Best Ebay story?
Tvac897
Posts: 1,478
Does anyone have any incredible (good or bad) stories from ebay?
-Rome is Burning
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Well it wasn't three days later and a package arrived. I opened it up and it was the Dreamcast system. I contact the seller and they said they always send out the items if they are under $50 before receiving payment and that if the buyers didn't pay (and I'm not making this up) that in the end they will have God to deal with.
To this day thinking back on this I still am amazed at that transaction.
Jeff
Miscut Museum
My Mess
Back in the early days of ebay, I used to go to garage sales and try and find things for myself and also to resell on ebay. I did spend alot of $1.85 gasoline going to my share of sales that consisted of nothing but empty popcorn tins, Mcdonalds Happy meal toys, and unused exercise equipment. And since I'm in Minnesota, 1 out of every 5 sales back then had the MN Twins World Series Wheaties box for at least $15.00.
After parking for one sale, the lady at the door told me that since it was day 2, I could fill a grocery bag for $2 with anything that was left. Hearing that didn't exactly raise my expectations of possible treasure.
The house had been sold, so they were clearly emptying it. Most of what was left was put in piles in the middle of each room. I saw a few books and looked through them. One was about ted williams, and it was only $1.50, so I grabbed it in case I saw anything else. Then I figured that for an extra 50 cents, I may as well just fill a bag full of stuff. My main score was in the kitchen, where I filled the bag with all the leftover cleaning products like 409 and armor All. When I got home, I put it all in under the sink and put the Ted book in the closet for a later time. I thought getting $15 bucks worth of household cleaners for $2 was a pretty good deal. I could put the savings toward beer. (which I'm sure I did)
Anyway about a year later, I came across the book in the closet and tried to do a completed search on ebay to see it was worth but there were none. Figuring it had to be at least worth my $1.50, I listed it :
Ted Williams Book- The Spendid Splinter, 196X (what ever the year was)
My description was very elaborate, something like .. Book- Ted Williams, The Splendid Splinter, 19XX. Book is 5" x 7" and in nice shape, has library like plastic dust jacket. And I had a pic of the front too. This was before ebay would host your pics for you.
The next day, I had a question about the book, something like a recap of the overall condition. 2 days later, I had another question, and that made me wonder if something was up. I checked my auction and after 2 days it was already at $15.00. After 3 or 4 it was at $50 something and I had answered 2 or 3 more questions. The night the book ended it was over $100 which to me back then was a fair amount of money. I went to bed pretty happy.
The next afternoon, I went to email the winning bidder and hoped they wouldn't back out. When I checked the completed auction, I saw that it went for over $700! I couldn't believe it and was then really worried about the buyer being phony. But no, he had already emailed me about arrangements for payment and insured shipping. So the deal went through- he was really happy to finally find the book and I was totally thrilled. I kind of felt embarrased about my pathetic auction description- I never knew that I had such a treasure.
For the next two years, my garage sale buddy would always look though the book piles, hoping to find another copy of the Splendid Spilinter book. I miss the early days of ebay when it was a great place to sell. I still like it, but mainly to buy. I love being able to find almost any old random thing I don't need.
Steve
I was out of town at a wedding until the the Thursday after Memorial Day. When I got back, I had an email from the buyer asking where his item was. I explained the situation apologized that his card had not arrived after 4 business days after a holiday weekend, and told him it would go out ASAP.
Then after a grand total, of 6 business days, I got a second email, demanding the card. At this point, I offered a 100% refund for the buyer's obvious difficulties with the situation.
Today, I got a negative feedback because the card took SOOOO long to get there. And the $2.50 I charge for shipping in toploader, team bag and bubble mailer was too much. (The buyer charges $3.00 when he ships....)
And the best part, is there isn't a damn thing I can do about it.
Thanks, eBay!
Only an idiot would have a message board signature.
Paterno is hard autograph to get and index cards where booked at like $50,so I started it at $200 with a $300 BIN. It got a bid and then kept getting bids and ended at slightly over $1500.00, plus I was able to sell some related items to the same guy for an extra $500.00.
Raw: Tony Gonzalez (low #'d cards, and especially 1/1's) and Steve Young.