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.
Today’s Question: QotD: Do you feel bad when you win $.99 auctions at very low prices or as the only bidder?(This was a suggested question)
Helpful Considerations: Do you pay and hope it comes? Reach out to seller? “ok” a cancelation? What if you’re paying a dollar + shipping for something worth 20, 50, 100+ ?
I did win an auction for $0.99 + ~$5 shipping from a new seller before. That one I felt kind of bad for, since the sale would net like $0.10 after fees.
Being patient and finding great deals is one of my favorite parts of collecting. I monitor auctions for increased activity, look for spelling errors, wrong categories, listings that don’t clearly show all items included, etc., all to chase a good deal.
Recently, I won several auctions with low bids as the only bidder (or one of a few). The shipping was sometimes significantly more than the winning bids, and the sellers were getting little to no profit. For example:
Item from Italy value ~$90, won for $7 + $4 ship to US.
Item from UK value ~$450, won for $22 + $37.56 expedited ship to US
Item from US value ~$100, won for $20+ free ship w/in US
Item from France value ~$110, won for $1.17 + $44 expedited ship to US
and tons of $5-25 auctions won for a dollar or two + shipping
These were all exciting! But it sucked to think some of these people may have needed the money, so I often have varying degrees of guilt.
Depending on observable circumstances, I’ve reached out to a few. Auctions houses = no regret. Pickers and re-sellers = depends.
But new sellers and people just selling items from around their house leave me feeling like I’m taking advantage. They hopped on ebay, maybe with their childhood stuff, didn’t know exactly what they were doing, and I made out like a bandit.
So sometimes a deal too good is a dealbreaker. I don’t want to think about someone selling their or their kid’s old pokemon stuff for next to nothing every time I look at it.
I don’t remember feeling bad about it though and I don’t think anyone should, if I was the seller and something like this happened and I didn’t want it to, there are things you can do to make sure it doesn’t happen again quite easily.
I totally agree with this. It never happened to me, but I’m pretty sure I would feel bad. I also understand that everyone has different views about this, though.
Obviously, you have every rights to claim the item and save every penny, but I’m sure you could secure a really good deal trying to figure out a slightly more fair offer to the seller.
I’m sure the majority of people would be very grateful for you sharing knowledge and helping them non losing money, and who knows, maybe they’ll even come back to you with more niche/rare cards you need.
Exactly. There was an ebay account last year that was pretty clearly selling their old collection that they’d been grading with Beckett, but they never got the card name, set name/number right in their listings. Listings with titles like “Japanese Golduck BGS 9” (just substitute the name of the pokemon for the other slabs) for a Misty’s Golduck went for $4-9 when they should have been 20+ easy. That account doesn’t sell anymore, and I still think about it sometimes because I took advantage of it for weeks.
Obviously you should figure out what you’re doing before grading and selling, but any number of people bidding on those auctions could have potentially “saved” the seller thousands of dollars
Yes - I feel bad because the seller isn’t going to make much money off of the listing.
No - The seller chose the price knowing the risk of what it could end at.
I recently had this happen, except of it being $0.99, the auction was for $0.01 I did pay shipping on it but I was still expecting a cancellation. The seller didn’t flake and it’s currently sitting in my CGC error sub bin!
Do you use TypoHound? If not, I highly suggest using it to find typo listings. I’ve found a few deals using it It’ll generate spelling errors and search them for you automatically!
There is quite a lot of value to be had in cheap ($0.99) auctions if you are patient and willing to scroll through a lot of junk. That’s no longer my cup of tea due to time constraints, but it sure scratches the treasure hunter itch if that’s a motivating factor.
I only feel bad when I win cheap auctions for vintage cards that I know are hard to grade. If grading is $10-$20 these days, mint EX era reverse holos and holos should not be selling for $15-$25… but they do sometimes because they perform poorly in auctions.
In March 2022 I won an auction for around 100 Japanese cards, mainly Holos and Reverses (with a few Vs and Commons mixed inbetween them) from Shiny Star V and VMAX Climax for 1€ with free shipping.
I messaged the seller that he doesn’t has to ship the cards and can cancel the order because shipping alone is way more expensive than the 1€. He never replied but shipped them anyway so kudos to him.
Once won an auction for 10 cents free shipping from Japan. Seller shipped it.
Once won an auction for a small handful of cards, nothing valuable, for $10. Seller cancelled because he thought it should be atleast $20.
Low price auctions are where the boys with integrity are separated from the guys who don’t know how business works.
Anyways, I felt bad about the 10 cent auction. Basically if the seller loses money from shipping alone, it sucks. I don’t care if they break even, it was their choice to start a 1 cent auction
Not really because the seller ran the risk of selling for that cheap and could have had the starting bid at a minimum they would accept. So the way I see it is if I win it for $1 or way less than past buy it nows its clearly a very low in demand item so probably wouldn’t sell for much more anyway.
Did I feel bad when I got the “Banned at the STS Sneasel” for $99 + $50 shipping? Not at all. It had been listed before with no takers (!!!) and I got it on the second time around. He then sold me two more that he had for another $99 and threw in two other display pieces.
I only regret later selling them.
I did pay shipping on it but I was still expecting a cancellation. The seller didn’t flake and it’s currently sitting in my CGC error sub bin!
It’ll generate spelling errors and search them for you automatically!
