded that his Paypal showed no payment but he would check into it. I still didn't know what to think yet; was this all part of a scam to cheat me out of my $77?

We kept messaging more info back and forth and that eased my mind a bit. It looked like the seller really did want to work things out. The breakthrough came when I gave him the email address that the Paypal went to. It was the wrong address. The address he entered with ebay was one letter off of his actual address. That's why my payment was shown as "unclaimed." Paypal had no one registered with the incorrect address, so the money was just sitting there.

Now we had to figure out how to undo this mess. Again, the seller was very helpful, as he realized that this was all his fault. What we ended up doing took a bit of a leap of faith on my part, but it turned out to be the right thing to do.

First, I cancelled my payment, which was simple to do since it was unclaimed. The money went back into my Paypal account. Then, he cancelled the ebay transaction. Once cancelled, I needed to still pay him for the card and trust that he would send it to me...my leap of faith. Because of the hassle I was going through, he gave me a new price for the card, $60 including shipping. Saving $17 sounded good to me, so I sent him $60 via Paypal. I felt somewhat safe, since there is buyer protection with Paypal and I had all of the ebay messages we sent as backup.

Just three days after I paid the card was delivered. He paid $5.35 to ship it priority mail. So in the end, it was just a sellers mistake, not a scam, and I got my card for the lowest price of any Barney Error card on ebay.

But wait, there's more! In addition to the Barney card, the seller added eleven more cards for my trouble, and when you figure the value of them, I ended up with an even better deal. That story is for tomorrow.