Wow! Your in a tough spot Andrew. I'm looking at a box of SPGU right now. The plastic is all clear and printed in white is the Upper Deck logo, and importantly the seal runs on only 3 sides on the box.
Basically, everyone who has posted is right. It really comes down to being realistic, and looking at it through the eyes of the judge and jury -eBay/Paypal.
Bigboyd feedback 30,000+ Titanium Powerseller.
Andrew 3134 feedback 50
Now, for argument sakes, in any dispute based on feedback and reputation who do you think is going to win? Remember, also eBay makes a minimum of about $US15,000/mth from their sales.
It's unfair, but that's the politics of the whole system. You may also want to try squaretrade dispute resolution which is supposed to be a 3rd party. It's been used against me, and I found it to be ok.
Personally I would take Scotty's advice and take the $35 and cut your loses. You'll save yourself alot of time and fussing around with Terry and Upper Deck.
I think you need to be real careful who buy from in the US. Most respected dealers like this buy from many other vendors in very large quantities. They then bust open alot of the cases hoping to get the hit and some money back. Most times they will break even or come out in front and sell their 'hits' under a different ID. The rest of the boxes are sold, which is why they appear to be cheap. Sometimes you can get lucky but the majority of the time you lose out.
I was unaware of this procedure until I was told 3 years ago by my current suppliers. I found out that people do pull much better cards on average (there's still the rotten box), than when I never bought directly from the manufacturers sellers, and bought from other 3rd party sources who busted open cases and resold boxes etc.
Try and find sellers you buy direct from the manufacturing companies (like me - sorry had to put in a tag for myself
). This way you avoid any tampering/searching/resealing etc, and you don't need to worry about quality assurance. You do pay a little premium, cause majority is bought by the case, but you stand a better chance of getting something worthwhile, and save yourself a bunch of headaches.
Sorry for the long post, but it is important to know the otherside, and I know you've bought from me before too
Good luck with what you choose to do, and keep everyone posted with what happens.