Fake Pokemon cards on ebay refund, advice needed

[EstragonHelmer]

Hey! First time posting, and an annoying one for me.

I recently bought a theme deck on ebay that was an auction from an individual seller, a single item, not hundreds in stock, not a ridiculously low price. Nothing to suggest I should be suspicious, but it turned out to be a fake.

As far as I can tell, the outer packaging, and the holo card visible through the front are real, but literally EVERYTHING else is fake. The pokemon coin has badly molded edges, and the cards are missing the black line visible on the edges between the layers of card. Some cards were packed in face up, others face down. Some even had excess paper and tears on one corner. The deckbox is so thin, and so much larger than the cards that they rattle around in it, and it doesn't even properly fit into the plastic packaging.

There's zero chance whatsoever that these cards are real.

Obviously, the seller is refusing a refund saying they bought it in a Smyths toy shop, and it was genuine. Should I just wait the 8 days and then escalate the case with ebay? Can anyone who's experienced this before give me some advice?

 

[donavannj]

Got pictures of everything that you can post here as an attachment to your next post? It's not remotely easy to spot the black layer through the side of the cards. Just want to confirm that you have a case to escalate based on other features of the cards.

 

[EstragonHelmer]

The only photos I took so far are on my ebay refund request, so they're not publicly available for me to link in a post here. I'll take some more tomorrow, so I'll try to post here then to show then to you all.

 

[EstragonHelmer]

Oh, apparently I can't link to photos until I've made more posts. Is there no way to post photos other than that?

 

[Hands]

You can use the little paperclip icon to attach them i think

 

[EstragonHelmer]

Aha! Brilliant, thanks!

Sorry the images are so huge. I have no idea how to resize them on here.
Okay, so... images. I know it's impossible to prove I didn't just flip them myself, but a lot of the spotting fake cards guides mentioned this. The deck came with a few cards the opposite way round to the others. I've never had this before.


Then, these are the cards with torn bits. There's actually excess paper (which I guess got caught when the cards were put in the box) as if they're poorly cut, or were removed from a perforated sheet.


Then, this is one of my previous cards, with the black line visible between layers of card.
You're right about these being hard to see, but my macro lens picked it up pretty well.


And one of the new cards, with no black line.

 

[donavannj]

At the very least, if it came like that, it was tampered with, though if they never actually stated it was sealed, they may have opened it, raided it for cards they wanted, and decided they didn't want the rest of the deck, or just didn't want the deck after opening it. The actual back of the card that I can see actually looks as it should, and the corners of the faces all appear to be legitimate. Got more pictures of the faces of the cards and got a description of how they feel in hand compared to legitimate cards?

 

[EstragonHelmer]

It could well be that only some are fake, as the holo Lunala outside the deckbox seems real. The corners on the torn cards are slightly angular, so maybe they're the only fake ones in it?

The only thing I noticed about the feel is that they're a bit smoother (almost a little like plastic?), but then that might just be because mine are a bit older.