I just completed a trade, I have my suspicions about the other trader resealing the bottles, since the sealed cap was slightly uneven on both lips of the bottles. How can I tell if he had done this or am I just being paranoid? He has good reviews out of his 28 trades. Thanks and cheers, just looking for piece of mind.
Well, before embarrassing them by posting about what might be nothing, I suggest you casually ask them if they noted the same thing you did.
And why would this make you suspicious? I've seen caps flattened, bruised, dented, & every other thing over the past many years, while many of my homebrew bottles could have won a beauty competition. Re-sealing is serious charge & should only be contemplated if there's something truly fishing going on: wildly off tastes (like Founders IS instead of BA Abraxas), non-branded cap that's usually branded, etc. You also have zero trades here. Where did you make this trade? So many questions.
I always love when people post here asking advice on a trade like the trading partner can't see the post. Anyway, as others have said, many more details needed here and pictures would be ideal. One of the most classic beer trading threads from years back when that guy got nabbed refilling and resealing with inferior beer from Toppling Goliath.
Watch the Documentary Sour Grapes. It is about Wine and not beer but will certainly make you think twice when trading for that uber whale.
Dude, thank you so much for this reference (watched the documentary tonight, thoroughly enjoyed it) - this is really thought-provoking regarding beer, as much as it is about wine. Really makes me second-guess chasing down BA Abraxas and so on. I've met, for the most part, nothing but really great, stand-up guys in the craft beer community... but there are definitely some guys out there operating for profit alone. Maybe bottle shares are just the way to go if you really want to hunt dem whalez.
Off. It's been done. People have rewaxed bottles with slightly different colored wax or, in one case, people suspect the original wax was just melted down after opening & reapplied. People are amazing.
As has been recommended multiple times - watch the documentary Sour Grapes. This is far from preposterous - it has been done for far, far greater degrees of profit.
I do remember hearing something along the lines of older TG stouts had no "label imprint" on the top of the cap in the wax and that they started stamping the label in there to prevent fraudulent bottles. no idea if it's true or not as I have not seen any older TG stouts in person.
