 Hey everybody, welcome back to Retro Tech and I've got a special unplanned episode we're going to go through and cover some very recent events that are involving Sony PVMs and BVMs and especially sales on eBay and especially a new scam going around. And I think we've probably touched on this with some other episodes of Retro Tech's Marketplace and CRT MarketWatch. So if you want to go back and check out any of those episodes and find out more about some of the sales data from the last three or four months on Sony PVMs and BVMs online, go check out that playlist. But tonight I'm going to be covering some things that were discussed in articles published by other people on new sources. So I'm going to give you their credit in the comments and the description for the video, but I just want to let you know that tonight's video is going to be under fair use. We're going to comment on some of these things and just go through and look first at what was discovered. So this was the article that I had just got done seeing and it's from retrorgb.com. So if you haven't already, please go over there and check out Bob at retrorgb.com. He does a great job of covering things in retro gaming, but this is specifically about BVM and PVMs RGB Monitor Scam. He said he just received an unfortunate call from Save On Pat, Pat the BVM Tech. Sadly there's an eBay seller trying to scalp junk BVMs for an extremely high price and then claiming that he's partners with Pat and he's been using Pat's pictures in his own listings and auctions. Pat has assured me that he is most certainly not affiliated with this person. It feels bad that his name continues to be used in these auctions. Sadly, this isn't the first time I've seen people steal Pat's pictures or claim that a monitor was worked on by Pat just to try to jack the price up. As always, try to be safe as possible with purchasing an RGB monitor. I made a tips video which he did and it's linked to in the link to this article, which I'll be posting below and it's got some more, you know, just not make sure you're not getting scalp junk, but this is a very interesting situation because I coinciding with the release of this article earlier today, I was looking at my comments for some of the past videos. As many of you who've been following the channel know, I've been working on a restoration video for the Sony PVM20L5 broadcast quality CRT monitor. And one of the last videos I did on that actually is about the chassis. And I actually used one to save on Pat's kits in that video, at least his design for kit, which I bought from him and everything's fine. So I felt really bad that this was actually coming up. And so did people, but anyway, this comment came from Agent Orange and said, did people buy all big houses PVMs at the same time? All of a sudden the listings are all gone. So this is the big house is the seller that I talked about in another video from last week where we were talking about the sales of PVMs and BVMs on the MarketWatch episode where I covered that one seller on eBay had sold like $15,000 supposedly of BVMs and PVMs. And that was big house that there was an account for them. They had had feedback that said they were having positive feedback. So I asked people to leave comments if they bought a PVM. Some of them did and they said they had a good experience. But we kind of was I was kind of wondering how was it possible that that many people could have paid that much money for PVMs and PVMs? So a lot of people in the comments of those videos rightfully stated that there are ways for people to use shadow accounts and go in and buy things on eBay and then just cancel the sales out, still get good feedback and still have a sales history of these items. And it's kind of like a scam that's been going on in other collectors realms for things like comic books and even baseball cards for a long time on eBay. It's always been a problem, but now it seems to be reaching over into items like Sony PVMs and BVMs. So what I did after I got that comment about whether all his listings were gone, I went on and you can always find the listings that he makes by just typing Sony PVM and BVM, or at least you have been able to for about the last two years. Now, again, that seller account has changed names a few times. But now I'm not seeing anything from that seller involving PVMs or BVMs at all. There's only nine items that show up. None of them are, you know, if you try to find a Sony PVM 20.0.5 or something like that right now on eBay, it's going to be tough sledding. I'm not seeing anything. But if I go over here down a little bit lower and I pull up the actual sold statistics on this sheet, then we'll be able to see what what I were talking about as far as the actual listings on here for these monitors. Now, the last big monitor to sell was this on February 11th, supposedly two days ago. So that's still recent, but it's not a BVM. This is 2950. But if we go down here, we can find these ones that I was actually talking about earlier just a few weeks ago in that episode of MarketWatch about all these sales on all these monitors, for example, the very last 20.0.5. If we click on the sales data, it's to see the original listing. This was by Big House. And again, all these are we called it out for having the same exact pictures in all of them and using pictures with the same serial numbers. But the problem is when the guy got down here and and this is the description. It says, I live right next to save on Pat. OK, let me move this just over a little bit more so you could see this part. I live right next to save on Pat. Google him if you don't know him, who is an incredible former save on Sony PVM and BVM technician service at Sony. See, he doesn't even make sense in his listing. He was he has worked on these monitors for years and can provide a pre-purchased service, which includes an inspection of all capacitors replacement of bad ones on all the boards as well as full calibrate to ensure many years of future proofing will pay half his normal service fees and calibration fees. So that's I mean, when I read that, I understand that that says, you know, that it's not it's not actually serviced by him. It says you can get it serviced by him if you do this ahead of time, which is he really taking it to him and having a service that I don't know. But I wouldn't say that, you know, he'd say that he is actually these are serviced, but that can be construed as being, you know, tricky in eBay as far as the descriptions. And again, I've always been critical of the descriptions of these monitors because they just tend to be too generic and copy and pasted. And every single one of them is like the same exact content as the ones before. But big house productions, he doesn't have any negative feedback still about PVMs or BVMs right now. But we do know that he's changed his name a couple of times. And if you look at what he's currently got for sale, it's nothing. So he might be getting in some trouble because of this, because again, it looks like he's pulled his entire store out and this was a guy who used to sell all kinds of items, not just BVM and PVM texts or stuff like that. So anyway, keep an eye out. If you're if you're thinking it's sketchy, just, you know, most likely it is. There's not too many guys that will put their name on repairing a CRT or a PVM or BVM like myself for Save On Pat. You know, we are man. I mean, there's probably a couple other people that will do it. But most of us, if somebody says that we worked on the monitor, you know, call them out if they're trying to buy it from them, say, hey, we'll then contact Retro Attack or Save On Pat. Most of the time, him or I will probably remember if we worked on some and other people who usually get theirs worked on don't tend to get rid of them. They usually tend to keep them because they're serviced and there's not that many people servicing them. So I understand why people want this, but it's just a shame that people are still going to be using every chance they get to make an extra money. And so we'll keep an eye on this obviously through MarketWatch to see whether more of these sales come back at all, whether any of these listings come back or what happens now to Big House, whether there's a name change coming or if this is just the end finally, because I did hear in the past that his inventory was running low. But that's all I've got for you today on this episode of Retro Tech. Please make sure you like and subscribe if you haven't already. And leave me a comment if you have any questions or if you have any experience again with this seller and want to leave it your story below, please feel free to do so. Also, make sure you check out the links in the description for more information on the actual article we're covering today, as well as a link to that. I'll try to put a link in there to the professional broadcast CRT monitor Facebook group, but have a great day and I'll see you next time with some more retro content.