Does this sound fishy or am I just paranoid?

Hold on...
If the guy's check does arrive, and it clears, what's the problem? Just deposit it, wait for confirmation, get your bank statement, and you are good to go.
However, you do risk bounced check fee; but that's better than losing your gear.

So, ask for a money order, or cashier's check, or whatever it is called in your country.
or why not paypal?

polishpunk68 wrote in post #14567781
What I don't understand yet is how they manage to scam by using paypal. Do they hope you ship before the payment clears and then dispute the charge? I'm used to the old fashioned western union fake money order scam

They use the fake "PayPal payment received" email. They never make a payment.

Checks don't really "clear" in the sense that you're thinking.

When you present it to your bank, they may honor it right away. Or they may honor part of it right away and the rest in a few days. And by "honor," all I mean is that they'll pretend that the check is legit by extending you credit for its face value. But they'll still take a few days (or weeks, in some cases) to present it to the originating bank.

When the First National Bank of Nigeria says "Oops, that account doesn't actually exist" to your bank, then your bank claws the money right back out of your account.

For that reason, I never accept checks, ever. Not even cashier's checks or certified checks, for the same reason. And I won't take money orders to my bank. I cash them first.

In theory, if you get sent a USPS money order, the USPS can confirm validity and cash it out for you at the counter, which is why I'll sometimes accept them (and will definitely cash them at the post office prior to shipping the goods.). In practice, I've had postal clerks tell me that a USPS MO is valid but that they can't cash it, usually because they don't have any cash in the till.

(As for the FBI and the postal inspectors, the amount that they find interesting is generally somewhere in the mid five figures.)

Gomar wrote in post #14568565
Hold on...
If the guy's check does arrive, and it clears, what's the problem? Just deposit it, wait for confirmation, get your bank statement, and you are good to go.
However, you do risk bounced check fee; but that's better than losing your gear.

So, ask for a money order, or cashier's check, or whatever it is called in your country.
or why not paypal?

rob0225 wrote in post #14555382
Scam! You can tell by the lack of details about your item and the use of generic terms..."other properties"', "movers", etc.

Yeah, I don't see one thing specifically referring to your lens in that e-mail. Picture you are selling a couch and it is actually more relevant as it is currently written. If there is nothing specific about your item, your actual price, it's pretty much ALWAYS a scam.

I guess it's too much work to try to tailor your scam e-mails to an actual specific product listing!

centrarchidae wrote in post #14571259
Checks don't really "clear" in the sense that you're thinking.

When you present it to your bank, they may honor it right away. Or they may honor part of it right away and the rest in a few days. And by "honor," all I mean is that they'll pretend that the check is legit by extending you credit for its face value. But they'll still take a few days (or weeks, in some cases) to present it to the originating bank.

When the First National Bank of Nigeria says "Oops, that account doesn't actually exist" to your bank, then your bank claws the money right back out of your account.

Extremely true. Been a while since I studied this subject, but if I recall correctly your bank has 30 days after you deposit a check to reject it, even if they "Honored" it immediately. So you need to wait at least that long to be 100% certain, and even then banks will get stupid if they are out enough money and try to take it back if they get stiffed after 30 days.

Here is some of the relevant UCC...
http://www.law.cornell​.edu/ucc/4/article4.ht​m