Ridiculous eBay Prices

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One thing enjoyed, but also frustrated, when was big on eBay years ago was having a nemesis...someone who always seemed to be bidding on the same things as you. Frustrating when lose but exhilarating when win, and also comforting to know your not the only crazy person bidding on this item.
I generally stuck to board games, RPG games and old magazines and zines.
Heh, I’ve spent way too much money for stuff just to defeat an EBay Nemesis.
 
>Gone are the days when I'd sit poised over my keyboard, watching the auction
>count down it's last seconds, trying to pick the perfect last moment to enter my final bid

Many years ago, back when you could still see (and follow) the people bidding against you on eBay, I noticed that there was one person who outbid me on any auction that we were both part of. Every time, no matter what the final price. Through a strange confluence of events and mutual acquaintanceships (and a tiny collector community), I ended up encountering her at a convention and having a (genuinely) friendly talk. It turns out that she had inherited over a million dollars two years earlier, and was willing to go as high as necessary for an item she wanted, even if she was overpaying by a huge amount. I just quit bidding against her after that.

Not long after, I encountered another person (at another convention) who was often bidding in the same auctions as we were. We came to an agreement that if it was just the two of us bidding (not the wealthy one), we would contact each other privately and figure out who wanted the item more, rather than getting into bidding wars. We got to the point where we would point out auctions to each other, if one of us wasn't interested but thought the other might be. If one of us bought an item lot that had some items in it that we already owned, we would contact the other person and offer to sell the extra items, or (in some cases) would just make a gift of them. It was a very interesting and mutually beneficial arrangement that went on for years.
 
It's not just eBay. I've been checking out Amazon as well and older RPG books in general are a lot more expensive than they used to be two years ago. Even books that were fairly common and cheap are now a lot more expensive, sometimes even going into triple digits when they used to be around thirty or forty bucks when I last looked at them.
 
It's not just eBay. I've been checking out Amazon as well and older RPG books in general are a lot more expensive than they used to be two years ago. Even books that were fairly common and cheap are now a lot more expensive, sometimes even going into triple digits when they used to be around thirty or forty bucks when I last looked at them.

I assume those Amazon sellers are just betting on some poor suckers who don't know any better?
 
>Gone are the days when I'd sit poised over my keyboard, watching the auction
>count down it's last seconds, trying to pick the perfect last moment to enter my final bid

Many years ago, back when you could still see (and follow) the people bidding against you on eBay, I noticed that there was one person who outbid me on any auction that we were both part of. Every time, no matter what the final price. Through a strange confluence of events and mutual acquaintanceships (and a tiny collector community), I ended up encountering her at a convention and having a (genuinely) friendly talk. It turns out that she had inherited over a million dollars two years earlier, and was willing to go as high as necessary for an item she wanted, even if she was overpaying by a huge amount. I just quit bidding against her after that.

There was a guy like that in the comic art community in the late 90s/early 2000s. If you bid against him you loss, simple as that. From others in the community I learned he was rich from the stock market.

One day he just vanished from the scene. It took a few years before I found out he went to jail for insider trading.
 
For me it’s the sellers who purchase a new product and then want to sell it with the same price tag.

For example the second edition Pathfindef core. If they bought it for 60$ and it is selling on Amazon or the LGS for the same price why would I buy from you. Especially given that Amazon delivers to my door.
 
As we get further away from the 80s and 90s, what used to be "people's old crap" has suddenly become "vintage collector's items"
Nope, it's still "people's old crap":thumbsup:.
It just so happens that more and more people want it. What does that tells us about the offers we get these days:shade:?
 
Perhaps not entirely germane to this thread, but I just checked an auction on E-Bay, and the seller pulled it, presumably because someone made them an offer they thought wouldn’t be matched in bidding.

It’s a damn shame, as it had a regular item I needed to complete my collection, along with several promo items, one of which I never knew existed until the auction.
 
:devil: Cynical sarcasm incoming...

That ridiculous discount is a tax write-off, not money laundering; one's legal, the other camoflages itself as legal. It's tangential enough though that I'd allow it. (No substantive claims to criminality have been pressed in this obviously comedic post. Any semblance to actionable claims reside in that dirty, dirty, letigious mind of yours. Yes, yours! Shame on you! What would your dear mother think? :brokenheart: )
 
:devil: Cynical sarcasm incoming...

That ridiculous discount is a tax write-off, not money laundering; one's legal, the other camoflages itself as legal. It's tangential enough though that I'd allow it. (No substantive claims to criminality have been pressed in this obviously comedic post. Any semblance to actionable claims reside in that dirty, dirty, letigious mind of yours. Yes, yours! Shame on you! What would your dear mother think? :brokenheart: )
If we go with non-gaming stuff, there’s a box of cards for $650 dollars where I’ve been offered 3% off.
 
It's not just eBay. I've been checking out Amazon as well and older RPG books in general are a lot more expensive than they used to be two years ago. Even books that were fairly common and cheap are now a lot more expensive, sometimes even going into triple digits when they used to be around thirty or forty bucks when I last looked at them.

Amazon has algorithmic pricing. So, you can see some runaway pricing where the algorithm has pooped itself. That said, my book is available for £150+ on Amazon when most people can get it from me for free with a couple of nice words.
 
Trying to find a hard copy of the Sailor Moon RPG from the 90's is a lot harder and more expensive on Amazon and eBay nowadays.
Ouch, yeah, I had a quick scan of my normal sources for rare books and even they don't have copies.
 
I don’t know if anyone has noticed this or not, but there appears to be some folks selling reprinted TSR books from DTRPG at an extremely high markup on eBay. I had seen a hardcover copy of Rules Cyclopedia hardcover on sale on eBay for $100 not too long ago. It was the same version that’s printed from DTRPG, with the tannish border around the cover art that the original version did not have.
 
I don’t know if anyone has noticed this or not, but there appears to be some folks selling reprinted TSR books from DTRPG at an extremely high markup on eBay. I had seen a hardcover copy of Rules Cyclopedia hardcover on sale on eBay for $100 not too long ago. It was the same version that’s printed from DTRPG, with the tannish border around the cover art that the original version did not have.

Yeah, I think we were talking about it a few pages back. It's not just TSR books either. It seems it's a booming business featuring multiple sellers with deep catalogs.

I've run across one seller recently who has been doing hardcover variants of old OOP and not-legally-available-as-PDF licensed RPGs. Baring the legal standing of such a thing, I think that's a much better type of service.
 
Yeah, I think we were talking about it a few pages back. It's not just TSR books either. It seems it's a booming business featuring multiple sellers with deep catalogs.

I've run across one seller recently who has been doing hardcover variants of old OOP and not-legally-available-as-PDF licensed RPGs. Baring the legal standing of such a thing, I think that's a much better type of service.
Missed that then, I guess. Seems odd that they actually do sell them to me though. I mean, you can get RC for like a quarter of that on DTRPG?
 
Missed that then, I guess. Seems odd that they actually do sell them to me though. I mean, you can get RC for like a quarter of that on DTRPG?

I can only conclude that it would have to be a purchaser who didn't know about the DTRPG option or who mistakenly thought it was an original copy. I think I fell for that with regards to a really old Heritage Models Star Trek RPG book a while back (I didn't buy it, but I did think it was legit at the time).

Completely off topic, I managed to score a copy of Deathwatch: First Founding for a reasonable price! My Deathwatch set is now complete.
 
I can only conclude that it would have to be a purchaser who didn't know about the DTRPG option
Sometimes I want to write about my experience in 2010/2011 with someone who had gamed since the 90s, but it had never occurred to them to look on the internet about RPGs.

Congrats on finishing Deathwatch! I think I need five books to complete all the 40k lines.
 
I don’t know if anyone has noticed this or not, but there appears to be some folks selling reprinted TSR books from DTRPG at an extremely high markup on eBay. I had seen a hardcover copy of Rules Cyclopedia hardcover on sale on eBay for $100 not too long ago. It was the same version that’s printed from DTRPG, with the tannish border around the cover art that the original version did not have.
I've seen it with GURPS PoD books as well for 3e.
 
I can only conclude that it would have to be a purchaser who didn't know about the DTRPG option or who mistakenly thought it was an original copy. I think I fell for that with regards to a really old Heritage Models Star Trek RPG book a while back (I didn't buy it, but I did think it was legit at the time).

Completely off topic, I managed to score a copy of Deathwatch: First Founding for a reasonable price! My Deathwatch set is now complete.
Check out the Seattle Goodwill ebay site. I think I saw a bunch of 40k books/RPGs come up this last two weeks.
 


It never fails to amuse me that one of the books I worked on that goes for crazy money is not only the book that got me to stop working for one publisher, but was so reviled by fans the day it was released the publisher sent out an e-mail berating us for how bad the book was. The fact all the complaints were about the stuff we brought up in writing and playtesting and were ignored by him just added to the “WTF!” of it all.



Most people seem to go on about how great the crunch of the book is, unaware of all the continuity errors in the fluff of the book, and that it contains one of the worst adventures ever published.
 

LOL

Well, if it makes you feel any better, there was one that sold in late September for $4.50. The seller couldn't seem to offload it at $9.

But I do remember a time when all those DBZ books were going for triple digits. There's another recent one of that title that sold for $59.99.

Did you do anything for the BGC books? I still have those. I never got to use them in play, but I remember the lore in them was good.
 
Digging through the Endless piles of stuff from the lockup© because I had a spare DC Heroes 2e Character Handbook floating about and checked the boxes to see if one was missing.

One of them had an ebay invoice in from 13th September 2012...

1639157071418.jpg


This probably explains why I have so many of the same book/game in certain cases. When it was so cheap I couldn't help but buy it because those were the games I played the most, there were no (legal) PDFs and it was long out of print. Plus like, £1.20. £5.50 postage.

I suppose this qualifies as a Ridiculous Ebay price (the game is intact, missing nothing and with all the other bits and bobs Mayfair chucked in to punt Chill, Index for the 2e game and so on). Anyone else recount any 'so cheap as to be impossible to pass up on' ebay/second hand/thrift store scores?
 
Holy shit. That's less than I paid for any one of those books a decade ago.
 
Might be interesting to watch this one:


A fellow in a Facebook group I’m in is selling the following cover art for $1,500. It’s billed as “Original pencils with new inks,” which leaves me a bit confused.

D3044D43-0E1C-4C44-92A4-0B7FF0F21A3E.jpeg
 
I'm assuming it was a pencil sketch, and he inked it.
I’m very surprised it was done straight from pencils when published. It waan’t until late 90s/early 2000s that I first saw that being done, let alone become common practice as it is today.
 


A used bookstore near me has one of these for $10 - been on the shelf for like a year
That looks rarer than you think. It doesn't have the yellow Advanced Dungeons and Dragon band across the left hand upper corner. I don't know that it's rare enough to justify the price but I have an idea where to find out


Edit- that looks like a true 1st print 1st edition so maybe $100 US. That might be $5-6k CAD.
 


A used bookstore near me has one of these for $10 - been on the shelf for like a year
Interesting... Do you live in a nice area? Where specifically (omit no detail no matter how small). Tell me, are there any used bookstores near you?

Asking for a friend...

*Whistles innocently*

invaderzim-whistle.gif
 
Live in Vancouver, BC - yeah, lots of used bookstores here.

I'll check net time I'm at that store (Pulp Fiction Books) if it's still there - they have a shelf of random old RPG books, a lot of 90s White Wolf, nothing very interesting to me, but after seeing some of the ebay prices I've wondered if I could buy the lot and resell them.
 
Live in Vancouver, BC - yeah, lots of used bookstores here.

I'll check net time I'm at that store (Pulp Fiction Books) if it's still there - they have a shelf of random old RPG books, a lot of 90s White Wolf, nothing very interesting to me, but after seeing some of the ebay prices I've wondered if I could buy the lot and resell them.
I mean that particular book I could see being seriously mispriced. I once bought the deluxe limited edition Rise of the Runelords for the price of the normal hardcover because someone doing the pricing could be bothered to do good research
 
I mean that particular book I could see being seriously mispriced. I once bought the deluxe limited edition Rise of the Runelords for the price of the normal hardcover because someone doing the pricing could be bothered to do good research

Well, I doubt it's a first printing, but I also think prices are seriously inflated on the secondary market for stuff that isn't even close to being rare.
 
Well, I doubt it's a first printing, but I also think prices are seriously inflated on the secondary market for stuff that isn't even close to being rare.
The book at the used bookstore? Yeah I would be surprised if it's 1st printing but who knows. Look for the trade reg applied for next to the AD&D at the top but who knows.
 
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