Item and price (Or link to item)
Bone-dry details: White Sheriff Garrett, more than once, for $35 each time.
Long story made shorter: In The Encyclopedia of Marx Toys, the author mentions White Sheriff Garrett, a version of the regular Garrett that was made in somewhat the same quantity as Honus Wagner T206 cards (one of which, I find upon examining results of a quick Google search, was also sold on eBay). The author mentions in the book having come across knowledge of only three of these dolls in his entire life. He places the doll’s value, Loose Incomplete (LI; i.e., without any accessories, just the doll itself), at $350. I can count on one hand the number of Marx dolls that would reliably sell, LI, for $350 or more.
My father got me interested in Marx dolls when he started collecting them to feed his inner child. He also suffered (might still; I haven’t been told otherwise) from insomnia, which meant he was checking auctions late at night and had lots of time to search through many hundreds of auctions looking for, among other things, White Sheriff Garrett.
One night (this seems long, I know, but the unabridged version is probably 3K+ words) he comes across something so fantastic he has to call me in to make sure it’s real before he does what he really wants to do. Sitting in the eBay browser window is a White Sheriff Garrett for a Buy it Now! of $35.
One tenth the suggested price of Tom Heaton, author of the Encyclopedia. And, frankly, given the rarity of the doll I’d say you could probably sell one at a trade show for more than that.
That doll is one of three White Sheriff Garretts we own, and the total price came in at approximately one tenth of what they easily could have. That means I own (it was my $, but we share the dolls) as many of those dolls as a man who has devoted many thousands of hours to collecting.
A very rare early 1970’s synthesizer that usually goes for about $3,000 - I got it for about $250 because it was “broken.” It turned out to only need about 10 minutes worth of internal cleaning and a tiny bit of soldering to work flawlessly. 
Well, I don’t remember any great eBay bargains, but I do remember the best sale I ever had on eBay - a CD by the band The Cure that I paid $2.98 for and sold for $137.50.
Like many 1980’s British bands that were popular in their homeland but not in the US yet, The Cure’s American record company released their second and third albums (Seventeen Seconds and Faith, respectively) as a double album set called … Happily Ever After*.
The Cure then began to rise in popularity about the same time that record companies began releasing domestic versions of their CDs en masse**. Although a few CD versions of … Happily Ever After were released, the decision was apparently made by Elektra Records to stop distributing the double album set in favor of releasing Seventeen Seconds and Faith as separate CDs. No money grubbing there.
As a result, while there are tons of vinyl copies of … Happily Ever After floating around, there are very few CD versions. In fact, the only one I have ever seen was the one I bought at a store’s going-out-of-business sale and sold on eBay for a huge markup.
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- other examples I can remember were early Madness and Thompson Twins albums. They came as single albums or “double cassettes” that had album 1 on side 1 of the tape and album 2 on side 2.
** - for those of you too young to remember the “early days” of CDs, supply was a big issue at first. Many discs could only be purchased as expensive imports. Also, because there weren’t that many CD pressing plants at the time, many CDs of popular albums were actually imports that were sold by American labels at “domestic prices” just to meet the demand for CDs.
In other words, if you wanted something that was rare in the US market - like the old goth band Bauhaus - you had no choice but to buy the import for $27.99. If you wanted a CD from a popular band - like Duran Duran - the $16.99 CD was just as likely to be made in Germany or the UK as the USA. As more CD pressing plants were built in the US, all “domestic” discs were made in the USA. This seemed to happen in almost one huge wave though, which is why the Cure CD was so rare.
My wedding.
About a year after our engagement my now husband and I decided it was time to start planning an actual wedding. I had initially suggested Vegas, since our families are on opposite coasts, but he wanted something more traditional. We also wanted to keep our budget as low as possible.
So, every now and then I would search for misc. wedding things on ebay. Not really sure what I was looking for, just seeing what was out there, invitations, favors, whatever.
One day after searching ‘wedding’, an actual wedding package came up. It was for a chapel in Vegas, but it looked like they offered pretty traditional ceremonies/receptions, perfect, I thought, and so did my sweetie.
The seller claimed she wouldn’t be using, and had the OK from the site to transfer it to another couple. Not feeling particularly comfortable with the ‘not using it’ part, I emailed the seller to get more info. She and her fiance had decided to get married in their hometown instead, but had already put most of the money down for the Vegas package, they just wanted to cut their losses, and let another couple get a good deal, rather than just lose the thing. So, I called the site to make sure they were OK with that type of transaction, and they said they knew exactly what I was talking about and were OK with it.
The seller had started bidding at $1200, with a $1500 buy it now option, which we did.
We upgraded the package slightly, ending up with roughly a $5000 wedding package for around $2000.
If you really want details on the package
this was the ceremony and this was the reception.
Very nice place, and they treated us wonderfully.
I ended up buying quite a few more things for the wedding on ebay, and online in general.
$470 for a safe that is $12,000 dealer cost.
$75 for a set of used outside micrometers that go for about $900 new.
Three view cameras - Calumet 4x5, Eastman 5x7 and Seneca 8x10, $100 each.
Various Wollensak, Schneider and Commercial Ektar lenses, $25 to $100. In short, a few hundred dollars for stuff that might cost a LOT more locally. And [drumroll] A 4.5 inch Newtonian telescope with equatorial drive and tripod for $10 (retail price somewhere around $300).[/drumroll]
A Kasey Kahne diecast car that normally sells for about $100, I paid $35. The seller was offering the car in a no reserve auction and would have easily sold for the higher amount except for a mistake made by the seller. He misspelled Kahne as Kane in his listing so it drew very little traffic. The seller wanted to back out of the deal but the threat of negative feedback helped seal the deal. I have won other auctions with very little competition by searching for misspelled variation of names.
Three things come to mind.
A first edition copy of Tessie The Bear, by Enid Blyton. Cost was, I think, $24 or something. It’s not in perfect shape, by any means, and the monetary value is probably minimal, if anything…but she’s my favourite children’s author and my name is Tess. So there.
A selection of antique gynaecology tools, from c. 1880. Cost: $44 or thereabouts Included: speculum, scissors, suture kit, gyne surgical procedure book dated 1888.
(at this juncture I should probably mention that I do collect old/antique medical books and equipment)
And finally…
A collection of Duran Duran fan memorabilia, purchased for the top notch price of $10 including shipping, for everything. Signed pictures, posters, sweatbands, badges, cassettes, old programs, sew-on patches, tour paraphernalia, the works. Oh, my ra-ra skirt and legwarmers are already calling me!
When I was helping my mom sort through some old junk in the basement a couple years ago, I noticed she had saved this beat-up, coverless copy of a book we liked as kids. It turns out that the very same copy was once HER favorite childhood book and she couldn’t bear to throw it away. I found a near-mint condition copy on eBay and paid around $3.50 for it. The look on my mom’s face when she opened it on her birthday was priceless. She keeps it propped up on her nightstand next to her bed!
Got a tool for crimping compression connectors on wire up through 500MCM-paid $65-the local electrical supply house quoted $900.
A replacement cylinder for my Interspiro SCBA would be ~$700. Found one that was NASA surplus for $30.
A pair of NiMh batteries for Makita cordless driver-drills with charger for $50. The batteries are usually around $60 each, and the charger is over a hundred.
Three Fred Machetanz lithographs: Ebay cost $3,400, market value $15,000.
A $1000 serger for $105. I’d been looking for one, but only wanted to spend about $300 or so. I was searching on ebay one day when I saw a listing with a title that read, simply, “Serger.” I figured it would be crap, but checked it out anyway. Turned out it was a good machine being sold by a new seller who didn’t know anything about writing good titles and descriptions. I felt bad for them, but I got over it pretty quickly. 
Season 2 of Buffy, for $20.00. That includes shipping costs.
some one actually payed $20 for Season 2 of Buffy. that was the best sale i eveh had. 
I got a several hundred dollar Louis Vuitton Murakami wallet for $100.
It was a gamble since there are so many fakes on ebay, but it looked good- if it was fake, it was a damn good fake.
When I got it, I took it to the Louis Vuitton store on Rodeo Drive and they authenticated it for me. It’s adorbale! And real! For $100!
Here’s a picture (a blurry picture) for anyone who’d like to see: My wallet and Me!
I just bought 2 front brake rotors including brake pads for my Yamaha FZR600R, the price was 176 EUR.
The dealer price here in Denmark is about 180 EUR for 1 rotor, not including pads.
I love ebay for motorcycle spares.
I paid $13 for the one track Highlights from the Phantom of the Opera CD. Since people were returning the one track complete 2CD sets by the bushel (What is this shit?) and complaining about the individual songs not being separated, only one box of the single highlights CD was shipped.
A guitar that I had bid on largely as a therapeutic joke. List was somewhere between $700-$800, and I said to myself early in the auction “I’d really like to pretend to try and buy this, but not really.” It makes me feel better to bid low sometimes on an auction, even when I don’t win. Well, this one just stayed low. I had capped my bid at $150, figuring it’d best that in a day or two. Five or six days later, I won the auction at (IIRC) $120, shipping included.