Some of the tips I will give will make you think 'he's just recycling stuff that has been around for years'.  Well, in some cases, yes.  The reason for this is that regardless of experience, advice or knowledge, the same errors are repeated time and time again!

This is now more visible in the internet age.  Search engines make it easy to look for 'cheap phone' or 'cheap console' and, being a global market, people are more comfortable buying internationally.  Compound this with greed and common sense gets put in a box under the bed.

Looking on many business and wholesales forums, the amount of people who tell their stories of 'I sent this guy money and he has dissappeared' are too many and too frequent, as is 'I received copies'!

If buying stock from an unknown source:

• Well, ideally, don't - get to know them before you do anything
• Check them out as much as possible
  • how long has their domain been registered?
  • when you search their name, does anything dodgy appear?
  • ask about them on forums?
• Never send money via the likes of Moneygram - bank transfer/TT is a little bit better, letter of credit is best (well, physically going to collect your order and transfering money is pretty good as well, but not normally practical)
• Do not be taken in if you buy a sample at a great price - buy more and everyone may dissapear, along with your money (a popular scam is get a cheap sample, get told that you can send a deposit (+/- 50%) and they will send your bulk order, which never turns up.  They then say there is a problem and they will get the goods released whn you send the remaining money (remember, they are 30-50% cheaper than anywhere else))
• A picture of their stock, along with a piece of paper with today's date on it means they have a piece of paper with a date and and some boxes - it proves nothing!