Ebay: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

[Retrogamer0001]

After taking a vacation from Ebay.ca for the past six months to save money and actually play games instead of buy them, I went on out of curiosity to see what a few games I still wanted to add to my collection were going for.

The Good
Finding what I wanted was easy enough and there are lots of listings, but...

The Bad
My god, the prices. Castlevania Chronicles, a PS1 game that was 39.99 a few months ago, was now priced regularly for 89.99. What the hell happened to this game? Not only that, but the shipping on almost every game I searched was at least $11. Every single one, and in many cases, much, much more.

The Ugly
Not only that, but I've heard from many sellers that seller fees are going through the roof, and can come out at around 15-18% what with Final Value Fees, Paypal's 3% fee, and then the shipping FVF. Worse, the "prices" for retro games factor in Ebay fee increases and thus gets added to the "value" of the games whenever people check out how much a game is selling for. "Ebay fee inflation" is certainly a factor as far as increasing prices on video games go.

How do you guys feel? Is Ebay a good place to buy, or even more interesting, to sell on? Is anyone doing much of either on this site?

[Damm64]

Should i be that guy?

Yeah im gonna be that guy.

http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopi ... 48&t=17456

http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=48

[Fragems]

Actually eBay isn't that bad for sellers at the moment.

For a standard seller like myself the final value fee is 10% of the total sale price including shipping. The insertion fee is also now only $0.05 and the first 50 listings are free each month. Ebay also offers 20% off shipping labels so that saves me around $0.60 per sale. Paypal is more of an annoyance since it's fees are $0.30 + 4% per transaction.

If your selling stuff at $1 with $3.04 shipping you end up loosing around 23% in fees. After shipping you would make around $0.60 so basically you would loose 40% of your asking price .

The percentage actually goes down as the final value goes up though because of that annoying $0.30 that paypal charges which is a nice extra percentage when you are doing sales below $10 shipped.

[Flake]

Should i be that guy?

Yeah im gonna be that guy.

http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopi ... 48&t=17456

http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=48

No, you shouldn't be that guy. Please read OP's post again and you'll see that he's talking about the second hand market economy in general. I think this is a conversation worth having.

As a favor to the community, please don't dismiss a person's thread out of hand that way. If you have a problem with their topic or feel that they are cluttering the forum, just flag the thread and let one of us moderators look at it.

Getting back on topic:

Yeah, something has changed and I'm not sure what it is. I was shopping around for some GBA and DS titles the other day and I really get the sense that the market makes no sense at all anymore. I used to be pretty good at sensing what would go up in value (hello my horded pile of Sega Saturns!) but now I see so many prices on eBay that defy common sense.

Case in point: Gamecube commons. It used to just be Nintendo's first party games that commanded a high price. Now even tripe like old Need for Speed's are going to get you for $15 after shipping. The line between ebay and the local brick and mortar has almost completely disappeared.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Shipping almost always kills it for me with eBay. I only use the site to purchase bundles or when I can combine shipping on multiple items. If I find a game there at a good price, I always check the seller's other items. If he or she does not have at least four or five other games I want, I typically do not buy anything. For me, at least, buying locally is usually the better option.

That said, eBay is great for truly rare items. I am trying to complete a collection of Arcadia 2001 games, and there is no way I would ever find them locally.

[cha cha]

There is a long history that leads up to this (aside from the increasing fees and costs to e-selling), but for the sake of my own time, I will be brief about it...

Basically all the commonfolk (for lack of a better term) who were scared/skeptical/unknowledgable about buying/selling/trading online have finally all caught up with where people 'in the know' used to get their online bargains. Since commonfolk are not in it for the gaming/nostalgia/culture, and only in it for "what they think" is the profit, this creates a lot of shoddy research and dubious pricing based off places like gamestop.
Their logic appears to be "Well brick and mortar stores rarely sell anything for less than $10, so that is where I will start", and they basically flat rate out their games that way and increase prices on titles they "heard" can get more, or try to match hastily conducted ebay/amazon completed listing prices...+$5... because they deserve it

The second group to have finally breached the internet chasm that relegated their kind to flea markets and swap meets are- the old school vendor guys. The guys who garbage pick, scout out estate sales and buy out closing businesses or distributor lots for game lots that come out to pennies on the dollar. These are usually older people who "know better than you" and they "know what they can get on the market" is what they will tell you when you try to haggle with them. These morons uphold the only bulk-buying belief that if you 'buy something for 10 cents, sell it for $10 (insert ambiguous pricing strategies here)' and that way you justify the whole lot purchase with just a few sales. In some cases, they get the sale too, which reinforces their belief that they are right, and simply waiting out "lowballers" will eventually bring profit. They don't care about how long they have to sit on it, and are generally just stubborn.
Sure sometimes these guys sit on gems unbeknownst to them, but there are soooooo many other collectors out there now in every market, that clean these guys out quickly and the rest of their dusty/grimy games eventually get put on ebay to collect e-dust instead.

The third group are the 80's-90's kids. The ones who heard legends of comicbooks from the 50's being worth "thousands" and see old NES games going for "thousands", and now they end up buying games, thinking every title they purchase is a "potential goldmine". So they sit on their crappy old Maddens, Needs for Speeds and Super Marios thinking that if they wait long enough, they will make "thousands"... then at some point for them the dream ends, life gets 'real' for them and they are forced to sell their shit in an emergency. But... they can't let go of that notion of potentially giving up future riches! So they price based on some made-up mental philosophy that they must get the most money possible out of their games and price them super high hoping someone will haggle a few dollars less and they still 'recoup the cost' of the initial purchase or close to it...

But yea, all those types have managed to infest ebay/amazon/craigslist in large numbers and I think they actually SEE EACH OTHER'S PRICES and now think they are justified, because they are surrounded by idiotic like-minded peers.

Wish I had more time to go into detail about it but my work constantly breaks my concentration from not-work posting. Hope... something can be gained by my ramshod rambles above

[Snatch1414]

^ You mentioned eBay being a diamond in the rough for deals back in the day. Yard sales, etc. used to be the same I'm sure.

I have a side question based off that being said though: Is there ANY pockets of existence that still exist where deals can be had? I'm not asking people to reveal what those are, but if the answer is Yes I'd be pretty surprised at least in my experience.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Yes. You can still buy games inexpensively at antique malls, flea markets, yard sales, pawn shops, etc. Certainly, it is more difficult to find vintage games that it was ten years ago (i.e., when all those games were ten years "newer"), but there are still many, many, many games priced far below internet, "market" prices. Patience, a sharp eye, and a thorough knowledge of "market" prices is the key to acquiring them. (I acquired 822 games last year, and the average cost of the games was $3.73. Admittedly, a lot of these were 2600 games - which are incredibly cheap - but I cetainly passed on many more games on different systems for similar prices because I already had them in my collection.)

[cha cha]

Places like this very message board. Being able to identify with someone who holds similar interests, barter/haggle with things you already own and find particular titles available with relative ease goes a long way these days...

But yea those old wives tales of garage sales megasteals, craigslist hidden gems and ebay superdeals are all but gone. Sure, everyone will get lucky now and then still, but the time/effort to hunt down the few gems left in the wild- pretty much mitigates the cost nowadays, in a world filled with tons of profit vultures lurking around every corner.

When a 60 year old garbage game vendor at a flea market tries telling me about Little Sampson and NES "World Championship" carts and how "you never know what game is going to explode next!" and that is why "he prices his games so high, because he could still be getting ripped off!" ($15 super mario/duck hunts).... you already know the world is fucked.

[fastbilly1]

($15 super mario/duck hunts)

Ive talked to several people who charge an arm and a leg for Mario/Duck Hunts, and their response almost unanimously is "people are willing to pay that much for it." Most had them at sub $5 but could not keep them in stock ever, and found that $10-15 keeps them around for atleast a few weeks. I still find it silly that one of the most common games, a game that I have used as a coaster, they are selling for $15. One had the audacity to tell me that it goes for more on ebay and is a really rare game (with his stockpile of 20).