Ridiculous eBay Prices

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Were Rules Cyclopedia prices ever really that high?

I know I had seen it listed on ebay for prices like $300-$400, but I don't think I ever saw it sell for that much. It tended to sell for $60 - $100 when it got a non-scalper listing, which seems to be more or less where it is today (maybe a little bit lower).

But Rules Cyclopedia had been widely available on the web as a PDF long before TheTrove. Even then, the scalpers were listing it for stupid shit like $1,000 for some beat up copy. I don't feel the PDF or POD being available on DTRPG really changed anything, because I'd dare say that most consumers don't even realize that venue is an option.
 
I think Rules Cyclopedia prices were getting to the £50-£75 range at one point which is a big no no for me. The ones I have I bought cheap (single figures in some cases) in the knowledge they were used copies to use not collect and treasure forever in a glass case in mom's basement aka Deathlords Sanctum of Adventurecraft. I bought multiple copies because I've killed two Rules Cyclopedias over the years and there was no legal way to get hold of the PDF so it was used/battered dead tree or pirated fuzzyscan™.

I see a lot of pictures of 'Shelfies' with complete run lines of this or that and with a supposed dollar value in the thousands for stuff that's hard to get. I just shake my head. I mean, who has the money to spend thousands of pounds/dollars on a few books? Sure there's the comic thing with Amazing Fantasy #15 and Action Comics #38 selling for piles of cash but I never thought RPGs would go that way. I always bought because it was/I am cheap and I wanted to play or at least read the book at some point. Then you get wrapped up in scouring ebay for cheap stuff and before you know it you have 10 parcels turning up on the same day and my wife (now my ex) is giving me a hard time (despite me paying for everything and squirrelling away a tiny bit of cash for myself and wanting to be able to spend it how I like. Apparently marriages don't work that way. Who knew?).

I can only assume the people who are willing to pay £200 for the first Dune game or £1000+ for the woodgrain box D&D 0e etc have nothing else to spend their money on and loads of time on their hands to scour ebay and snipe. That also leads me to suspect they live on their own/in moms basement (aka Deathlords Sanctum of Adventurecraft) and don't spend their money on other stuff like a social life or deodorant.

Mind you I do live on my own and haven't been out much lately. I can confirm my personal hygiene standards are high though. Phew. Thought I was describing myself as some sad middle aged game collector then.
 
This one seems like a bargain in comparison. If you are clinically insane and wanted to spend a pile of cash on a book.



I have all of these. I never would have valued them at this though. With 14 watchers I can only assume there are fourteen people out there with all of these wondering if an idiot exists that would pay all this money.



You'd have to really, really like Warhammer to pay this. Maybe the Daniel Fox (Zweihander) guy would like to buy it and mine it for ideas to put his name to.



Edit: Another one I have.

really.jpg


Never in the wildest flights of fantasy can I see someone paying this for this lot. Pure speculation.

In theory most of us seem to have hundreds or thousands of pounds/dollars/euros sat on the shelves waiting to be sold off so you can buy a new car/get a house deposit/go round the world on a cruise etc. In reality we have dusty books that might smell a bit fusty and some wild mad scheme to get piles of cash selling them to rich idiots who don't actually exist.
 
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I can just see it now...

Wife: "The travel company rang to say the family holiday to Disneyland is definitely on, all the flights and hotels are booked and it's non refundable. We need to transfer the £8000 to their account."

Husband: Looks at copy of Dune he recently bought on ebay and starts cold sweating.
 
Mankcam Mankcam ‘s family vacations have been delayed several times when his interest turns to a new system.

“Dad, when are we going to Disney World like you promised five years ago??”

“Kids, we’ll go there soon. In the meantime, let me show you the wonders of the 2d20 system!”
 
Mankcam Mankcam ‘s family vacations have been delayed several times when his interest turns to a new system.

“Dad, when are we going to Disney World like you promised five years ago??”

“Kids, we’ll go there soon. In the meantime, let me show you the wonders of the 2d20 system!”
This is so true

Actually the pandemic restrictions destroyed our last planned USA trip, then life events such as needing a new vehicle and renovating our pool got in the way, so our holiday money got spent anyway and we are doing a reset now

I need the pandemic international flight restrictions to remain in place for at least the next two years to cover my tracks, heh heh

Game wise I have slowed down on Conan 2D20 for some time now, as it has lost its shine.

(I like the Momentum mechanic and the content, but if doing another Hyborian Age campaign with different characters I am more likely to use Mythras with increased Luck Pts)

However my wallet is no lighter, as I have been buying WFRP 4E and 7th Sea 2E at a frantic pace

And only last week whilst at the shops my boys wanted the latest shiny Playstation game, and I told them to wait a month to see if it's still their thing or not, then we'll get it

Then two days later I ordered online the PoD of 'Mythic Babylon' for Mythras, so I'll have that next week

So yeah, there's more than a bit of truth in your words, heh heh :grin:
 
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I'm not sure if I'm on drugs for thinking the out of print Dune RPG could be or even should be bought for £200 (it should not) or for this guy for thinking he'd get eight grand for it.

drugs.jpg


To be fair he does list a 'Make Offer' on there. I wonder how he'd feel about £30, posted. A fair offer I think. :thumbsup:

He's on drugs
Things that amuse me:
I like how it's stated that it's not shrink wrapped, so it can't be "LUST AS NEW".
Also, the related product suggestions include a 5.99 Elvira figurine.
 
The thing I like best about the Dune offer is that it also adds an extra 30 for shipping:grin:! Can't afford to pay shipping for the book if you're making only 8 grand on it, right:devil:?

Regarding online piracy of books I look at it as an extension of the library. If people really want the product, they'll pay for it even if they've already read it for free. If something being freely available meant nobody would pay for it, then there would be no books sold for out of copyright material like Shakespeare, Robin Hood, etc. Certainly some sales don't happen due to online piracy, but I doubt it's a major loss of income. But I imagine a lot of gamers are like people on this site who have bought and own way more rpg material than they will ever actually use. Just look at shelfies and threads where we've put up how many PDFs we have from Humble Bundle, Bundle of Holding, etc. I mean, I have a lot of print books, but my bundles and drivethru files dwarf my print books. Currently purchased digital rpg files are: 28,877 Files, 772 Folders
Yeah, that's how I see it. I've been using the Trove to download PDFs for reading that I already own legally. And for those that I didn't own, I purchased them after reading, so it was generating them income:thumbsup:.
Conversely, I gave up on even reading Zweihander, or maybe I finished it and decided against using it - really not sure. I do own it legally, but simply didn't like the system all that much, totally unrelated to Fox's online persona - the decision was made before he was even banned here:gunslinger:!

Then two days later I ordered online the PoD of 'Mythic Babylon' for Mythras, so I'll have that next week
And I'd hopefully receive my copy at about the same time...it seems to have shipped from Germany already:shade:. There was a hiccup with the shipping, so DTRPG have sent me a replacement copy.
 
Closing this while the posts get sorted out. I started a separate piracy thread.

 
That's not even Street Fighter. It's the fan created "20th Anniversary Edition" I made about 6 years ago! Holy shit! Never did I imagine copies of my fan compilation getting bootlegged on eBay. It's amazing. Hehehe.
Imagine what an author signed copy would go for!
 
Were Rules Cyclopedia prices ever really that high?

I know I had seen it listed on ebay for prices like $300-$400, but I don't think I ever saw it sell for that much. It tended to sell for $60 - $100 when it got a non-scalper listing, which seems to be more or less where it is today (maybe a little bit lower).

But Rules Cyclopedia had been widely available on the web as a PDF long before TheTrove. Even then, the scalpers were listing it for stupid shit like $1,000 for some beat up copy. I don't feel the PDF or POD being available on DTRPG really changed anything, because I'd dare say that most consumers don't even realize that venue is an option.

I tracked it on the secondary seller market on Amazon.ca and it started at $90 and grew to $300. Adjust between 10-30% for USD depending on where the Canadian dollar tends to be. After the POD came out it came down to around $100-$130. All of them too high imo. Especially as I used to have a copy I either misplaced or gave away way back when.

Some of the secondary sellers on Amazon are clearly scammers like these Ebay sellers but I've also found lots of good deals over the years, the RC never dipped to a level where I would have considered buying it.

Now I have the POD and I'm quite happy with it.
 
WFRP 1E and 2E books are pretty inconsistent regarding pricings on eBay and Amazon Sellers. Some sellers let them go for pocket money, whilst at other times some are asking for small fortunes :sad:
 
Now I have the POD and I'm quite happy with it.

Me too. I sold my copy years ago for a ridiculous price. That may be distasteful to some but I always look at sale prices on ebay and set mine based on the last few ones that are similarly conditioned (usually mint or better) to whatever I'm selling; the way I see it, if that's the market value then that's the price it should be. I picked up the POD RC about a year ago and its great - a was a little wary as some reviews said the wording was 'fuzzy' but I haven't found that to be the case. It isn't as clean and crisp as the original but I don't strain my eyes or struggle at all with it.
 
WFRP 2E core book going for AUD $866?
(That's approx USD $640)
Good grief, really eBay, really?

I saw a limited edition copy being sold for around that price recently. I wonder if that’s how they determined their price.
 
I saw a limited edition copy being sold for around that price recently. I wonder if that’s how they determined their price.

Heheh. You're probably right.

So, does anyone know why certain sellers activate "Make Offer" as an option, and then set things to autoreject every offer under the BIN? I've seen this quite a few times, and I'm not talking about auction listings. It happens on regular sale listings where it's just a BIN and a Make Offer. I mean, if a BIN is active, then there's no reason to Make Offer higher than the BIN, right?
 
Heheh. You're probably right.

So, does anyone know why certain sellers activate "Make Offer" as an option, and then set things to autoreject every offer under the BIN? I've seen this quite a few times, and I'm not talking about auction listings. It happens on regular sale listings where it's just a BIN and a Make Offer. I mean, if a BIN is active, then there's no reason to Make Offer higher than the BIN, right?
It might have something to do with popping up under certain filters in the site's search function?
 
I've seen several listing for the Ghost Dog rpg I the 40-60 dollar range. Which blows my mind because I've seen it in $2.00 clearance bins at HPB more times than I can count.
That sounds like a money making opportunity if it actually sells on ebay...
 
As an aside because Rick Meints annoyed me over in the Glorantha thread I went from being on the fence about tracking down all the old Avalon Hill RQ 3e stuff to activity seeking out and purchasing some and making a list of all of them from that time period that I'll need to find. Ah well, it's fun anyhow to rebuild the old collection. Thanks Rick for giving motivation to go ahead and do it. lol
 
As an aside because Rick Meints annoyed me over in the Glorantha thread I went from being on the fence about tracking down all the old Avalon Hill RQ 3e stuff to activity seeking out and purchasing some and making a list of all of them from that time period that I'll need to find. Ah well, it's fun anyhow to rebuild the old collection. Thanks Rick for giving motivation to go ahead and do it. lol
Hey, let me know if you spot a reasonable price spare copy of Land of Ninja. That's the one major item I skipped from RQ3.
 
Not an RPG item, but please humor me.



For years I drooled over a Jim Lee piece of art his dealer had for sale, but I could never justify $900 for it. I was sad when it sold over the summer, and a little upset when it showed up yesterday on E-Bay for $3,500 “or best offer.” I assume gold flecks had been glued to it to justify that level of price increase.



I’m posting about it because I went to drool over the listing today and found that not only is the listing gone with no trace of it ever having existed, but the seller’s account seems to have been nuked as well. I’m honestly wondering if it was a scam account that got nuked, or if they got some one to bite and took the money and ran.



Maybe that’s the fraud investigator in me, but the fact that the seller listed themselves as being in a town not too far from me just adds to my curiosity..
 
Not an RPG item, but please humor me.



For years I drooled over a Jim Lee piece of art his dealer had for sale, but I could never justify $900 for it. I was sad when it sold over the summer, and a little upset when it showed up yesterday on E-Bay for $3,500 “or best offer.” I assume gold flecks had been glued to it to justify that level of price increase.



I’m posting about it because I went to drool over the listing today and found that not only is the listing gone with no trace of it ever having existed, but the seller’s account seems to have been nuked as well. I’m honestly wondering if it was a scam account that got nuked, or if they got some one to bite and took the money and ran.



Maybe that’s the fraud investigator in me, but the fact that the seller listed themselves as being in a town not too far from me just adds to my curiosity..
It was probably a red head. Taunting you. Teasing you.
 
I mean, who has the money to spend thousands of pounds/dollars on a few books? Sure there's the comic thing with Amazing Fantasy #15 and Action Comics #38 selling for piles of cash but I never thought RPGs would go that way.
That’s kinda silly. It’s all scarcity. How many people want it? How badly do they want it? How hard is it to find?

If all three of those work out to “this is a pain in the ass,” the price will hike.
 
It was probably a red head. Taunting you. Teasing you.

Pennsylvania redheads usually know well enough to lay low and avoid my attention. Years on and we still discuss if a coworker getting married and having a kid was all just a ruse to lose my attention.
 
Pennsylvania redheads usually know well enough to lay low and avoid my attention. Years on and we still discuss if a coworker getting married and having a kid was all just a ruse to lose my attention.
You might want to see someone about that...
 
You might want to see someone about that...

Well, the last time I had a non-redhead show interest she turned out to be young enough to be my daughter, despite looking as aged as me. I take that as reality telling me “Stick to your established, creepy redhead lane.”
 
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