Sellers ebl-2377 and dalekss on eBay are both selling LG BP55EB40 EB52 drives that have had their shells opened and the drives replaced with 2013 Panasonic drives that have been flashed with firmware that makes them appear to be LG drives but with unusual firmware versions.
In ebl-2377's case, the drive was listed as open box but essentially new. The site's being really glitchy with attaching images so here's an imgur of what I got:
https://imgur.com/a/ZJCIJrh
The listing said no returns were accepted but I filed a return anyway and got a refund within a few hours and didn't have to send the drive back.
Later, I tried to purchase one from dalekss and this one was listed as new. To make this even more of a facepalm, I DM'd the seller and specifically said I'd been scammed once already and wanted his written confirmation that these were new drives. He said yes. I got the same scam:
https://imgur.com/a/2F5fPha
I've submitted a refund request for this too and am waiting for a response. I suspect like the first one, I'll just get my money back again.
I have no idea how these sellers have such crazy high feedback ratings but they're either scammers or are being scammed and reselling the products blindly without checking. Given that the listings for the drives are still up (they had multiple of them), I'm guessing the former. Do not buy from these people.
I can't afford $325USD for a pre-modded drive from here and despite these still supposedly being in production, they are impossible to find anywhere new so I guess I'll just have to skip out on this. I haven't tested these Panasonic drives yet but hopefully they can actually still read regular Blu-rays. I can probably resell them clearly stating what they are for like $50 or something maybe.