Cutting Ebay off vs. AdventureVision

[jatari87]

So, I'm really kind of sick of Ebay, and want to cut them off {or more precisely, be willing to not care if I tick them off or violate one of there rules and get myself suspended or de-registered or whatever it is they do to bad guys}.  BUT, where else can I realistically get something like an AdventureVision or some other obscure thing or system that I don't even know I must have yet?  I'd like to think this site could be a place, but it sure seems hit or miss, and the wait to catch harder to find items {like a REAL Eli's Ladder perhaps } might be prohibitive. Goodwill's sight seems to be a total fail. Etsy shows minimal promise. Craiglist - doubtful. But, beyond that, I run dry. I even think I may finally be willing to sign up for Facebook if that site offers real promise as an alternative.  I sure would like to hear if there is/are some place(s) that I'm missing, because I sure would like to be ready and/or willing to cut ties entirely from their platform real soon.  And, I'm sure tired of playing nice in many aspects over there. Regards all.    

[Keatah]

Why sick of ebay? It's likely your best hope.

 

[Zap!]

I got an Adventurevision a few years ago right here on Atari Age for the incredible low price of $650 shipped. It is worth at least three times that.

[jatari87]

Well Keatah, I don't rule out that it may be realized in the end that Ebay is the best gig in town despite its problems.  The buying end is not too bad {or even good I guess}, save for the high prices sometimes, and as long as I remain willing to fight the good fight against the occasional scammer or person just trying to unload their broken or near broken junk without saying as much in their listings.  But, on the selling end, it just gets tiring {and I've had a few too close together recently} when I've just got to accept return(s) on items I know are perfectly functional and/or exactly as described, paying shipping both coming and going, because a buyer either didn't read the listing or didn't do their homework on the item they bought.  The one that really got me was a buyer opened a return because something wasn't included that I specifically said wasn't included in the listing, and the Ebay rep basically said they take the buyers word if they say something is missing.  Shipping was 1st class. So, it wasn't worth it to call another rep to fight harder or verify whether the rep was lying or not. The laugher of that one was that the same buyer {already blocked at this point} contacted me to ask if I wanted to strike a "package deal" on these very same items.

As to the Adventure Vision, Zap, I bow to you.  I believe your purchase may have been the one I was thinking of when I wrote this post.  I'm truly happy for you, but I do believe it may have been the last one sold through this site, and I seem to recall it was on the long end of a few years ago at this point.

[Zap!]

5 hours ago, jatari87 said:

As to the Adventure Vision, Zap, I bow to you.  I believe your purchase may have been the one I was thinking of when I wrote this post.  I'm truly happy for you, but I do believe it may have been the last one sold through this site, and I seem to recall it was on the long end of a few years ago at this point.

I took a risk. The guy had no feedback, but he FaceTimed me showing me the AV. I sent him $650 via PayPal, and it was shipped and delivered right away. Anyway, you're right, it was a while ago, 2014. Here is the original thread:

 

 

[carlsson]

How about you only buy things through eBay, and then sell things through other channels?

 

Besides the ones you mention, the only one that comes to my mind would be something like Yahoo! Auctions Japan if you're into Japanese items, but then comes the language barrier and that you usually need a middle man to ship stuff out of Japan anyway. Sure, you can keep visiting your local flea markets for rest of your life in hope to find really unusual video games but as you already figured out, the likelyhood that you'll find what you're hoping for is getting slimmer every day. Facebook groups might be useful but then again there are so many on the marketplace and many are semi-local anyway so it doesn't exactly compare to eBay.

[jhd]

On 7/21/2019 at 12:04 AM, jatari87 said:

So, I'm really kind of sick of Ebay, and want to cut them off [...]  BUT, where else can I realistically get something like an AdventureVision or some other obscure thing or system that I don't even know I must have yet?    

 

I, too, refuse to use Ebay, either as a vendor or purchaser. I limit myself to that which I can find "locally" -- though I do travel often and visit shops wherever I happen to be. There are very obscure things that I will (probably) never find, but, otherwise, it just takes patience. I view this hobby as long-term (and I accept that I may die before I "finish" my collection.)

 

For example, I wanted an Atari Flashback 2. It took me 10+ years of searching until I randomly found one in a shop while visiting another city a very long distance from where I live. 

[Agamon]

38 minutes ago, jhd said:

 

I, too, refuse to use Ebay, either as a vendor or purchaser. I limit myself to that which I can find "locally" -- though I do travel often and visit shops wherever I happen to be. There are very obscure things that I will (probably) never find, but, otherwise, it just takes patience. I view this hobby as long-term (and I accept that I may die before I "finish" my collection.)

 

For example, I wanted an Atari Flashback 2. It took me 10+ years of searching until I randomly found one in a shop while visiting another city a very long distance from where I live. 

When shipping over the border got bloody insane a dozen or so years ago, I stopped using eBay for the most part, too.  I found a ColecoVision collection in Toronto a couple years ago, but haven't used it for years otherwise.

[Tanooki]

I'm sorry to say that I just can't do the 'no ebay' because even if it is more games than not, it's the not, that usually is easily had there over other places both for the item itself and price/time to receive.

 

That said like the other recent posts, I've converted my thinking a lot on more common items.  When it comes to the DS and PSP, PS1 too, nearly everything I've grabbed for them has been locally farmed goods.  It's just too easy to get in too deep buying online through ebay, and it's a rabbit hole to go Paypal dry in in no time.  I've still used it a few times for them but very very limited.  I prefer having most of what happens to hit the shelf be local because you get a really cheap thrift or whatever price, and it's spread out so it's less likely to get overwhelming so there's more time to play much like a kid on an allowance budget.

[jatari87]

I like the perspectives.  I'm definitely gonna start shifting to Ebay as more of a sidelight and continue to look for alternatives to buy and sell any extras.  And definitely make more of a focus on getting into the wild and finding my way to expos, etc. to see what others got going on.