Quote:
Originally Posted by DocScoot
. They don't bother me except when it's a relatively rare card I'm actually hunting, and it just sits on eBay for a year or more at some absurd price. I'm in that situation now, hunting a card that's listed for about 8 times what they actually sell for. I've even messaged the seller a couple times begging him to sell it to me for fair market value. Never even bothered replying to me. Card's just been sitting there well over a year now.
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Once upon a time, probably about 5 years ago, I would’ve agreed with you wholeheartedly.
Of course, some of our friends around here are fond of reminding us that selling cardboard is not an eleemosynary activity, so our hopes and dreams as buyers don’t really enter into the seller’s calculus in any meaningful fashion.
I’ve also grown to have a bit more of an appreciation that for really rare stuff, particularly stuff that hasn’t come to market in the last 5 or 10 years, no one really knows what the market is today. I’ve often found myself rejecting a sellers price, and waiting a few years for another one to come to auction. Except when it finally comes to auction, the other 10 guys who have been coveting it and have rejected the BIN price as absurd all pile in to the bidding. Next thing you know, we’ve managed to bid it up into the same ballpark, sometimes even higher, simply because we’re unwilling to let that absurd BIN seller get his way.
When it comes to stuff that rare, my experience is that you have a few options:
1) pay the man, and just be glad it’s not more;
2) hope another one comes onto the market someday, and at a price that is more pleasing to you (however, see above cautionary tale); or
3) decide you really never wanted it anyway.
Of course, I have several difficult to find items that I have listed on eBay with absurdly high asking prices, some of which have been waiting for years for the right buyer to come along. So you might even be vexed by me personally.
Now, if I were selling commonplace junk-era wax for $10k when it sells every day for pennies, I suppose that’s another scenario entirely. But a guy can dream!