Ethical purchse, or hot?

One complication of a well-developed conscience is that one can never win betting against it -- even if you are never found out, you still know.
 
In 1996 I was looking to buy a couple of cues. I told a couple of the local pool hall owners to let me know if they knew of anyone wanting to sell. A couple of weeks later I got a call from one of the owners that there was someone with a Schon SL-10 for sale. I knew the owner was a straight up guy and asked him if he knew the guy with the cue. He said he knew him and I met the man with the cue at his pool hall. I questioned him about how he came by the cue, why he wanted to sell it etc.

I bought the cue, brought it home and immediately fell in love with it. A few weeks later the police show up at my office, resulting in a lot of raised eyebrows from my staff. The cue was stolen from a display case from a pool hall across town and he offered a reward for it's return. Someone who witnessed my transaction saw the reward flyer. He gets a reward, the police get the cue, the thief goes to jail, I'm promised restitution that never happens.

Lesson learned. If you have the slightest reservation about a deal, walk away.

The pool hall owner feels bad about what happened and offers to order me another Schon at cost. Still have that Schon LTD I bought from him.
 
BC21 said:
A few years ago I found a Joss cue in a leather Instroke case (2x4) at a pawn shop. I paid $150 for it then sold it on eBay for a little more than $350 I believe.

Anyhow, as I was packing the cue and case for shipping, I got a phone call from an old friend concerning the cue. She said it was hers, that someone had stolen it from her car. So when she heard that I'd found it at the pawn shop she figured she got lucky.

I told her I'd cancel the eBay transaction, but also told her I was going back to the pawn shop with the police. I just wanted my $150 back. She insisted that that wouldn't be neccessary, and she offered to pay me the $150 that I spent to get the cue.

Something didn't seem right. I got off the phone with her and called the pawn shop and explained that the cue had been stolen. Then I asked if they could tell me who pawned it, and to get a police officer involved. Come to find out, it was the girl herself, my old "friend".

She lied to me. The cue was NOT stolen, and the pawn shop told me she had had the cue in and out several times. All she had to do was pay $90 to redeem it, but she didn't pay and she lost it.

I called her back and told her I was not canceling the eBay transaction. Then I mailed the cue off to its new owner. Of course, she was furious with me. She told me she would've borrowed the money from her dad to pay me for the cue. I asked why she didn't just borrow the 90 to get it out of pawn in the first place.

Fact is, she tried to hustle me by playing the sympathetic friend card. She kept saying, "I can't believe you're not going to give my cue back...I thought we were friends..". I told her if she'd have been honest with me from the beginning, like a real friend, then she’d have gotten her cue back. But she lied.

It's sad, but people lie about shit all the time. The best you can do is believe that everything is on the up and up, until you have reason not to believe it.
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Just another pool player
 
Not pool related but simular.

Years ago i bought and re-sold stuff on ebay. I bought a bunch of guitar pedals, I paid something like $500. I was going to break it up and resell for about $1k. I got all the stuff in was in nice shape. About a day or so later i get a message from someone. And that the item i bought was stolen from them and XYZ sold it to me. I was given a police case number and officer which all turned out to be bullshit.

I've boughten a few big lots of things. I'd assume one or two of them were stolen out of the hundreds I've flipped
 
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