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Captain Beard

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Posts posted by Captain Beard

  1. Posted

    In a final-hours burst of PURE INSANITY, I have decided to add extra carts to the MYSTERY LOT (see 1st post) at no extra charge.

     

    Suitably obnoxious-sized text has been added to the auction page to proclaim this loudly to the world.

     

    This deal just got... well, um... way more... let's say, uh... dealier!

  3. Posted · Edited by Captain Beard

    Ya, games on "media" i.e. CDs, DVDs and even floppies qualify. Carts are hardware.

    Golly but they're dopey.

    I was told by a clerk that the distinction was games or software had to be "something playable on a computer." :ponder:

     

    What is so stupid about it is that a big heavy box full of paper can be sent cheaper than a little ol' game.

    Oh come on now. You can't mail a big heavy box full of anything for $1.51.

  4. Posted

    Yeah, -10! I had a strong 48 point lead, then I scored 1 more basket and BOOM! With 10 seconds left an At-At Walker, a Yar and the BiPlane from Combat swooped in, destroyed me and my goal and rolled our scores.

    All that makes perfect sense to me...

    But who the heck let that Kaboom! bomb on to the court!?!

  6. Posted

    Are you seriously saying that you can'-t see how other bidders are affected?
    I'm seriously saying that if you really meant to suggest the affect on bidders is something actually measurable. We all know sometimes auctions end in great steals and other times they explode in bidding wars. Since there's never any guarantee on eBay, what's one more auction you didn't win here or there? In the end, what's really the affect on bidders? Wasted time? Heightened expectations? A burst of anger? A momentary wisp of sadness?

     

    Life's full of missed opportunities, after all.
    Opportunity!?! What opportunity remains for anyone else to win an item once it has been "rooked"?

    None, of course. That was my whole point: Not every seeming opportunity actually comes a-knockin'. You win some and you lose some and life ain't fair and sometimes blah blah blah. I just don't see how you've been cheated of anything. You didn't have something, then you thought, "Ooo! Maybe I'll get one of those," and then the chance to get it evaporated. So essentially, you're exactly where you were before the "Ooo!" part. C'est la vie, y'know?

  7. Posted

    You may not believe that you conned a seller, but you certainly cheated the system, ebay, and everyone else who had an legitimate interest in these items...

    Aren't "the system", "ebay" and "everyone else..." all the same thing, i.e. eBay?

    'Cuz without question, you're absolutely right that eBay was cheated, but I'm at a loss who else was. The only possibility that springs to mind is potential bidders, but really, how were they cheated? Life's full of missed opportunities, after all.

  9. Posted

    Morals ain't black and white. I was describing a slip, where one does from thinking, acting and even talking one way and then rationalizes doing the opposite.

    Gotcha -- and of course I agree that morals ain't b&w, hence my question. :)

    And when I have a garage sale, I will be taking pictures of early birds and letting them know that if they don't leave immediately, I will not sell them anything once the sale begins.

    A few years ago I threw out some early birds -- they came at 6AM, the sale was advertised for 9AM.

    I told them they were being docked an hour and couldn't come back until 10AM. Boy were they pissed (they came back at about 9:40 anyway.) But that's nothing. Record collectors are fuckin' nuts. When I have a garage sale and put "100s of LPs" in my ad, people start ringing the doorbell days early (usually with some bs story about how they're gonna be out of town 'cuz their Grandma needs a kidney or something.) Now that's just plain rude.

  10. Posted

    It's always fascinating to see someone rationalizing a slip in morals.

    Do you really see this as a moral issue?

    I mean, just 'cuz somebody does something you don't like or wouldn't personally do doesn't automatically make it immoral.

     

    Asking a seller of goods if they'll make a transaction for an amount both parties agree is reasonable hardly seems to qualify as immoral to me. I mean, I am personally very unhappy about garage sale early birds (both because they swipe the good LPs before I politely arrive at the scheduled time and because they annoy the piss out of me when I'm the one having the sale) but I wouldn't go so far as to say ithey're immoral. Rude and annoying, maybe, but immoral? Really?

     

    Wheeling and dealing is the nature of the game when you're talking about collectibles.

  11. Posted

    if only ebay would make it where sellers can't end their auctions early, we wouldn't have to worry about all this would we?

    I suppose, but sellers would be in a bad position if they needed to end an auction early for another reason.

     

    I once had to end an auction on a laserdisc set because my cat managed to knock it off the shelf. It landed edge on, splitting open the box on two corners and shattering two of the discs. Auction ended.

    Another time (again with a laserdisc -- I used to sell a lot of LDs back in the day...) a customer e-mailed to ask if a particular disc featured a commentary (apparently, there were some pressings which had it but were not labeled as such.) When I popped it in to check it started playing side two. Confused, I flipped the disc over and... side two again. Now that ain't right. Auction ended.

    I'm sure others can share similar stories.

     

    However, I have never ended an auction early because of a side deal (and I've certainly had my share of offers.) Apart from alienating potential future customers, it's pretty much a guarantee that you'll end up with less money since nobody offers'em for worthless crap.

  17. Posted

    Your "All-unique label variation lot!" is presented purely tongue-in-cheek, I'm hoping!!!

    I hope so too! :ponder: :D

    BTW - I decided not to mention it in the ad - 'cuz I lost the Certificate of Authenticity, wouldn't you know and it's just my luck - but those "hand-printed labels" were penned by Leonardo DiCaprio himself, in preparation for his upcoming role as Nolan Bushnell. True story... as far as you know. :cool:

     

    If not, and you sell these for big bucks, I'm going to have to break out my label maker and boxes of common dups!!!

    If these sell for big bucks, it's certain I'll have more posted quicker'n you can say, "[email protected]@K!!! MUST SEE!"

     

    My only regret is that I didn't put "MINT!" in the auction header... but there's really not enough writing on the labels to justify such a grade. ;)

  18. Posted

    I don't do eBay. Plus, I don't want the hassle of dealing with someone who'd probably live in Brazil, seeing as how I'm in the United States.

    Fair enough on both counts, although I can't say I've ever had any trouble dealing with the good folks in Brazil.

    Slow shipping, to be sure, but otherwise, no hassles.

  19. Posted

    Not sure if it's worth your while to pay someone to make a repro (if it's even possible) as these show up on eBay a couple times a year and don't usually sell for all that much. I think I paid around $40 for mine and I don't recall there being too much action in the auction (try saying that 10 times really fast!)

  20. Posted

    There's always a never-ending rotation of threads decrying the bad behavior of others on eBay and the like, but it's pretty rare that anyone ever fesses up to their own mistakes. And let's be honest, mistakes happen to the best of us. If you ask me, it's how we clean up the messes we make that separates the great sellers from the less honorable ones.

     

    So I hope this thread will serve as a sort of confessional, absolving us of our eBay sins and making our bitching about others a little more... oh, I dunno... pure, maybe?

     

     

    My most boneheaded move ever: It wasn't on eBay; it involved two orders from my online record store (which makes it even worse, IMO.) I pulled the ol' switcheroo and mailed swapped packages to the wrong customers. The kicker: One of the customers was in Japan and I'd shipped his (wrong) package via Surface Mail! Needless to say, I refunded my U.S. customer's $$ pronto and asked both guys to simply refuse the packages so they'd be returned to me. Once I received the package that should have gone to Japan, I ate the air mail shipping charges and sent them ASAP. The happy ending: After nearly 5 months, the package mailed to Japan did find its way home and the original customer still wanted to buy the records!

     

    1st Runner-Up: I auctioned several Golden Age of Looney Toons laserdisc sets simultaneously and didn't check my cut-and-pasted listings closely enough. This resulted in my claim that there was a booklet included in one of the sets for which there was none. The thing sold for hundreds of dollars but when the set arrived sans booklet, my customer was understandably distressed. But that's not where I made my real mistake -- I ended up accusing the guy of trying to scam me, insisting that the insert had been included when I shipped. We went back and forth for a couple days until a little detective work (involving 3-year-old laserdisc newsgroup postings in a tangent far too intricate to detail here) uncovered the truth and I had to send the most apologetic e-mail I've ever composed -- along with a complete refund, of course. Happy ending: The guy left me positive feedback!

     

    2nd Runner-Up: Another laserdisc set auction gone bad, this time to a (very particular) customer in Canada. After following his obnoxious, overly-detailed packing instructions to the letter and jumping through hoops to get him to send me payment in some form of U.S. currency I finally shipped the thing off. But for some idiotic reason (perhaps unconscious malice, I've never been sure) I listed the value on the customs form at THREE times what he'd paid for it. Needless to say, he was pissed (and rightly so) and I ended up refunding most of his payment to cover the customs fees. Happy ending: Unless the jerk (that's right -- I may have screwed up, but he was still a jerk) got hit by a bus or something, I'm unaware of any...

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