I've read the entire thread and I'm sorry you had to join the ever-increasing number of "Vic-tims" on this board.

Vic Galante is a small-time crook with a small to moderate-sized collection of casino chips. He's specialized in low-level ripoffs, which leads me to believe he's what we call a "degenerate gambler," someone who's hit rock bottom and is trying to climb back up the hill through a series of petty swindles. My experience, which you might not have heard about in time to prevent your experience, was that I had won nine separate chips from him in a series of eBay auctions. He charged $1.85 postage and handling for each chip, refusing to give a discount in postage because his policy was that he did not combine shipping. As I expected, he actually did combine the shipments into one envelope, bearing $1.29 in total postage. He charged me a total of $16.65 for shipping and handling. I gave him a negative feedback and took him to eBay's Square Trade arbitration service, which he refused - for good reason, since he could lose his eBay account for gouging postage and avoiding eBay's Final Value Fees. As it turned out, he received another negative feedback for poor customer service and failure to deliver on chips won in an auction, so he abandoned his eBay account and started up a new one. The old one was alpha1425 or something like that. His eventual explanation for what he did to me was "Profit, pure and simple."

Others have mailed (or received) hundreds of auctioned or traded chips with no problem at all. I've never had any problem on eBay with any other chip dealer, and have received literally thousands of eBay packages with vintage baseball cards and other "essential" items with no problems at all. The folks on this board are absolutely magnificent with following up on trades and sharing information, especially us new guys with the CC+GTCC membership numbers in the 6000 range.

Vic continues to post trade offers on this board, and it's anyone's guess why he does it. He refuses to deal with any of the outstanding complaints against him, has been tossed out of his local chip collecting club, doesn't qualify for membership in the national organization, and I guess he generally assumes that people on this board are too stupid to remember the weekly or bi-weekly fiascos generated by his unwelcome trade offers.

"Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by stupidity," as the saying goes, and in this case, it's entirely possible Vic is too stupid to understand such advanced concepts as how to make use of the services of the U.S. post office. Whatever the reason, whatever his affliction, it's just plainly clear that he simply doesn't get it, doesn't understand why what he does without apology is flat out wrong. We do understand, and we warn each other to watch out for petty crooks of his ilk.

Best,
WMD