1972 TCMA 1928 Tharp's Ice Cream F50 Reprints Baseball Forum

Would you sell a 1948 Bowman set without counting it first for completeness?  How about a 1951 Topps set?  A 1972 Topps set?  As a buyer, what's the oldest set you'd accept incomplete as an honest mistake?

Today, I received an incomplete 60-card 1972 TCMA set.  It's supposed to be a reprint of the 1928 Tharp's (F50) set, and contains players like Ruth, Cobb, Gehrig, etc. The set arrived out of order, and was missing a card from the seller's hometown team. 

When I informed the seller, he said he accidentally bought an extra set not realizing he alread had it, and sold it to me without counting the cards.  He offered me a mediocre partial refund (try finding individual cards from this set online) or a full refund to return the item (shipping? packaging? gas? time? effort?).

I'm just wondering how many people out there have extra '70s sets laying around that they don't even know about.  Oops, I accidentally bought an extra 1972 Topps set not realizing that I already had it.  No, I didn't use it to upgrade my personal collection.  I was too lazy to count 60 cards 

Was this a mistake or not?   

That sounds fishy to me...sounds like the seller was hoping whoever bought it either A. wouldn't know the difference or B. would never actually open it.

It could be an honest error though. I've purchased hand-made "complete" sets several times, and less than half of them were actually complete. (which is why I have not purchased any in that form since the 1990s). Some of them the cards were outright missing, some had different cards in their place. (Parallels)

Even more frustrating is buying a factory sealed factory set and not getting all the cards. That's happened to me three times in my life.

If it's a rare set I would probably take the partial refund and keep the cards.

I don't sell anything- never have in 28 years in the hobby, never will- so I can't answer the question as posed.

Personally, I would (and do) check every set I send out for completeness.  I sell a lot of sets on eBay and direct to a loyal buyer base and I pride myself on making sure that the customer gets what they ordered.  Mistakes do happen when you're sorting sets (we're all human), but the amount of effort involved in checking a 60 card set is minimal.

Despite what I believe to be the general anal-retentive nature of collectors, I've found errors in the majority of large lots and hand-collated sets I've bought. So far, I've been able to correct the problems pretty easily, but it's still quite annoying. Whenever I sell a large lot, I list every single card in the listing. I think 350 is about as high as I've gone. If I were selling a hand-collated set, I'd look through every card. Twice. It's just a matter of wanting to be professional (even if I'm an amateur), and not wanting to cause annoyance. 

But I suspect it's incompetence more than evil when I get a set that's short players, especially because sometimes I get extra cards. People just aren't careful. Or they have their 9 year old pull the cards. It's just the risk you take. I feel for the original poster, though. The Hunt is fine, but mostly I just want the cards I want. Buying a difficult to find "set" only to be missing a card or two just sucks. 

V3

Agree with V3 on almost all.  That is why I hesitated to get rid of all of my doubles as I invariably would pick up sets in a large purchase only to find some that were missing a card or two.  Errors for sure as they were never the star players, just commons.  But I would suspect a 60 card set as described above.  Even if a seller didn't go through every # (and I wonder why not), it is easy to count to 60 to make sure they are all there.  Also conspicuous of which card was missing.

I would take the refund, value of the missing card+ and begin the search for the missing card.

I've had this happen several times. Very frustrating indeed. Hopefully it is not one of the more valuable cards. That would be very fishy. I think people are often just not very careful. Baseball sets can be hard since there are just so many cards. I've gone through sets thinking I new which ones I was missing only to go through again after getting those cards and find out I was still missing another. Bottom line is if I am advertising a complete set I will be certain everything is there. 

My strangest experience was buying an 86 Donruss set where the cards were still in the plastic in 55 card groups. Instead of having a complete set I had doubles of two of the groups. 

I hope you can find the one missing without too much trouble.

First I have very few sets I've ever completely completed. However If I were to sell a set if I knew it was missing some cards I would list it as a "Near" set if it were at least 95% complete. Between 90% and 95% complete I'd call it some kind of "partial" set or "almost near" set. If it were less than 90% complete I'd just call it a large lot from that set.

Some years back I had purchased through Ebay a 90 card set of "Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Women of Sunnyvale" cards. When I got the set it was missing a card (Dark Willow) but there was one card that was duplicated. So I had 90 cards. I obviously contacted the seller about the problem. Unfortunately that had been his only set and he didn't know about the problem. He had probably bought it as a full set and never checked it, or just did a card count without looking checking for duplicates. These things happen. I eventually found a copy of the card I need so I have a complete base set.

It's actually better if the missing card is a star. You could get the partial refund and have a better shot at finding the replacement card. But imagine missing today's card of the day, for example. Tough. 

I probably have 10 of them....

Vvvergeer wrote: It's actually better if the missing card is a star. You could get the partial refund and have a better shot at finding the replacement card. But imagine missing today's card of the day, for example. Tough.

The Database is filled with good people though. On other forums I was on (run by a big magazine) I literally had someone tell me that they had a card I needed to complete a set but since it was just a common card they wouldn't bother sending it to me...even though I offered to pay for it. And people wonder why I don't post on that forum anymore...