Does anyone ever spot a steal anymore?

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Posted By: Bob

It seems like it gets harder and harder to spot a steal anymore on ebay. You don't place a bid until the last 6 seconds and hope no one else spotted it, but ZAP!I remember the good old days on ebay when someone might miss a variation or rarity but nowadays it seems there is always someone lurking in the weeds who knows just as much as you do (or more)

Case in point was the very rare 1911 Zeenut Stinson large on ebay. All week at the starting bid of $25. Ah well...congrats to the eagle eye collector who outsniped me and got a real deal.

http://tinyurl.com/7voqa6>

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Posted By: rand

i dont understand your thread. you want a steal on a very rare card (your words) and you thought the winner got a great deal. so why were you so cheap and didnt bid strong for the card? yes, there are alot of great deals on ebay, but if you need a card and its important to you than i suggest you do not treat it as a bargain. go after it and if the price lands lower than you were willing to bid then you got a bonus. right? if you are not going to bid to win, then you shouldnt feel bad about it. who knows, maybe the winner had a higher bid then you could afford, but at least you tried.

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

Bob is just lamenting the good ol' days of ebay when you actually could get a real steal. Doesn't seem to happen anymore...and really hasn't for a long time now.

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Posted By: rand

this may turn into a good thread,,, what is considered a steal? $100 under value? $250, $500, ect.... i am sure there are plenty of stories out there.

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Posted By: Jeff Mohler

About four months ago I picked up a Matty Pinkerton Postcard on Ebay with a pinhole and writing on the back for $4.00. It was in the correct category, so I have no idea why no one else bid on it. That was a steal.

BTW, my snipe bid was around $200.00

I figure it all evens out in the end though. I have bought plenty of non-steals over the years!

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Posted By: Rob D.

Even my very best bargains on eBay were snagged with ceiling bids that were much higher than the selling prices. In other words, my bid didn't determine that it was a bargain, it was the lack of a competitive underbid that did so.

If I think I've come across the possiblity of a bargain that's described poorly or listed in the wrong category, that doesn't mean I adjust my bid lower because I assume I'll get it at a discounted price. I don't really see the logic in that.

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Posted By: Matt

A "steal" usually comes about when you have a knowledge advantage; everyone saw it, but you were the one who knew what it was worth. If an item is listed in the wrong category, rest assured there are tons of people who collect that category who saw the item, but not knowing it was a unique baseball collectible, didn't know the value. With more knowledge out there (which is a good thing) less "steals" will be found; that said, they still occur.

I think I had a "steal" last week in the correct category when I bought an E135 Speaker for under $700; there were no VCP sales, so people may have been unsure of the value. I recall Barry had a comparable card (Boston Store with a scratch on his face) for auction a year or two ago that sold for over $1500. And, indeed, my snipe was much higher then the sale price.

My Trade/Sale Page

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Posted By: D. Bergin

Here's an example of a steal I guess:

I deal in mostly boxing now but in the earlier days of Ebay (around 2001 or so) I stumbled across a group of Fan Craze Cards. Poor description, poor photos, wrong category..........I'm not even sure how I found them. I was in a non-sport, multi-sport phase then and was looking for almost anything to buy at the time.

I couldn't really tell what was in the lot so I took a chance and won it for under 30 bucks. What I ended up getting when it came in the mail was about a dozen or so Fan Craze baseball cards in very nice condition, including a few lower end HOF'ers.

Finds like that used to happen fairly regularly.

Needless to say I don't remember anything close to that happening in years. As a matter of fact my Ebay bidding has been almost non-existent as of late.

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Posted By: Jason L

not in my collectible universe
I only like what everyone else does, so the prices are always high
I don't take chances on things with red flags, so I won't get that discount

the only time I spot a steal is when the item still has 7-9 days left on the auction

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Posted By: Joann

I've never gotten a steal in an ebay auction, where knowledge of what something is or isn't might come into play. I think those days are probably gone. Even in the area of female player images, where I would have confidence that I might be able to spot something that others miss, the sale price reflects the fact that knowledge tends to be more universal these days.

However, I have gotten two pretty good deals on ebay BINS. In both cases the card was notably underpriced and my "skill" was in being the first one to trip across the listing. In one case of a maybe slightly underpriced card, I hit the BIN within 2 minutes after it listed. Within 5 minutes, literally, I had an email from toby (Hi toby ) that I had just beat him to it. So even my "try to trip over the BIN first" strategy has it's challenges.

But Bob is absolutely right. It used to be a lot easier to find good bargains - even steals - on ebay.

J

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Posted By: boxingcardman

Joann has it right; I usually trip over my best deals on BINs or completely misdescribed and listed in the wrong place. Then again, I also have searches running in wrong places with oddball wording, and when one of those yields a great item (happens every once in a while), that's "skill" not luck. Occasionally there is a knowledge deficit that plays in my favor; used to happen a hell of a lot more (but that's what I get for writing articles and books and hosting informational web sites on cards I collect).

I do agree that if a must-have card comes up, there's no excuse for not putting your best bid forward for it, and no reason to lament if you don't win it despite your best bid.

Sic Gorgiamus Allos Subjectatos Nunc

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Posted By: Al C.risafulli

They're still out there - just last month I won a Federal League broadside advertising a game between the Newark and Kansas City teams. It was described improperly but probably was in the right category, and I would have thought that the way it was described (as a Negro League item) it would have still received a lot of eyeballs. There was only one underbidder on the item.

In my research to determine what it was while the auction was running, I was able to find only one similar item, that sold for something like $1800 and again for $1400. I won mine for less than $300.

-Al

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Posted By: Bob

The Stinson was the "large picture" variety and I thought it might go for around $35-40 so I took a flyer on it for $101. Anything under that would have been a true steal. Since I have the smaller version (more common), it wasn't a card I HAD to have, and the winner needed ANY Stinson and is a friend so I was glas he won it. I was just commenting on the fact that back in the day on ebay cards used to slip by, even in the right category. Collectors are more computer savvy when it comes to searching ebay coupled with a growing knowledge in the hobby of what's what.

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Posted By: Bryan Long

Hey Bob, Just bid on my stuff. All of my auctions seem to be going for record lows now-a-days. I don't seem to be having much luck lately.

.

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Posted By: Joe Hunter

Yes, I would agree that steals on Ebay are hard to find. A few bargains, yes, but not many true "steals". Most of mine have come from flea markets or antique stores.

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Posted By: JK

I used to find deals pretty consistently on ebay. Not so much lately. My best and last ebay "steal" was about a year and a half ago - got this for about $1900 (its since been sold) because it had a terrible scan in the listing.







It graded a 60.

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

I've had a few steals on ebay...mostly through the Live Auction category. Don't know what it is, but people still don't like bidding in that category compared to the others. I got a Honus Wagner decal bat for $400 that I tripled my money on...a postcard for $30 that I turned and sold for $200. I got one steal that I didn't even know about until I opened the package...I won a small baseball ephemera lot for $5 and I only bid on it because it had a Connie Mack Diamond Jubilee program in it...when I was going through the stuff there was a certificate signed by Kenesaw Landis.

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Posted By: Joe Hunter

Dan: I had the same experience with a live auction about a year ago. I won an early KC A's program for around $10. When I looked through it, I found three autographed 8x10's, one of which was Nelson Fox. I ended up selling it for $400.00.

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Posted By: Chuck Ross

I think sniping services did a lot to kill off "steals". Back in the Wild West days of eBay (1990s) I got a lot of nice stuff cheap because the auctions ended at strange or inconvenient times and I could manually snipe a win. I remember winning some great items at 2 or 3 in the morning. Now, when people see something of interest they set a snipe for the highest amount they are comfortable with and forget about it.

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Posted By: Rob D.

Chuck, that's a great point.

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Posted By: sporteq

... i don't buy many cards .. i mostly buy paper, photos, pins, trophy etc. There are alot of good buys still on ebay. I find my best buys from the big auction houses lately. Yeah .. i do miss the good old days! i remember buying a group of newsphotos of Babe Ruth about 9 photos for less than $300. The deals are still out there on ebay .. just takes more time.

aL

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Posted By: joe

It's been 7 or 8 years, but this was on ebay with 2 others, I got those and ended up buying almost a complete set of Detroit Tiger Wolverine postcards from the seller.



joe


Ty Cobb, Spikes flying!

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Posted By: boxingcardman

for bad auction images, poor descriptions and auctioneers who didn't care. I once bid into a lot of nonsports strip cards with a description so bad and a seller so unresponsive that I resorted to enlarging the image and counting the cards to determine my bid. When I got the box I pulled out a brick of cards with several times as many cards as the number shown in the image. Now that was a steal!

Sic Gorgiamus Allos Subjectatos Nunc

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Posted By: David Poses

the only "steals" i've found recently have been somewhat oddball post-war stuff. picked up a '51 berk ross johnny mize psa 8 for $15 and a '52 berk ross rizzutto psa 7 for $12.

i really dig this series, so please don't start bidding against me. obviously you didn't want these cards to begin with and i am enjoying the low prices