I’ve been using Ebay for about 3 years now and have found some pretty good stuff. I have never had a bad deal (once, the post office lost a payment, but the dealer stuck with me until the money order was replaced). I usually look for Electric Light Orchestra-related stuff. Currently there are two copies of “Ole ELO”, one is a blue vinyl promo and the other is a white vinyl promo. The prices for these seem to have gotten WAY out of hand with the blue one going for $338 and the white one for $551. Both auctions have about a day left. I’d put in a bid for the white one and was quickly outbid. I did a little research and found the exact same record for $75 from an online record shop!! Now, I know Ebay and the real world of collecting have little to do with each other, but it is interesting to see this kind of bidding war going on and knowing the real world value is much lower that the bids that are flying around.
I’ve never really followed too much stuff myself, but I remember reading an article in Money or Fortune or one of those where the columnist bought a digital camera, didn’t like it and sold it on eBay for $50 more than retail despite it now being opened and used. They also showed some other eBay purchases and “real” values such as a rather battered first edition of Tom Sawyer selling on eBay for nearly $100 more than an on-line antique bookstore had for a “fine” copy.
Old macross or Robotech / gundam / transformers toys check them out , they sell 500$+ i was browsing and a friend who had one of the said items gave it away for free and the said item as sold for about $1400 which he was very annoyed.
I’ve had a nuts item myself i had a rare only 10 ever made jacket from a certain film and i put it up at $25 it got to about $500 then some nut put a massive bid onto it and never replied and gave me a negative feedback for another blow .
Possibly the worse ebay case i have ever had was a $250 item
and they sent me an envelope via fedEX which i had to sign for and when i opened the envelope it was empty , and he protested saying that he had put the money in and since i had signed the FEDEX form i had stolen his money .I got alot of hassle over that and he left 1 negative and 19 abusive neutral feedback which annoyed me alot.Then I asked FEDEX how much the package weighed and weighed the package with $250 in it the weight was different and he STFU as it proved he sent it empty , little bastard .
I only ever buy on ebay now since its safer to be the buyer if you buy off somebody with a good rep.
Hey, they used to sell EverQuest accounts over EBay, before Sony’s lawyers stepped in. People were shelling out triple digits for high level characters. I played EQ for about two years, but I can’t even imagine the mind frame that thinks paying three hundred dollars for someone else to play a game for you makes any kind of sense.
I once got in a bidding war with someone for an old video. I don’t know why I didn’t quit after bidding the 3rd time. I still stopped before the price passed the original retail value of the tape. I kind of feel sorry for the guy I bid against though. The next time the item was offered I managed to get it for half the price he did.
I think some of the worst examples of overbidding were for the Playstation 2. Some units were going for 3 times the retail value. People were paying up to $10 just for information on a web site that might have the Playstation for sale before Christmas!
I was kind of surpised to see some rather rare advertising collectables for sale quite cheap though.
You also might want to check out the bidding history of some of the people who were bidding up those prices. Sometimes there is a genuine bidding war, and sometimes it is just shill bidding.
I’ve noticed that, on certain items like ELO or the Beatles, for example, there is a small group of hardcore collectors who’ll stop at nothing (literally!) to get certain items. They all have high feedback numbers and rarely have negatives. I’ve lost plenty of cool stuff to this group. I’ve even bought stuff FROM some of these bidders, as well. Ulitmately, it comes down to how badly you want an item. There are no places locally where I can buy these items so Ebay it is. I have yet to “overpay” for an item, though.
My best story involved selling some manga. It was the whole series, and had cost me some $30 or so at a used Japanese bookstore here in Hawaii.
I dropped in to check on the price about 10 minutes before the auction close, and it was at the modest sum of $75, where it had been for the last day or two. Checked up on it at the two minute mark, and it was at $78 or so.
Checked up on it again after the auction ended, and was floored to find that it had sold for something along the lines of $140! :eek:
After checking the bidding history, I saw that there was one heck of a sniper war - like something out of Enemy at the Gates, really. I asked the winning bidder about it, and he admitted, almost sheepishly, that the bidding did get a little crazy there at the end.
He did pay, though, and we both got positive feedback out of it.
On the selling side, I put a Disney “Haunted Mansion” LP up. I got emails from collectors wanting detailed information the likes of “the third ghost from the left on page 6 of the attached booklet, what color is his hat?” I checked it an hour before it was to close and it was at about $30. It ended up closing at close to $90, with sniper bids coming in seconds before closing. On the buying side, just try buying a set of “Tick” episodes (if you still can, I guess eBay’s been cracking down lately). Home-recorded episode sets going for over a hundred bucks. Then I’m sure some of the buyers turned around, duped copies of the tapes and put them up for the next round of suckers.
100 bucks for Tick episodes! Wow, I’m glad I got mine for only 40!
Two times I have bought an item from eBay, realized I didn’t want it, a re-sold it for more than what I bought it for. Once was with a cheap digital camera, and the other time was with a PCMCIA Firewire card.
I’ve seen two auctions, running at the same time for the same objects, nothing to choose between them - and one sells for more than the other. I mean a LOT more. The only difference I could see between the two was that one started the bidding at $0.99 and the other at $30. It seems people are prepared to bid more on auctions that start lower, and will pay $60 on the cheaper auction rather than bid $30 on the other. Ebay is an interesting place…
We went to the Sunday market on the weekend and picked up some items for $AU3 each. One sold tonight on eBay for $100, the others pulled in $20 each. But Mr Cazzle’s best ever deal was a North Star Horizon computer (ancient and collectable) that he got for $80, and sold for over $AU1000. He also had a windfall with the 3 Exidy Sorcerer cartridges that came free in a box of junk and sold for $AU488, and recently he also sold a couple of Exidy Sorcerer manuals for $AU320. Incredible!!
cazzle, what’s your eBay ID? Maybe I’ll check some of your auctions out. I only dabble in eBay - I regularly buy items for $1-5 and sell them for $20-30, but the best (and I’m using that term loosely) has been a dress I bought for $1 and sold for $42.50.
There was a fantastic story awhile ago about a guy who went dumpster diving and found some old license plates - they ended up selling for thousands. :eek:
people often start with rock bottom prices on hot items as lower starting items have a lower insertion fee , and trading on ebay costs $ as the seller anyway
I love E Bay, especially their lots of clothing and jewelry. I have got many good buys but one of the most recent was a 1.5 carat diamond and gold bracelet included with a group of about 20 braclets for $15.00. There were 2 other gold braclets in that lot; one weighed 7 grams, the other 20 grams. Also 3 sterling silver ones. The rest were costume but still wearable.
I try not to exceed my limit but I can see how easy it is to get cought up in the bidding.
[minor rant] What I hate is when someone gets their bid in at literally the last second just when you thought you had won the auction. Grrrrr [/minor rant]
Oh no! You have to love the snipe! I do it all the time (not very well though, despite the presence of a cable modem) because I hate nibblers or shills eating away at my bid. You really should try it sometime.
When I was the chief executive officer of the local Knights of Columbus Fourth Degree assembly in Borthern Virginia, I started a series of articles in our newsletter about the history of the Fourth Degree.
Someone on eBay offered a like-new copy of the 1957 Life magazine that featured a front-cover picture and story on the Knights.
I bid $10.
Everything was fine until about 5 minutes before close, when I saw I was outbid. So I went up to $15 - no luck’ I wasn’t the high bidder.
Long story short - I got it, at about 30 seconds to spare, for $52.
Next week, another copy of the same damn magazine went for $9.
I emailed a seller asking about the item he was selling - I asked some very detailed questions that he had to do some work to answer. Bidding was around $60 at the time of the question. When I got my answer the bidding was about $120. I didn’t place a bid. The seller asked me why I didn’t since his answers were the ones I was looking for. I told him that he had the exact product that I wanted but the bidding already exceeded what I can buy it flat out on hte net for (about $80 +$10s/h).
My 1st attempt at bidding was not so good - got into an early bidding war - drove the price way up and got snipped the last 8 seconds. Learned a valuable lesson that day.
My personal ebay rules:
1 Look but don’t bid - decide on a max price.
2 set an alarm
3 sign on and if the price is still under the max price log in and snipe when I get to around the 12 second mark.
Sometimes I use 2 computers - one for the countdown and one for the bid entering. Once for an item I absolutely needed I use 2 computers on e connected to dsl adn one to dialup as a backup.
Can I hijack this thread for a minute for some advice? I have some items that I would like to sell on e-bay, but they are all rather large. Would it be better for me to sell small stuff first, to get a good rep?
I went up against a woman from the “nbc.com” domain whose feedback included references for a bunch of old TV memorabilia, bidding for a copy of the old NBC Trivia game. I ended up winning for something like 61.00.
The next week, she won her copy for a buck.
That’s my worst one. I’ve gone too high on a couple of things. I’ve gotten a bunch of steals though, so good karma evens out bad.