There are 2 key 'tells' that help me identify scammers on places like Armslist:
1. The price is below what the market would normally bear
2. They almost always use photos off the internet because they don't really have the item
Additional ones on this thread:
3. "No need to register" - just doing a quick internet search on these items, that sounds like complete B.S.
4. Money Orders for payment - never, never, never
So, here is my quickie way to test a listing for a scam, and it's what I did on this one - I use Chrome to do this, not sure if other browsers will do it:
Right click on one of the photos in the listing and select "Search Google for this image". It's amazing how often scammers just grab photos from random listings and use them for their listing. I found this happening all over when I was looking for used M1A's a while back. Anyway, on the listing above, I didn't find the photo of the sear itself, but the photo of the papers he posted - I found that on listings on 4 different sites - and each of those sites said that a $200 tax stamp was required for this item.
So yeah, I'd stay far, far away from a listing like this, even if I had the $$ and the desire - I have neither
1. The price is below what the market would normally bear
2. They almost always use photos off the internet because they don't really have the item
Additional ones on this thread:
3. "No need to register" - just doing a quick internet search on these items, that sounds like complete B.S.
4. Money Orders for payment - never, never, never
So, here is my quickie way to test a listing for a scam, and it's what I did on this one - I use Chrome to do this, not sure if other browsers will do it:
Right click on one of the photos in the listing and select "Search Google for this image". It's amazing how often scammers just grab photos from random listings and use them for their listing. I found this happening all over when I was looking for used M1A's a while back. Anyway, on the listing above, I didn't find the photo of the sear itself, but the photo of the papers he posted - I found that on listings on 4 different sites - and each of those sites said that a $200 tax stamp was required for this item.
So yeah, I'd stay far, far away from a listing like this, even if I had the $$ and the desire - I have neither