Wow
Reading this sucks, sorry for you guys getting scammed here. Sadly however, if you collect something for long enough then you are going to get burnt at some point, sadly I believe that is becoming a statistical probability. It does make you long for ten years ago when eBay was a god send and there were very few 'con men' out there, I believe someone smarter than I wrote something about the price of progress.
Anyway this one does read strangely. As Iain has said the standard con is take the money and run and be nowhere near the postcode when people realise they have been had. This person seems like they are more driven by being in the middle of events and creating situations like this than entirely with the money, the guy could be hanging about to enjoy the fallout a bit or because he has other cons going on and he just protecting himself until they are done, or he genuinely had intentions to send the goods but for a number of reason he hasn't, sold the items several times and got into a pickle or there is a world where this guy is just not playing with a full deck and might believe all he has said, or he could be saying to build up evidence in a he said she said scenario, which is really what we have here.
In any event my rambling doesn't change the fact that you guys are all out of pocket and this sort of thing really needs to be shut down and these guys called out.
But maybe the items do all arrive and I hope they do, I did have a bit of lego take three weeks to reach me from the sender a few weeks ago, so you do get the odd delay here and there, but maybe not to this extent.
Anyway this sucks and I feel for you. Just felt like saying.