You know what the problem is with eBay and boardgamers? The two are not a healthy mix. Boardgamers really just see eBay as an auction game (what you say?!?). What I mean is its the ultimate test of your auction/bidding skills - with the score being kept in your own money. The problem is - I don't think everyone really understands the rules. Here's a good example - a recently expired auction for a NIS Age of Steam. This beauty went for a whopping $122.50. Can you believe it? Its a bit of cardboard with a few painted wooden bits. Now, don't get me wrong - Age of Steam is my favorite game and I own a lot of maps for the game - bringing my total AoS collection alone close to (well, based on that price) maybe $340 worth of AoS (I did not pay that much for it, its just worth about that now). At any rate, its still just a game. Trust me, if my copy had burned in a fire I would not pay $125 for a new copy. Its being reprinted 2nd ed. and as a new 3rd ed. next year! WTF?!
Back to the point at hand. First of all (and maybe I shouldn't even bother sharing this) - people don't understand eBay. You don't get good prices by bidding until the last damn second. That's right. All you get by bidding early is you run the risk of paying more. By placing your max bid at the last possible second, you give yourself a chance of winning without actually paying your highest bid. Looking at that auction, with 3.5 hours left, one guy put in a bid of $120. Of course, eBay shows this as just enough to beat the previous high bidder by showing $70. This is all well and good, except that he put the bid in too early. Everyone did. If everyone had stayed off this, the max bids might have been considerably lower and a $120 might have won. As it is, someone dropped in and sniped it out for $122.50. The second lesson to learn from this - bid strange highest amounts. If $120 is your top bid, bid $120.61 so you don't lose to the guy who shoots for sniping you just higher than your highest bid. I don't understand how people that can be sharks at and love a game like Age of Steam can suck so badly at a game that costs them in real cash...
1 comment:
125 bones - that's absurd. some people just can't help themselves...they just want to see their screen name as the high bidder - they are the players that spend all of their cash at the beginning of a game so they can quickly jump out ahead early in the game...and then they end up getting their butts handed to them at end game. suckers.
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