DEAR Jasminda,
I PUT a collectible item on Facebook Marketplace.
A man offered to buy it.
He also paid a deposit, so I marked it as sold.
He said he couldn’t attend the first pick up date, then said he was sick, and now he wants to meet me at a halfway point with cash.
Nigel W.
Dear Nigel,
It appears you have moved from Marketplace to its darker and more sinister brother: Marketplace Mobland.
Surviving Marketplace is a hard enough task – a zone where the normal rules of engagement don’t apply.
Sally from Sage and Light comes across all vibey and spiritual on her profile, until you have to negotiate a fair-priced bulk smudging stick sale with her.
It’s akin to negotiations on reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
Selling is even more fraught.
Our local Vinnies has become the frequent beneficiary of my failed Marketplace negotiations. Some buyers have an innate ability to wear sellers down.
Most recently, my exchanges over a pair of spanking-new Nikes morphed into chess-level wheeling and dealing.
Beaten down, annoyed, but willing to accept a low-ball offer, I agreed to a price.
The purchaser then asked if I could meet her at a more convenient location.
“Forget it,” I said.
With the cost of petrol at the moment, I could have bought myself a pair of Balenciaga Speed Trainers.
All that pales into insignificance, though, when you enter the domain of Marketplace Mobland. This is the space of shady deals done behind abandoned scout halls in the dead of night.
The buyer arrives in a hotted up Benz with NOCOPS number plates.
In the back of his vehicle, you make out two shadowy accomplices in balaclavas.
The buyer (Murray during initial messages, but now Muz in conversations you suspect have taken place on a burner phone) emerges from his car.
You notice he has one hand clutching a brown paper bag, the other is twitching in his pocket. Slowly, he ambles towards you, throws his cigarette butt in the dirt and grinds it with the heel of his cap-toe shoe.
“We do this on the count of three,” Muz says.
And, on three, Muz hands you the bag, and you hand over a Labubu doll worth six-months’ of diesel. Forlornly, you head back to your car.
The deal is done. Or is it?
Seller’s remorse creeps in.
What will you say to your daughter Sophie?
Have you sold your soul on Marketplace Mobland?
You turn and start to run towards the Benz.
One of the goons steadies a rifle at your face.
“It’s name is Baba, you yell, but your scream is lost in the screech of the Benz’s spinning wheels.
Later, in your driveway, you drag the cash out of its bag.
In true mob form, it’s a wad of counterfeit.
You see your daughter at the screen door.
“Daddy,” she cries, “I can’t find Baba”.
May this be a lesson to you, Nigel.
Carpe diem,
Jasminda.
