Friend of mine ended up ordering a cart from there listed only with graphics issues, but had arrived physically busted, and had also clearly been heavily soaked in water prior and not dried out soon enough. The label looked ready to fall off the cart and it smelled pretty bad. None of this was listed in the details, and the cart did not match the stock pic condition wise. He had to do a return because of the shell damage.
After he left feedback the seller started slamming him with calls to his phone and other email mess denying responsibility and blaming the buyer. Typical scammer seller stuff. I was there when my friend opened the package, so I know what the cart looked like, and it most definitely did not match the condition of the one pictured in the auction.
I am not going to get into the details of all of that, but it is a ongoing mess and did make my friend physically reexamine his other buys from this seller, inside and out, because he had gotten a loose Riding Hero cart prior that had a heavily water damaged manual. That seemed like more then just a coincidence for him at this point with this returned cart smelling like it had been in a flood.
The Riding Hero cart looked fine though on the exterior and worked fine so he didn't care much about the manual issue at the time. Same with all the other carts he got from this guy. On the outside they look fine. But he popped them all open just to make sure the guy has not been dumping flood damaged carts on ebay over the past couple years, and he did find rust in his Riding Hero cart.
He also found that one of the Magician Lord carts had been worked on prior. One of the chips evidently had damage that was repaired, like legs were cut away in sections and bridged to the pcb with solder. I have seen this kind of repair work before on arcade boards, and its usually related to rust damage.
There is also wires all over the back of the pcb. The cart does work fine according to him, but when I saw the mess, tbh I was surprised it does. He is going to be doing clean up work on that mess, but obviously it affects the value of the cart compared to what he originally paid the seller.
The rest of his carts were fine though, so only two out of the six he currently has have any issues. The seller is located in Florida near the ocean, so I wonder if they either had a flood issue prior, or just have a moisture control issue in general. Either way, no offense to my friend, but Im glad it was him that got this stuff and not me. I had been watching this sellers listings for awhile. I am glad I never pulled the trigger on any of them.
I'm trying to talk him into handing over the damaged Magician Lord to me to convert over to MVS for him so the chips are at least on better condition pcbs. Then at least he will have a better condition copy on both formats. Will see how that goes.
After he left feedback the seller started slamming him with calls to his phone and other email mess denying responsibility and blaming the buyer. Typical scammer seller stuff. I was there when my friend opened the package, so I know what the cart looked like, and it most definitely did not match the condition of the one pictured in the auction.
I am not going to get into the details of all of that, but it is a ongoing mess and did make my friend physically reexamine his other buys from this seller, inside and out, because he had gotten a loose Riding Hero cart prior that had a heavily water damaged manual. That seemed like more then just a coincidence for him at this point with this returned cart smelling like it had been in a flood.
The Riding Hero cart looked fine though on the exterior and worked fine so he didn't care much about the manual issue at the time. Same with all the other carts he got from this guy. On the outside they look fine. But he popped them all open just to make sure the guy has not been dumping flood damaged carts on ebay over the past couple years, and he did find rust in his Riding Hero cart.
He also found that one of the Magician Lord carts had been worked on prior. One of the chips evidently had damage that was repaired, like legs were cut away in sections and bridged to the pcb with solder. I have seen this kind of repair work before on arcade boards, and its usually related to rust damage.
There is also wires all over the back of the pcb. The cart does work fine according to him, but when I saw the mess, tbh I was surprised it does. He is going to be doing clean up work on that mess, but obviously it affects the value of the cart compared to what he originally paid the seller.
The rest of his carts were fine though, so only two out of the six he currently has have any issues. The seller is located in Florida near the ocean, so I wonder if they either had a flood issue prior, or just have a moisture control issue in general. Either way, no offense to my friend, but Im glad it was him that got this stuff and not me. I had been watching this sellers listings for awhile. I am glad I never pulled the trigger on any of them.
I'm trying to talk him into handing over the damaged Magician Lord to me to convert over to MVS for him so the chips are at least on better condition pcbs. Then at least he will have a better condition copy on both formats. Will see how that goes.