I am not a big poster on this forum for one simple reason: I am now knowledgeable enough yet. I do have questions that have been bugging me and after all my lurking here and on reddit, I never do find clear and concise answers. I was doubting whether to put these questions on the general board or on Just a quick question, I decided to put it here but I would like to apologize if I messed up on that one.
I also seem to be extremely unsuccesful with auctions on eBay. For example, yesterday I was bidding on 4 different auctions of one expedition card per auction. I increased the bid a few seconds before the end, but I got outbid with about 1-2 seconds remaining by a large sum (4.99 euro start price, no one bid; I bid 7 euroās on the items a couple of seconds before the end; I get outbid instantly by 5-6 euroās). Is this simply luck of the draw and me bidding not enough or am I missing something here? Auctions are generally not interesting as the concept of a bidding war scares me. The few times per month that an auction is interesting, I am always outbid. Could anyone give me some advice in this direction?
My last question is about going that little bit further. I understand a lot of deals and arrangements are made on this forum, and also on eBay. It is obvious that the more seasoned collectors will have access to channels unknown or (currently) inaccessible to newcomers like me, as they should be. However, I do wonder how one can get his foot in the door in order to make large purchases but at a considerable cheaper price.
Sorry for this long post, or should I call it essay by now. I figured that I had to try figure it out based on previous posts, forums, my own experience and that it was better that I combined all my questions in one good post instead of them being spread all over the place.
My main recommendation would be to create a detailed buy thread here with prices you would be willing to pay for the cards. There are tons of members here who have loads of PSA 9 cards and given a buy thread with specific wants and prices, you may find yourself pleasantly surprised how many deals you can make.
On the auction part, there really is no secret. Whomever places the highest bid wins. Many people snipe, but I myself look at auctions ending for the day on my keyword searches and place my max bids regardless of if there are 10 seconds remaining or 10 days remaining. I let eBay proxy bidding handle the rest up to my maximum. If you are never winning auctions you are just valuing them less than the bidders that you are competing with. I bid on hundreds of items a week and typically win 5-10 that end up being at the right price point for me.
eBay is the bulk of where people get their stuff when it comes to older cards. Next you would be surprised how far a plain old google search can go in the event of certain items. There really is no secret oasis for cards, even for us Americans though we do have it easier being that most old school English cards are here and easily accessible for us with no customs fees or exorbitant shipping prices.
Without going to personal, just reading your post brings back so many memories I rather forget. I feel your pain and I hope youāre clean.
Secondary, eBay is a bitch. Especially if youāre after certain cards.
With low starting price auctions for cards Iām after I really just go and look for most recent sold cards and bit that amount, as long that price is reasonable and feels āokā. Bidding 18k on a Charizard because on sold for that brings you nowhere, but bidding letās say 12$ on a Dark Machamp because the most recent sold listing all have them between 10-15$ will put you in a safe spot. eBay, unless very lucky and having good search results, isnāt a place where you can snatch cards for 2-10$ below their āvalueā.
Personally, I noticed markets in the Netherlands and Belgium have shifted away from eBay, 2dehands.be, marktplaats.nl and are now focusing on Facebook Markets. Iāve picked up amazing cards recently on Facebook in conditions I havenāt seen much on eBay for prices well under eBay. Itās something worth looking at.
In regards to bidding, my advice is to not let it get to you. For every amazing deal Ive gotten on an auction I have lost at least 5 by a difference of a $1. Again, donāt let it get to you because itās all part of the adventure, your own collecting adventure. If anything, itās only gonna help you with more information in regards to the market. For example, I have set up my alarm to be awake for a bid that was ending in the middle of the night. I have not placed a bid till the last 30 seconds probably hundreds of times. I have seen cards end at $500 one day and $300 the following week. When you see those things you are now gonna have a window of how much people are willing to pay and now the next time you try there will be less surprises I promise you that. You have to be careful with shill bidders and for that we have āThe Blacklistā here in the forum, there are names of sellers/stores who now work for Team Rocket in āShadeCityā. Lately this trash is shooting for higher end items but let me tell you that they exists in all levels.
Yes when you are the second highest bidder for any given auction you will seemingly ābarely loseā every time. That is the way bidding works. I donāt know why anyone would take it to heart, but some do and I always remind them that although they were only beaten by one increment, they may well have been outbid by a large sum. The winning bidders max could have been much much higher than you realize. I have won many auctions for a fraction of my max bid. Off the top of my head I have definitely won bids where my max was over $1,000 for under $500. It doesnāt happen often, but having bid on tens of thousands of items it happens from time to time. It is not infrequent to win for $50 or more under my max bid and in those cases the second highest may have felt close to winning when in reality it wasnāt the case at all.
Placing a max but lower than recent sold is a very risky move, but can work sometimes. But youāre right. You only see you place a bid of 45$ and the final bid is e.g. 46$. But you will never know if the winnerās max bid was 46$ or 146$
If you have a card shop in your area you can ask them to help find what your looking for.
On Google you can look for cards you want by using the search tools to only see results from the past 24 hours.
You can also look for Ebay sellers in your area and I try to make deals with them in person.
I felt this too, and thatās pretty inconvenient considering i donāt wanna open a Facebook account since i absolutely despise this kind of social medium.
itās such a massive un-personal clusterfuck of infringement of oneās privacy.
More in a way that Iāve seen big local shift of Pokemon card sale from places like eBay, Marktplaats.nl, 2dehands.be to Facebook. Dutch and Belgium collectors that really want to deal with people that know what theyāre doing (other collectors, bulk flippers) move their business to Facebook. And with Facebook taking such a spot on the market you just not seeing certain cards pop up on the notorious websites like Marktplaats anymore.