Deep Pocket Monster

Yep, this is really me! Just a quick note because too many people are creating duplicate accounts nowadays, but this one is official.

This Padres Brewers series is insane, what a battle! 🤯

There are a lot of layers here. I just woke up and I’m catching up on all of this now. Yes, I could ignore it and move on, but since I became involved it’s important to talk about.

I’ve had both parties reach out to me privately to share their side of the story, all of which is out in the open now.

My take:

The kid wasn’t scammed (i.e. ripped off with purposeful intention). The cards that were traded are real cards, and yes, the dad did overreact. He said so himself.

The deal also wasn’t fair (not even close), and I think vendors are responsible to make sure that deals are fair especially for kids, even if a kid agrees to a trade. Personally, I would have asked for a parent to be there before agreeing to a trade with high value cards and slabs like this. Maybe that’s just me. They might not understand all that’s going on but they’d be there to poke holes and ask and question things before the transaction, as opposed to after.

That said, there’s lot of kids are out there slinging $20k slabs who know exactly what they’re doing, even more than the parents. How they get all that is another conversation, but with all this there are often misalignments in communication, expectation and outcome.

As a father, I would have been upset about the trade too, so I don’t blame the dad for the emotion, but it should have been handled in a different manner, and accusations without all of the info are dangerous. Hearing from the vendor about this, it definitely caught him off guard and felt unfair.

That said, from my understanding, the dad did attempt to find the vendor, but the vendor left. He thought this was to bounce after a scam, but in reality the vendor was rotated out of the room because he hit his two hour limit, and simply went to lunch. Classic.

And now, we’re are back to the beginning. The kid has his card back, and the vendor has his cards too, but of course no one is happy. This is what happens online.

So, to try and make some good out of this, there are always opportunities to learn. Most people won’t care, and the “I ain’t readin’ all that crowd” already left, but for those of you still here…

Here are my top 5 lessons to be learned here:

1. Dextero sucks. They deleted their article that used an image that made me look like the scammer in the story, which is also crazy. But yeah. Thanks for that.

2. It’s important to hear all sides. The parent could have handled this all without a megaphone. And the vendor could also empathize with why a parent might react that way. The world would be a much better place if we lead with empathy.

3. We as people are quick to judge. The internet is even quicker.

4. Miscommunication and misunderstanding are often the root of many disagreements, hate and blame.

5. We all can do better, including myself.

When I stepped in to offer help after the OP included a picture of me (after just having met the kid before this all went down), by quoting his post and offering help publicly I indirectly put blame on the vendor. I didn’t mean to do that, and I did reach out to first learn more.

Like I said above, I could have gathered more information first, but I will always default to making sure a kid is taken care of.

I hope this helps in some way. I not looking for any praise from any of my involvement in this, or this post. It’s just, as an old ass unc, I’m tired of the bs and just want to do good things for people, and Pokemon is doing so much good out there for people, I just wish those were highlighted more than the bad.

Wishful thinking.

Life’s too short, we gotta enjoy it as much as possible. Thanks everyone, and now I’m about to board this flight home from Worlds. 🙏

Thanks for making it look like I’m the bad guy who scammed a kid on this post @Dexerto 😑

Dude, I read the thread of what happened. I’m so sorry about what happened. I’ll reach out to you via DM, I’d love to help out.