I feel like you’re suffering a little from the audiophile’s distorted sense of value - coming from our bizarre realm where a $1000 (or 2000... or 3000) can be considered entry level. $200/$300 is quite a lot of money to most people. To fake something for a fraction of that price and then pawn it off as legit and make $100 or more in profit is a very good hustle.
I did take the “I should have checked it” as an admission of guilt. That combined with the fact that it was very underpriced in the first place. Think about it - if you sold someone a cartridge that you fully believed to be legit and they came back and said this is a fake, wouldn’t your first response be... are you sure? There must be some mistake, etc. I would at the very least express intense surprise and be upset about it. A bland “I should have checked it I will refund” to me has the ring of “I am taking the position that I never paid close attention to this thing that I sold you” which to me is offering a too convenient alibi.
But look... I don’t know. I showed it to a few people with a lot of experience and they instantly pointed out a red tube holding the cantilever that is generally white on every legit dl103. That alone made them think something was wrong with it. Maybe it had been retrofitted somehow to HO... but talk about an unlikely operation. Who would go to that effort? For what?
I did take the “I should have checked it” as an admission of guilt. That combined with the fact that it was very underpriced in the first place. Think about it - if you sold someone a cartridge that you fully believed to be legit and they came back and said this is a fake, wouldn’t your first response be... are you sure? There must be some mistake, etc. I would at the very least express intense surprise and be upset about it. A bland “I should have checked it I will refund” to me has the ring of “I am taking the position that I never paid close attention to this thing that I sold you” which to me is offering a too convenient alibi.
But look... I don’t know. I showed it to a few people with a lot of experience and they instantly pointed out a red tube holding the cantilever that is generally white on every legit dl103. That alone made them think something was wrong with it. Maybe it had been retrofitted somehow to HO... but talk about an unlikely operation. Who would go to that effort? For what?