Wow, that's quite a story Ki.
I guess in the end, if the couple gets the money, he gets his cut and you end up with a nice machine things aren't too bad.
It goes to show that even with well established buy/sell sites, the "buyer beware" sign is still in place.
Maybe it's a sign of the economic climate but there seems to be more "sharks" in the waters. It could be that these "sharks" have just learned to eek out more profit from auction sites etc.. (Padding their profit with large shipping/handling charges for example)
If I think about it, I also browse the sellers feedback not just for the "positive/negatives" but the balance of buying and selling items. I can't help thinking that some of the inflation of prerecorded tape prices we've seen lately is due to those folks who've bought the tapes for low/reasonable prices and are re-selling them with starting prices that insure that they'll at least break even. Of course, that's what many of these markets have evolved into.
I recently received a tape that is a dub of the the original. The tape stock appears to be used and the reel is a much lower quality. Other than that, the labels are almost exactly the same and slightly distressed to appear aged. The box is a little larger (depth) but without having several other copies of this same tape, it would have been difficult to say for sure that it's counterfeit. I'll be posting something about this latter when I do a little more research into the matter. For now, suffice it to say that the sound of the tape is pretty low quality. I can hear the low quality playback/record amps imposing their will on what is normally a fantastic sounding recording.