On Friday, February 18, 2022 at 3:01:42 AM UTC-6, evil.king.m...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Valentine's Day four auctions by the same seller ended and the results were absolutely terrifying. All four were 1987 era Transformers loose but with their original packaging. The auctions were for:
>
> Autobot Clones Fastlane & Cloudraker
> Punch/Counterpunch
> Highbrow
> Hardhead
>
> Each of these in this shape and level of completeness would go for $150 to $175 tops maybe? But what was absolutely insane was that each ended for OVER 500 DOLLARS!
>
> https://www.ebay.com/sch/forbidden-planet/m.html?item=224826560516&LH_Complete=1&LH_Sold=1&_udlo=350
>
> $525 for the clones, $545 for Highbrow, and $510 each for Hardhead and the Doublespy. I looked at the bidding and the wars were between legit buyers with hundreds of feedback. No shills or 0 feedback bidders driving the prices up that I could see.
>
> Giftsets don't go for that much. Japanese exclusives don't go for that much. 1984-'85 figures in the same condition don't go for that much. This is either the dawn of a new era of demand for 1987 stuff or it's always been like this and maybe I never noticed?
Wow. That's crazy.

A big chunk of it is the packaging. but that's still too much.
We got a bunch of loose with boxes 84/85 Transformers in and were selling them mostly for $100-$150, no idea what would boost them over the $500 mark.

Other than them being Forbidden Planet auctions, which for unknown reasons people pay more for. Kind of like Wheeljack's Lab or Transformerland auctions people pay more for those auctions too. I guess it's automatically assumed they have better condition stuff, but looking at their auctions it isn't always.

On Friday, February 18, 2022 at 5:48:13 AM UTC-8, Ob1k...@att.net wrote:

> Other than them being Forbidden Planet auctions, which for unknown reasons people pay more for.

That's a great observation-the name of the seller may have contributed to the bidding hysteria. But here's the kicker-this isn't the real Forbidden Planet-it's some guy living in the same podunk area I live in like 15 miles southeast of Tacoma. Unless Forbidden Planet has an outpost in Bonney Lake, Washington, this is just some guy clearing out his closet.

> Kind of like Wheeljack's Lab or Transformerland auctions people pay more for those auctions too.

I need to change my ebay handle to 'Wheeljack Slab' or 'Trans Formerland'. As far as I know there is no rule against it.

> I guess it's automatically assumed they have better condition stuff, but looking at their auctions it isn't always.

I think they capitalize on having a wide range of items available at any given time. That's how they get me sometimes. I hate using the 'slab because they always send me stuff with tons of styro packing peanuts, but sometimes just nobody else has the specific decoy or packaging or something I am looking for like they do.

Plus lately I am getting weary of bidding on auctions. Zob is a champion of the current system where most items are Buy It Nows, which I detest because everything is set 50-100% higher than what the actual price would be were it an auction. But lately sellers have been screwing my orders up and sending me the wrong thing or just putting the item in a mailer envelope and hoping it arrives uncrushed and doing other dumb stuff. So I get it cheaper when I get it, but shipping and accuracy are issues.

I recently won a carded Afterburner which is the toughest of the Technobot minis to get. The seller also had Strafe & Nosecone carded. Those went for 60 while I paid 100 for Afterburner. What arrived in the mail? Strafe. If they sent me Strafe and the Strafe buyer my Afterburner, you think he's gonna return Afterburner? Especially since he originally bid 60 bucks on Afterburner and just got it in the mail?

On Friday, February 18, 2022 at 8:01:58 AM UTC-7, evil.king.m...@gmail.com wrote:
> Plus lately I am getting weary of bidding on auctions. Zob is a champion of the current system where most items are Buy It Nows, which I detest because everything is set 50-100% higher than what the actual price would be were it an auction.

Not necessarily. You could have an auction sit at a reasonable price for four days and twenty-three hours and then have it suddenly skyrocket in the final minutes before the auction closes. I would rather have a seller set the pricing than the buyers, because buyers tend to get into last-minute bidding wars. Sellers are ultimately trying to unload their merchandise, so sometimes they'll offer discounts if you put something on your eBay watch list. They would rather get x amount of money for an item, or even x amount minus 20 percent, than nothing at all.

And for every item that eBay has available, there's inevitably at least one seller out there who has no idea what he's got, so he ends up setting his asking price much too low. I got a pair of Micromaster Airwave missiles recently for $1.85 plus shipping. Now when I go shopping for Airwave eventually, I can get a set with no missiles, and it will be a lot cheaper because the toy is incomplete. (With G1 toys, you can always get the core toy for relatively cheap. You are ultimately paying for the accessories.)

> I recently won a carded Afterburner which is the toughest of the Technobot minis to get. The seller also had Strafe & Nosecone carded. Those went for 60 while I paid 100 for Afterburner. What arrived in the mail? Strafe.

Ugh. I've had eBay mix-ups like that before. One time I got an eBay auction intended for a David B. Edwards (off by only one middle initial), so that was a very easy mistake to make. The seller has tried to make it right every time, so I've been lucky in that regard.

Zob (don't care about the diet; eating pizza tonight)

On Friday, February 18, 2022 at 7:21:07 PM UTC-6, Zobovor wrote:
> On Friday, February 18, 2022 at 8:01:58 AM UTC-7, evil.king.m...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> > Plus lately I am getting weary of bidding on auctions. Zob is a champion of the current system where most items are Buy It Nows, which I detest because everything is set 50-100% higher than what the actual price would be were it an auction.
> Not necessarily. You could have an auction sit at a reasonable price for four days and twenty-three hours and then have it suddenly skyrocket in the final minutes before the auction closes. I would rather have a seller set the pricing than the buyers, because buyers tend to get into last-minute bidding wars. Sellers are ultimately trying to unload their merchandise, so sometimes they'll offer discounts if you put something on your eBay watch list. They would rather get x amount of money for an item, or even x amount minus 20 percent, than nothing at all.
>
> And for every item that eBay has available, there's inevitably at least one seller out there who has no idea what he's got, so he ends up setting his asking price much too low. I got a pair of Micromaster Airwave missiles recently for $1.85 plus shipping. Now when I go shopping for Airwave eventually, I can get a set with no missiles, and it will be a lot cheaper because the toy is incomplete. (With G1 toys, you can always get the core toy for relatively cheap. You are ultimately paying for the accessories.)
> > I recently won a carded Afterburner which is the toughest of the Technobot minis to get. The seller also had Strafe & Nosecone carded. Those went for 60 while I paid 100 for Afterburner. What arrived in the mail? Strafe.
> Ugh. I've had eBay mix-ups like that before. One time I got an eBay auction intended for a David B. Edwards (off by only one middle initial), so that was a very easy mistake to make. The seller has tried to make it right every time, so I've been lucky in that regard.
>
>
> Zob (don't care about the diet; eating pizza tonight)

Zob, I always read your auction winnings then have to go check ebay, because when I price stuff ebay seems to show me auctions that are a bit lower...

Of course the real challenge now is sifting through all the chinese KO auctions

On Friday, February 18, 2022 at 5:21:07 PM UTC-8, Zobovor wrote:
> Not necessarily. You could have an auction sit at a reasonable price for four days and twenty-three hours and then have it suddenly skyrocket in the final minutes before the auction closes.

There is also a related scenario where the snipers and shill bidders ride their bids to the moon, then the winner never pays and the entire fiasco ends up a huge waste of everyone's time. Then the seller puts the item back up after a week and rinse and repeat. It becomes a war of attrition between people who legitimately want to blow big wads on an item and dreamerboys with no feedback who get their kicks driving up bids and wasting everyone's time. Usually what happens is the item goes for less when it does finally sell after multiple attempts so there's that, but sticking with it over the long haul to finally win is a drag.

>And for every item that eBay has available, there's inevitably at least one seller out there who has no idea what he's got, so he ends up setting his asking price much too low.

Those are way too few and far between to count on. And someone who doesn't know what they have most likely is using the worst auction description possible and I am not about to waste time chasing every "Bubble Bee" or "Takara Fairlady" or "Tansfromer" trying to guess where the steals are.

> Sellers are ultimately trying to unload their merchandise,

I seriously doubt this sometimes. There's this one seller in particular that FOR YEARS has been running auctions for '86-'87 era TF card backs he wants over $100 each for. Just card backs. No figures, no bubbles, just the cards. Over a hundred bucks each.

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_dmd=2&iconV2Request=true&_ssn=m.collectablz&store_cat=0&store_name=millenniumcollectablz&_oac=1&_nkw=transformers%20full%20card%20back

I think some people just want to show off their collections and ebay is their shelfspace.

> On Friday, February 18, 2022 at 8:01:58 AM UTC-7, evil.king.m...@gmail.com wrote:
> > I recently won a carded Afterburner which is the toughest of the Technobot minis to get. The seller also had Strafe & Nosecone carded. Those went for 60 while I paid 100 for Afterburner. What arrived in the mail? Strafe.

Well miracle of miracles, the seller messaged me today and told me Afterburner is in the mail. This means that someone who bid 60 dollars on an auction that they lost because it eventually sold for 100 still returned the carded Afterburner when the seller accidentally sent it to them. Whoever this person was didn't have to return the item but they did. It is hard to think of other ebayers as anything other than the greedy faceless enemy whose mission is to spoil my happiness and deny me victory when we're warring against each other but I guess some of them are all right.