The Question of the Day is a way to facilitate community discussion to help members ponder the unanswered questions of the world that are somehow relating to the hobby. Questions are many times open ended and up to interpretation. Feel free to post your thoughts in as much or as little detail as you’d like.
Helpful Considerations may or may not help some people focus their answer, these are blurred to not bother those who have their own ideas.
I tend to bid just above a psychological number, like $101.
If a fixed price item has been in my watchlist for a while, i’ll often message the seller asking if they would accept a Best Offer. I figure if it’s been sat there for a while, they might just want it sold. Often get ignored, but sometimes i’ll get an offer of a few percent off.
From a sellers perspective, I set auctions ending on Weekends, at a time where US West Coast / East Coast and Central Europe are all naturally awake.
Not necessarily winning auctions but go for newly listed auctions that have a higher starting bid, no watchers and no bids, if they have make an offer on, throw them an offer for a bit more than the starting bid. Often it gets accepted.
Another is filter to newly listed, and just search “Pokemon Cards” sometimes you get once in a while a large lot for a couple hundred bucks buy it now. Risk is not knowing the condition but I didn’t shop for condition.
Lastly, not sure if it’s really a thing anymore but misspelling Pokemon names to see listings. Can’t tell you how many “Gayarados” cards I got by doing this. lol
I use electronic bay and gixen. Set my snipe at my max price, and then my worries are gone. And I get an email saying if I won, if not, then I move on with life.
For best offers, I just add a little nice message, or no message. Then I also don’t badger the seller with crazy messages. Its amazing what you end up with by doing that. Instead of an Ebay Garbage story, I end up with Ebay Gold stories instead! Sometimes I get free cards, or little fun doodles or something when I just add a little “Thank you”. Even if I abandon a counter offer, I don’t flip out over it. I just say, no thanks and best of luck!
I set my max a tad higher than my actual max because missing by 1% on an item sucks.
Also, I use a sniper, look for items ending in the middle of the night, PST, and pay special attention to auction ending during big events like Halloween, Superbowl, and New Years.
@SolemnStar I appreciate the Ebay Gold plug. It’s a great way to keep some of the magic!
