The Mysterious Thingies

5/9/2021

Available on Amazon

It sometimes feels as if the world is awash in mysteries.
For example, there was the time I received the beautiful bouquet of eighteen white roses with no name on the accompanying card (See post from 12/9/2019, "The Mystery of the Roses").

That mystery was solved several days later when some sleuthing revealed that the roses were a gift from my nephew Randy and his wife Anusha, whose names had been left off the card (see the post from 9/13/2020, "The Mystery Is Solved").

(The mystery of why their names were left off the card remains unsolved).
Then there was the time flamingos mysteriously showed up in the yards of my friends.

Okay, I was behind that mystery (See post from 3/11/2021, "The Pink Flamingo Mafia").
And I'm also behind the mystery of the bunnies that show up in my neighbors' yards every year on Easter Sunday morning (see post from 4/9/2021, "Pies, Bunnies And Christmas Breakfast").

I will admit that I give as good as I get when it comes to the propagation of mysteries.

A few days ago a new mystery arose when I discovered on my porch a small but rather heavy oblong package that jingled a little when I shook it. I couldn't recall having recently ordered anything that should be of that size. When I opened the package I found this:

...obviously jostled in transit. I rearranged the contents to get a better perspective.

Not only had I not ordered these...thingies, whatever they were, but I could not imagine who in the world would. They appeared to be some kind of utensils - maybe for serving hors d'oeuvres? But how could you spear, slice, or spoon with any of them? I tried to picture one of these little apparatuses next to an olive or dip bowl or beside a round of brie. The image was rather icky. They looked like gold-painted plastic but were rather heavy pieces of gold-painted metal.
The whole situation was annoying, not only that these little doo-hickies had been sent to me by mistake, but that they were such dumb, garish, useless little doo-hickies.
Especially annoying was this tooth pick dispenser thing.

I mean, seriously, three toothpicks? Who in their right mind would go to the trouble of dispensing three toothpicks at a time? Upon closer examination, it didn't even look like the toothpicks could be detached from their thingy. So they were just show toothpicks. How ridiculous!
And then there was the message written on the box under the thingies.

What was that even supposed to mean? I figured it was supposed to mean "Made in China,"
That evening I shared a text on our family thread about the mysterious thingies.

(As it turned out, I was mistaken about the box having come from Amazon; one loses sight of the fact that, though rare, it is within the realm of possibility that a package might show up on one's porch that did not originate from Amazon. This happened to be one of those rare cases. Had I looked closer at the package upon its arrival I may - or may not - have realized this, which would have slightly altered the narrative arc of this story, as will soon become evident).
A couple of my children thought this could be some kind of scam, specifically one called "brushing," which involves an Amazon vendor hiring people called "brushers" to order the vendor's products through Amazon. The brushers then write a glowing review of the product - specified as a "verified purchase" - on Amazon and the good reviews left by "verified buyers" help sales of the product.

However - here's where the scam comes in - the vendor doesn't actually send out the product ordered by the "brusher," but some cheap, random thing which is sent not to the "brusher" who ordered it, but to a random address. Hence people sometimes receive random stuff from Amazon and have know idea why or where the stuff came from.
We figured that must be the provenance the thingies, though exactly what they were remained a mystery. We spent a good while texting back and forth, joking and musing about the mysterious thingies,
Then one of my daughters texted this photo, which she said she found from doing an online picture search:

Though the photo was very small and unclear on my phone screen, I said that yes, those were the thingies!
My daughter then texted this:

This was an OMG moment for us all. Everyone who knows me wells knows that I am a Salvador Dali super fan. All of a sudden these stupid, non-functional thingies didn't look so stupid or non-functional anymore; they looked like...Dalis!
Wait, I thought: Last December I ordered for myself for Christmas a Salvador Dali Persistence of Memory clock.

Could there be any connection between the Dali clock and the Dali thingies?
Definitely some kind of scam, the relatives on our text thread agreed. "Do they look cheap or expensive?" asked one.
"This ain't cheap," wrote my daughter, accompanied by a Sothby's auction price for a set the Dali cutlery:

I looked up the U.S. equivalent of 44,100 GBP: $61,627.54.
Now the family text thread lit up with urgent advice: I needed to immediately check my credit card, my credit report, my Amazon account, my bank account. I asked the thread members if they thought I should maybe call the FBI? Just to be safe? What if I were an inadvertent dupe in a Dali smuggling scheme and someone came looking for the $61,627.54 thingies?
That was when the case broke wide open with this text from my daughter:

My daughter went on to elucidate that the ad that showed up on her Facebook was from a company called oumytrade for a set of beautiful Dali pieces,

...selling not for 44,100 British pound sterling, but for a very affordable $39.98 U.S. dollars,

...plus tax and shipping, which brought the expenditure to $50.00.
"The ad wasn't clear whether the pieces were authentic Dalis or replicas," my daughter explained, "but for $50 I had to give it a try."
Alas, as we learned, they were indeed copies. Though, as it turned out, not very convincing ones. A little research on our part revealed that the actual Dali Cutlery pieces were of a silvery gold, each piece intricately detailed,

...some resembling whimsical sea creatures with tiny gems for eyes.

...and all the pieces engraved at the base with Dali's signature.

Apparently oumytrade had filched the Sothby's ad for the Dali Cutlery:

...substituted their own company logo and switched out the price from 44,100GBP to $39.98:

The pieces they then sent out had barely a hint of detail, and no Dali signature.
The authentic Dalis:

...the oumytrade Dalis:

The Dalis I received had no tiny gems for the eyes but did have tooth picks for prongs.
The authentic Dalis:

...the oumytrade Dalis:

My daughter knew right away that she'd been scammed by oumytrade when she saw my text about receiving the box of funny-looking thingies, which in no way resembled the photograph of the beautiful Dali thingies - whether real or decent knock-offs - she thought she had ordered. But she decided to make the best of it and at least let all of us on the text thread have a little fun with the mystery.
And, in truth, for my daughter's fifty-dollar expenditure we we did have an evening's worth of fun, winding up with lots of laughter when she finally sprung the joke and the story of how she'd been hustled.
We noted that this was kind of like that story from a few years ago when a (supposed) art restorer promised this: