darkSpyro

Can someone help me with this? Why would someone on eBay have a bid on all the Stink Bomb and Trap Shadow variants? This same person also has them for sale as well. I am missing something because this person has 100% reputation. I don't think this person is buying all those. I had one for sale and the person keeps giving me the run around. Never had an issue with eBay until these items came out. I also have never sold anything over $100 on eBay either. Any insight so I can understand and avoid these shenanigans I would appreciate it.

Driving up supply and demand. It's shill bidding, and should be reported to ebay. He's trying to drive up the overall value on the item, so that people will pay more for his. Reputation only comes in to play on shipped items. If he never pays for your items, he still gets off with no punishment. Block his user ID and report him to ebay.

It's not shill bidding unless the bidder has an established relationship with the seller. Typically, only verifiable family connections and employment/business relationships will meet the criteria for shill bidding strongly enough for eBay's staff to actually do something about it.

I don't condone what the person is doing, Sharpeido, but the only real way to stop him is to make him eat some of his bids. Set yourself a personal maximum (including shipping) that you'll bid for your desired item, and bid up to that amount, but not more. If the crazy bidder person bids higher, let him buy it. He'll be taking a loss financially (most likely) and if that happens enough, he'll stop bidding.

Understanding eBay in one easy lesson,

It's a scam.

An even better idea, actually, is to not get emotionally attached to any of the "chase" variant Skylanders. Yeah, they're cool looking, and different, but ultimately they're still just little plastic toys, and their value will go down, not up, in the long run.

Quote: Pyrofer

Understanding eBay in one easy lesson,

It's a scam.

Not really. One just has to exercise caution and patience when dealing with eBay.
There are SOME scammers out there, obviously, but MOST of the sellers with established feedback track records are legitimate.

Holy crap. I hadn't looked at the eBay sales for these "metal" swapper chase variants until I saw this thread.
$400 - $600 each?

Some of ya'll bidding on those have lost your marbles!

EDIT: OK, I figured out who the culprit is/was, OP. The guy's eBay name is "the fossil" (with underscores between all the letters in the account name). That's funny, because I have reported this clown to eBay on numerous occasions last year after I caught him "borrowing" photographs from my files for his eBay listings. This is not the first time his name/account has been brought up for delinquent activity in these forums.

I personally had to call him by phone last year to complain about Negative Feedback that he'd left on my eBay profile because he was insulted that I had blocked his account from making additional purchases from my store. To his credit, he did redact the Negative Feedback after our phone conversation, but I definitely got the impression in speaking with him that he's a hermit shut-in type that spends WAY too much time and emotional investment in eBay'ing. Feel badly for him, in a way.

Regardless, now that I've identified who the OP is talking about, I agree with post #2 in this thread. Definitely block "the fossil", and if you're so inclined, report him to eBay. I'd be very surprised if "the fossil" doesn't have a fairly lengthy file of customer complaints on file with eBay, despite his feedback score.

Thanks for all the feedback. Again I have had great success on eBay with smaller priced items. Fossil is one of the guys and there is also Mikefran2013. Is there another venue for selling/trading with better results?

Quote: BahamutBreaker

I don't condone what the person is doing, Sharpeido, but the only real way to stop him is to make him eat some of his bids. Set yourself a personal maximum (including shipping) that you'll bid for your desired item, and bid up to that amount, but not more. If the crazy bidder person bids higher, let him buy it. He'll be taking a loss financially (most likely) and if that happens enough, he'll stop bidding.

I'm not sure I'm looking at the same guy you all are, but I see one buyer who has 8 retracted bids in 30 days, 25 in 6 months. So no, apparently he won't have to take a loss as he can just retract his bid if someone calls his bluff. Ebay would do well to limit the number of bid retractions a buyer can have. Mistakes can happen, but this is obviously not mistakes.

Agreed on setting your own personal max on variants. Pretty much everything I want is over my max these days, so I'm out of the market. Prices seems much better around Christmas.

Quote: BahamutBreaker

An even better idea, actually, is to not get emotionally attached to any of the "chase" variant Skylanders. Yeah, they're cool looking, and different, but ultimately they're still just little plastic toys, and their value will go down, not up, in the long run.

I've been wondering about future prices of variants, thought about making a thread about it. I'd like to disagree with you , but I can't.

Quote: Sharpeido

Thanks for all the feedback. Again I have had great success on eBay with smaller priced items. Fossil is one of the guys and there is also Mikefran2013. Is there another venue for selling/trading with better results?

The other options are Amazon and Craigslist.
Both have their obvious "pros" and "cons".

eBay is still your best bet, offering the broadest selection and most visibility. You just have to have realistic expectations, and be aggressive about blocking lowlife accounts.

All of this talk may actually motivate me to sell all of my extras I've been meaning to do now for 6 months. I just know I have some nutcases out there waiting to be delt with...haven't sold there since 2006.

Just don't sell them for anything over MSRP or you'll be labeled a dirty scalper.

I need to try and unload some of my extras on eBay as well - Craigslist was a joke - although it might have helped if I had listed them individually and put real effort into it.

It's a shame we don't have a B/S/T forum here.

Quote: UncleBob

Just don't sell them for anything over MSRP or you'll be labeled a dirty scalper.

I need to try and unload some of my extras on eBay as well - Craigslist was a joke - although it might have helped if I had listed them individually and put real effort into it.

It's a shame we don't have a B/S/T forum here.

People forget that there's time and effort (which isn't free) and eBay fees, so I really don't care what I'm labelled. I just want the damn things out of my house.

I personally think Craigslist is too risky, too cumbersome...

Quote: GhostRoaster

I personally think Craigslist is too risky, too cumbersome...

All I know is that when I listed my lot on Craigslist, I didn't get one legitimate reply.

Quote: UncleBob

Quote: GhostRoaster

I personally think Craigslist is too risky, too cumbersome...

All I know is that when I listed my lot on Craigslist, I didn't get one legitimate reply.

So you got a bunch of people wanting it for free?

I got people wanting to scam me via PayPal. Not that anyone who uses PayPal is a scammer, but when you ask them follow up questions you can get a good idea of what they're planning to do.

Right, because PayPal will return money if there's no "shipping address" or "confirmation of payment". The whole impetus of Craigslist is in person, which is totally contrary to how PayPal works. Kinda cheesy and stupid scam; only the naive fall for that.

Quote: Matteomax

Yeah, that guy should be banned with that type of cheapskate bidding. Not cool.

Perhaps you could ban him from our site then?

See post #1276 from this thread:
//forum.darkspyro.net/spyro/vi...c=44202&page=26

Look near the top of the screen in the 2nd photo.

BahamutBreaker, I never would have noticed that. Fine detective work there.

I have a fine eye for details. Thanks, Skylandscaper.
I'll be interested to see if the community and admin staff here have the guts to address this.

lol... it's a witch hunt. A good, ol' fashioned witch hunt.

I've only sold a couple of figures on eBay and it was totally not worth the effort. I would have been better off throwing them in the bin or giving them away on the street.

If craigslist is all about "in person" then they can pay cash, otherwise why do it in person???

Quote: Pyrofer

I've only sold a couple of figures on eBay and it was totally not worth the effort. I would have been better off throwing them in the bin or giving them away on the street.

If craigslist is all about "in person" then they can pay cash, otherwise why do it in person???

In my case, the folks trying to scam me were always from out of state and wanted me to ship them (and always throwing in a pretty penny for shipping). They'd get all defensive and upset when I said in-person only, cash-only. One guy tried to invoke Jesus.

Quote: UncleBob

Quote: Pyrofer

I've only sold a couple of figures on eBay and it was totally not worth the effort. I would have been better off throwing them in the bin or giving them away on the street.

If craigslist is all about "in person" then they can pay cash, otherwise why do it in person???

In my case, the folks trying to scam me were always from out of state and wanted me to ship them (and always throwing in a pretty penny for shipping). They'd get all defensive and upset when I said in-person only, cash-only. One guy tried to invoke Jesus.

Its funny, I was selling a surface pro this weekend on Craigslist and I had a guy text me from Ohio and I'm in Texas about it. He wanted me to send it to his daughter instead of him. I'm in the IT field so I'm well aware of the scams they run where if i sent it and excepted PayPal for it that he could and most likely would have filed a claim that he never received it. I told him that if he wanted it I could do it but it would have to be done through escrow.com. Its a pretty nice site. For those who don't know about it but do a lot of transactions it might be something to look into. Its free to sign up and basically what happens is you both sign up and then you agree on the terms and submit the agreement. Then escrow asks the buyer to pay for the merchandise. once the funds clear they tell the seller to send the merchandise to the buyer. once the buyer receives it they have certain amount of time to inspect it based on what you guys decided in the agreement. there is a little fee based on the price of the merchandise that either person can pay or that can be split. Once the buyer says it is fine or the time frame is up for the inspection process the funds are released to the seller. SO in theory it protects both sides in making sure everyone is honest on the transaction. Sorry got side tracked with that. but back to this guy. I mentioned this and he said no he wanted to do PayPal and I said that's fine if I mailed it to his confirmed address with signature required. the whole time we were texting he kept say you can trust me I would never do anything like that and I kept saying oh I know but this protects both sides. Once I said I could PayPal with my signature to his confirmed address he stopped texting me. I guess he figured out he wasn't gonna get to scam me and moved onto the next target.

Quote: BahamutBreaker

Quote: Matteomax

Yeah, that guy should be banned with that type of cheapskate bidding. Not cool.

Perhaps you could ban him from our site then?

See post #1276 from this thread:
//forum.darkspyro.net/spyro/vi...c=44202&page=26

Look near the top of the screen in the 2nd photo.

If you looked down a few more posts in post 1277 you can clearly see the full name in last picture of snowderdash.

I once sold a Macbook on eBay with "Will not post internationally, UK ONLY" in the auction...
The winner said "I live in UK but am out of state for a few weeks, please can you ship it to my sister in Nigeria"

Let's just say I didn't send it. Does anybody believe the UK is a US state???

The current theory is they do this stuff on purpose as a kind of "stupid test" to weed out anybody with half a brain early on so they don't waste time trying to convince people who won't fall for it.