bojay1997

I'm sorry, but this is absurd. People should feel free to come here asking for advice (as this guy did) and not feel like they are obligated to sell something below market value or favor the members here over anyone else. This isn't the only classic collecting site on the planet and just because most of us are collectors, we don't have some special status that entitles us to discount pricing or first dibs on things. Why should the seller sell all of the boxes to you? Are you a museum or non-profit that is going to make them available to the world to enjoy free of charge? Or, are you just another guy looking to skim off the boxes you want and then sell the rest at a profit to pay for your hobby? Personally, I try to post extra items I get in the marketplace forums here at below market value, but that's not something I expect other people to do and frankly, this is a very unusual find and one that deserves to be sold on the open market for whatever people are willing to pay.

Actually, the Qubes for $260 was from a different seller and the Tapper wasn't sealed. This buyer just seems to be spending whatever it takes to build their Colecovision collection. The bidder also spent over $130 on a sealed Keystone Kapers for Colecovision.

Isn't this the same bidder who also won the $300+ Tapper and the sealed Qbert Qubes a few weeks back? They are apparently not exclusively into sealed, but they sure do pay crazy amounts for things.

I'm not aware of any state where you can recover attorney's fees in small claims court. You also would still need to collect the judgment and that's next to impossible for an individual to do, especially if the seller is out of state. In short, making sellers responsible for return shipping on not as described items is the only reasonable approach as sellers are fully in control of how items are packed, how they are shipped and how they are describing items. Buyers have little or no control over these things.

Cool. Less competition for the rest of us.

He's already explained this fully multiple times. How about taking a moment to read his post immediately above yours?

I probably buy 30+ items a month that come shipped in priority mail boxes. I would say I receive 2-3 a week that arrive damaged when they are shipped in priority mail boxes and this is from sellers who actually care and provide adequate packaging. It's great that you've been lucky, but it also could be that your buyers don't bother to complain. There are a couple of hardcore comic collectors I work with that have shared similar experiences in recent months. In fact, most of the major comic collector vendors they work with use recycled Diamond boxes that are double ply to ship higher value items because they have had a massive increase in claims since the USPS went to thinner boxes. Maybe we all live in a bad postal area of Los Angeles, but I kind of doubt it. In any event, for high value items, I always ask the seller to use a real box and I pay whatever extra costs are required to do that. Given the value of these items, there is no way anyone should be skimping on shipping.

The current priority mail boxes being given away for free by the USPS are of horrible quality. I regularly receive damaged items because they are almost completely unable to withstand any kind of bumping or weight. I certainly wouldn't ship comic books or other fragile paper collectibles in them as they will arrive bent. These boxes will similarly end up damaged unless they are properly packed and that means reinforced boxes with sufficient padding and rigid interior support.

What if they were a bunch of Precious Moments figures that nobody was really sure what they were worth and that hadn't appeared in that pristine condition in many years? I mean, I could understand if this guy didn't want to spend the time and someone was willing to do the selling on a 30% consignment basis with 70% going to the seller, but otherwise it makes no sense to guess at the value and then deal with the strong possibility that your valuation was far too low. It's also not that tough to take photos and then follow a template on Ebay for listings. Yes, it will likely take a number of hours to list them all (he did say he might group the Vic and TI stuff that he suspects probably correctly is less valuable) and to ship them all out. Having said that, I suspect many buyers are going to scoop up as many of them as possible, so I doubt he is going to be shipping out hundreds of packages. There are also plenty of deep pockets collectors who do not have these boxes. Look at how much interest was generated here among some very prominent collectors and that doesn't even account for the lurkers and people who have never been to this forum but who buy classic games for crazy amounts on Ebay. You must make a pretty good living if you can leave 30% of what will undoubtedly be thousands and thousands of dollars on the table. We should all be so lucky.

Not sure I follow the logic. Ebay fees are only 10% (He would still have to pay the 3% Paypal regardless of if he sold them here or to a middle man). Why wouldn't you put in a few hours to make an extra 20% percent selling them yourself? How would he even set a market value when many of these boxes have not been sold in mint condition for many years, if ever? How would he know what 70% of market value is? Frankly, I think some of these will go for hundreds of dollars each and 20% on even a few dozen that sell in that range is another $750-$1000 for not a lot of extra work. That doesn't even include the extra 20% on the remaining hundreds of boxes. Unless he has no time at all, it seems like doing the work himself would be well worth it. I also don't buy this angry bidder backlash claim. On uncommon items like these, the bidders with deep pockets tend to come out in force and they aren't the type to complain about overspending.

That all depends on the other bidders and quite frankly, the item. I personally just use the Ebay smartphone app so I can bid from anywhere. I also personally tend to bid at the end (not sniping exactly, but late enough to avoid certain concerns like shill bidding). None of that changes the fact that if you bid the full amount that you're willing to pay, the only possible way someone else can beat you is if they bid more. I agree with your second point. These are definitely not obscure items. They are items that have a high demand and will probably sell for record amounts.

Ever since buyers like yourself started to take an overly aggressive approach to trying to eliminate the competition for desirable items by trying to make sellers believe they will never get a better deal than what you're offering. I have been buying on Ebay for 17 years. The only time sniping has any impact on me is if the sniper is willing to pay more for something than I am willing to bid. Sniping is not some magical trick or deceptive practice, it's simply a technique some bidders choose to use for a variety of reasons. If you don't want to be outbid by a sniper, all you have to do is bid the very highest you're willing to pay. If you still get outbid, the sniper wanted the item more and was willing to pay more. That's just how a competitive marketplace works.

It's non-working, not in the best shape and the seller did almost nothing to promote the auction. I think he could have gotten significantly more, but $10K is still a record since the last complete one sold for $3500 on Ebay six years ago.

While this is certainly true, Atari actually did start shrink-wrapping their games post-Crash era. Most of the Atari red box games coming out of Venezuela are factory sealed in shrink-wrap. Early Atari first party games were not shrink-wrapped at the factory and the copies that often pop up shrink-wrapped on Ebay and elsewhere were likely shrink-wrapped by the distributor or retailer during the post-crash liquidations or later. It's a tricky problem for sealed collectors, but often there are multiple examples of known sealed copies that can be found and compared to reduce the risk and doubt.

Strongly disagree. Ebay and Paypal fees on regular auctions are just 13%. There is no doubt that things will sell for substantially more on Ebay than here and give everyone a fair chance to compete. I can also guarantee that regardless of what you offered here, the Ebay results will be substantially more on every item. The market for this stuff is hot again after a recession induced lull and European bidders in particular are paying crazy amounts for uncommon stuff. Frankly, if you can't be bothered to bid on Ebay, you're not serious about wanting these hard to find items and ultimately you're just afraid that others want them more and will be willing to pay more which is absolutely true. You can't get sniped if you truly bid your maximum and what the market price actually is rather than trying to lowball bids.

Strongly agree. There is no reason to entertain offers here as people who are interested are just as likely to bid on those items on Ebay and there is a whole group of collectors outside of here that scour Ebay daily for rare items like these.

Personally, I think it's an attempt by the seller to avoid responsibility for defects in the item. I generally interpret it as the seller never owned it until just before the listing on Ebay and they don't know the history of the item or anything much about it. If someone says they have owned it since release on the other hand, it seems like more of a guarantee that it was at least stored properly and probably not defective. Of course, neither way of presenting the item is really any guarantee of anything.

Agree strongly. If buyers have a question about actual shipping costs, it's very simple to just send a message to the seller before bidding to clarify what service is being used and the weight of the item. If the buyer doesn't like the answer, they just shouldn't bid. In the TI-99 example being used, it's a fairly heavy computer and like many vintage items, the shipping costs may exceed the actual value. The seller is not responsible for subsidizing shipping simply because something is not worth the combined item cost and shipping to any particular buyer. Frankly, I rarely see inflated shipping now that Ebay is really cracking down and actually takes a percentage of shipping costs as part of the final calculations.

I think there is just confusion over the difference between "offering returns" and Ebay's mandatory policy requiring sellers to accept returns of merchandise that is not as described. The information is still accurate that no seller has to offer unconditional returns. If someone buys something and then just decides they don't want it, a seller can refuse to accept a return and that has always been the case and likely will continue to be. At the same time, no seller can refuse to accept a return if the item is not described. Frankly, as I've stated multiple times in this thread, sellers have always had to accept returns for items not as described and all this does is force sellers to pay return shipping for not as described items. I still maintain that there will be no upsurge in fraud as for buyers really intent on defrauding an Ebay seller, paying return shipping is never going to represent a significant deterrent and we would have seen massive return fraud for many years leading up to this. Even not as described issues are relatively rare and I think out of the thousands of items I have bought on Ebay, I may have had to return maybe 50 over 17 years or roughly one item every few months. I suspect that's pretty average for high vclume buyers and will continue to be even under this new program.

Comedy gold my friend, comedy gold.

The guy has been listing and re-listing the game for a few years now. Several collectors have tried to explain that the real value is probably closer to like $5K, but he just becomes belligerent and jacks the price up further each time. It will never sell and ultimately, this guy will die or go bankrupt and it will find its way back into the market at a more reasonable price someday.

If you had bothered to read my posts, you would have seen that I have been on Ebay over 17 years. In that time I have bought and occasionally sold literally thousands of items. I have also had a number of claims against bad sellers in that time and so I am very familiar with how Ebay treats claims and the way in which they evaluate buyer and seller accounts. While I may not be a senior citizen like yourself, I am an adult and the 1997 refers to the year I obtained my primary e-mail address, so I use that on forums I frequent. In any event, someone's age has nothing to do with their level of intelligence or common sense nor necessarily reflects their experience. For example, you're purportedly 59 years old and yet you repeatedly misspell basic words like "ignore" and "experience" and "scammers". Should we all discard your opinions simply because of your poor grammar? Frankly, anyone who constantly threatens to block or ignore others on a forum simply for stating their opinions is probably not mentally stable as all you would need to do if you were serious is just skip over my posts and yet you have felt the need to keep responding to them. So, I guess you don't really want to ignore me at all? Not sure why a newbie like yourself registered solely for the purpose of posting in an Ebay bashing thread. I would assume you're some kind of conspiracy/secret government nut job, am I right?

Factory sealed it's pretty hard to find. There is a small and apparently wealthy classic Mac collecting community out there. I think either J&K or Peter Olafson had a sealed copy of this maybe six months back and it broke $100 from what I recall. The Commodore, ST, and Amiga versions were released later and are all much easier to find.

Again, the incentive is already there now and has been for years. If someone wants to scam you out of a few hundred dollar item, do you really think shipping costs are going to serve as a deterrent? Do you really think there are large packs of classic game and computer collectors looking to scam people selling $50 monitors? I just don't buy it and people have been making these kinds of claims about Ebay since I joined over 17 years ago and every year sales have increased and the variety and uniqueness of items has only gotten better and better. Prices also haven't spiked on most items and certainly not because a few sellers fall away because they are afraid that their profit will be reduced due to some new buyer friendly policy. Heck, I remember when sellers were all going to quit over Paypal becoming essentially mandatory for most auctions and Ebay setting limits on shipping and then taking a percentage of shipping. It never happened and it won't happen this time either.

Ebay gave you a refund because they didn't want to deal with a complaint, not because they broke any laws. Amazon does the same thing for buyers and sellers. Rather than spend time and resources on arguing with you, they will occasionally just compensate the buyer and the seller and handle it that way. As for your other point, the free return shipping is simply not a big enough incentive for people to engage in the scamming you are talking about. There is still a lot of hassle involved in getting a return approved by Ebay and it takes time and effort to drive to the post office and actually mail something back. People are far more likely to do this kind of scamming with local stores with liberal return policies and with Target and Kmart and Costco already offering virtually limitless returns, there's no way someone is going to turn to Ebay as a source of goods they want to rent.