eBay centric collecting. Sorry guys, can't do it!

[ianoid]

There's something so vapid about bidding on eBay as the primary mode of collecting.

Sure I use eBay to supplement my collection, but if I had to use eBay strictly for everything, I probably wouldn't have much of a collection, and I wouldn't be so head over heals into this hobby. It just doesn't sound like much fun to me.

I love the hunt. I dig having contacts in 40 countries. I love mailing packages to get a different one back. Meetings are a major highlight, and a great place to trade, meet people, play games, and buy stuff. I'm addicted to thrifting and flea markets and yard sales and junk piles. Game nites are a blast.

But the oft lonely world of the eBay only collector is just plain sad, for some reason.

And buying stuff on eBay so you can turn it over on eBay is sad, too. Sorry Sylentwulf. I know it works! I just can't get used to the idea. I go for good deals for my tradelist, but all the sales- it's just pimping of the pleasure principle.

I can't explain why these things bug me- they just do!

[Buyatari]

I have tried trading with Ian but I just can't do it.

He always wants the good stuff and doesn't want to give up anything rare. He is too tough to deal with.

You have better luck getting over on a used car salesman or the gypsies on the black market.

Seriously thou..........

Once you have all the common stuff trading is just a pain. I'd sooner pay the cash and get it over with. Most of my trades have taken MONTHS to complete. They never have anything I need and always want the stuff I don't want to get rid of.

You can't trade a boxed Ody2 and a handfull of games for an NES prototype. You just can't.

Thrifts and flee markets were great for building a collection but once you amass a few hundred systems what besides trade bait do you expect to find? And you can't trade common junk for really rare stuff,unless you have Ian broker a deal for ya. :P

The really really rare stuff is just a click away on eBay. I could buy a prototype every week on eBay. Try to duplicate that at the flee market or the thrifts. Sure you might get lucky once but 99% of the time its just stuff you already have.

Adam

[Felixthegamer]

I can see both sides of the argument. E-bay can be a wonderful place. Sooner or later, most games come up for auction. You cannot say the same thing about the local thrift stores or flea market. However, locally hunting for games is fun and is usually cheaper.

I know for me personally, I browse e-bay, but do not buy gaming items all too often. It is, however, nice to know I have an avenue to find something extremely rare or a proto. My collection is considerably smaller then most here. I can still go to the flea market and find games I need to fill holes in my collection. I still need many common games. I understand some people have so much that they are not able to just go out and find games they need. I am sure e-bay breathes new life into their collection.

Trading offers more avenues as well, but I think it would be difficult to determine a fair trade when you are dealing with quite rare games. Although, I have never done well trading. I used to trade baseball cards when I was younger. I know I was "taken" in a lot of trades, but I always got the players or cards I wanted. I suppose if both sides are pleased, then the trade is a decent one.

I think it is okay to find games and sell them too. I personally am not interested in this, but I do not see the harm. This is probably a good way to make money back and then some. I imagine most people who do this, put some of the money back into the hobby by buying more. This is good, right? However, I do have a concern as to how e-bay will impact the hobby in the long term

Trade, hunt, e-bay or other avenues are okay by me as long as you get the games you want and all parties involved are satisfied. We all want certain things for our collections and I hope we all achieve them which ever ways we each see fit.

[Nespit]

I would love to go to meetings, classic gaming expo's etc.. But I live in the netherlands..:-(
Not much to trade here. Yeah the common stuff. But that is not what I want! I want the obscure! The proto's, test stuff, demo's..Etc.
U can't find that here. I've spend 2 years looking for that stuff here. The only place for me to get it is mostly ebay and a few contacts in the US. And that is it! Believe me when I say that I also got a lot of stuff from being on the internet all day long and searching for collectors with nice items and make offers. But the main part of my stuff comes from ebay.. That is the beauty of ebay/yahoo auctions etc.. It is a market place for the entire world. And me, as a rare nintendo items collector, doesn't mind at all..:-)

[Arrrhalomynn]

I'm in exactly the same situation as Nespit. I have never found any games at a thriftstore,fleamarket or something. And specialized gamestores are rare here and usually don't carry classic stuff. There are no meetings that I know of.
The internet is the best place for me to get my stuff. Usually ebay, but also other sites.

[GENESISNES]

I have used ebay for most of my collecting, but i just dont like the feeling that what im bidding on, thousands of people can just stare at. Thats why i like flea markets, garage sales, and goodwill. I can just buy my stuff without all of the collectors fighting over it. pretty much all of my 32x collection came from ebay, but thrift stores are still good, with finding about 30-40 games for sega to nintendo.

[punkoffgirl]

I have used ebay for most of my collecting, but i just dont like the feeling that what im bidding on, thousands of people can just stare at.

See, I'm not the ONLY one that gets that feeling that they're being WATCHED! They are out there, I tell you..

[omnedon]

As a Canadian, I find E-bay far more useful for selling than buying. I used to buy more, but after exchange and duty, even 'cheap' auctions aren't cheap anymore. $10US purchase turns into $30CDN fast after shipping in US funds and then duty charges. Selling however is a different story, where a Canadian can almost never go wrong.

I just hunt really hard. Seems to work for me. And I've got the $5CDN NES Final Fantasy complete in mint box to prove it. It's more fun, in my experience so far. If I was a yank, being paid in US dollars, then buying from E-bay exclusively would no doubt not seem so expensive.

FYI
1 US dollar = 1.58 Canadian dollars therefore my Final Fantasy cost me $3.16 US, no shipping, no duty. Tough to ignore.

[JeffD]

While I do go to an occasional yard sale or thrift, I rely on eBay for my collecting fix. My time is too valuable to be spending it scouring every corner of town. I'd rather pay a premium to get what want quickly. My wife and I both work full time and i'd be missing out if I wasted all my extra time trying to find shit in the wild. You're lucky if you have enought time to kill running around looking for games.

-jd

[Raedon]

Here's the difference. I have no life, so getting out and game hunting is the only time I actually get out :P

I use Ebay only for selling or getting SMS games (only see these locally once every 6 months or so.)

[omnedon]

That's true, I do have time. My wife and I are self employed with a contract job that hasone of us working 5 hours max, at night, 7 days a week. She works 4, I work 4. So, half the time I'm a stay at home Dad, with 2 out of 3 in school.

If we worked 'full time' in the classic sense, no doubt I wouldn't have near the search time. I'm building a small side business now repairing stuff, for local game stores and pawns. I've got stores giving me busted stuff now, or stuff they think is busted anyway. 8)

Even if I had less time, it still sucks to be paid in Canadian $$, and to try to buy on E-bay. After shipping, even a bargain is rarely a 'bargain' anymore. $10 US win = $30CDN spent. :cry:

[Captain Wrong]

I wish I had the option of not doing the 'bay. Recently, I've been getting more trades which is really good but I'm also really into Saturn imports (specifically shmups and fighters) and while fighters show up every once in a blue moon, shmups tend to be the kind of thing you only find on line.

I also think, as others have said, once you get past the commons, unless you've got really good trade bait, or a magic Goodwill, you're kind of screwed. I've had some nice finds in the wild, but it's just not worth 3 weeks of driving all over town every weekend to look at 6 common VCS carts, overpriced Genny sports games, and maybe one SNES cart I want. And this is from someone who actually loves the hunt!

Yeah eBay kind of takes the fun of the hunt out of it, but sniping can be a different kind of fun on it's own.

[digitalpress]

I balance. Not just one one leg but also betwen eBay and "real life" collecting.

I don't spend much time going out of my way anymore to hit flea markets and garage sales. Did a whole day of that this summer with Portnoyd and it came up pretty empty. But if I'm driving by a potential source of games, I always stop.

I do a lot of "collecting" in malls, too. Cheap Dreamcast games, cheap PlayStation games, clearance at K-B. I'll pick things up if they're cheaper than they should be, good trade bait for the real deals later.

I certainly do spend time in eBay. I don't believe in leaving ANY door closed to my particular dementia. I know I pay too much for the stuff on eBay but overall it's balanced out too by the things I've sold there.

Finally, I get my best stuff from collector meetings. NAVA, CGE, PhillyClassic, and even right in my home on a scheduled game nite.

No stone unturned! That's what it's all about.

OH, for you guys in the Netherlands who claim not to have any gamer gatherings, please send me your email address. I can hook you up with the crew there. One of my best friends is from Amsterdam and I've seen pictures of their gamer meetings. Looks like a good time.

[Kroogah]

I live in ROCKFORD, ILLINOIS. Good finds used to turn up fairly often, but I think I've cleaned the entire town out. ^_^

It's pretty damned hard to find imports in the wild, so that's what I shop for on Ebay, mostly.

[portnoyd]

Yeah Joe, what a bomb that was. A shame really. Next year we start on the OTHER side of town :)

As far as I go, being mainly NES is a boon, bc I have the Funcos and the EBs of the world to use as hunting grounds. A Salv Army here.... a crap store there... and that's about it. Maybe once a month or two I do a run up and down half of Jersey through Funcos and EBs for whatever's cool.

Without eBay, I would have like half of what I have now. If even that. There's just not enough time or resources to get where I am right now without the 'Bay.

And Joe's right, conventions and collector meetings are the way to go. People who know what to look for offering for sale stuff people are looking for? Nice system.

And I have no room for trade bait. When I get extras, they getsold as fast as possible. Sad but true :P

dave

[maxlords]

Well, I too am in Canada...Ontario to be exact, and I can't find CRAP at any of the flea markets or thrift stores. I've had a few good scores, but they're VERY few and far between. Now, this is depressing cause I used to live in Oregon until last year, and there I found rare stuff at pawn shops and yard sales and such EVERY WEEK! I'd sell that stuff to finance buying the stuff I wanted that wasn't available in my area.

While eBay is a ridiculous market most of the time, you can get stuff there that is impossible to find in your local market. For instance, most places it's REALLY difficult to get TG16/PC Engine games. Almost my entire collection of TG16 stuff came from eBay. There just weren't any where I lived in Oregon..period. On the other hand, I could get Genesis, SNES, and NES stuff all day long and there was always more. Now that I'm in Canada, there's NOTHING! It's HORRID pickings for games here. I think it has something to do with the fact that the opoulation is smaller than the US and so less games per person were ever shipped here. There's only ONE game store in my area that carries any older stuff, and he wants $150 for a boxed Lufia 2, $100 for a used Shining Force 3 Part 3, $170 for an import Saturn, $100 for Starcraft 64....he's INSANE! All his prices are double or triple eBay prices plus tax. Anyway, it's unfeasible to buy them locally from him, and there aren't any anywhere else, so eBay is my main source now. And omnedon is right, the value of Canadian money makes it REALLY hard to collect here. Minimum wage is $6.85, but the game prices follow the exchange, so you'll end up paying $60-85 per title for a new game + 15% tax! The only reason I can afford to buy games at all is that I sell the games on my website for US dollars and then get to benefit from the conversion rate.

I miss Oregon for games :( But on the upside, I already have most of what I want. The problem with trading is that it's so hard to agree upon a trade, especially when you want rare stuff, and it takes FOREVER sometimes. And don't you hate it when you have to ship first? I'm always so paranoid... Anyway, most of my trades fall through because either people are greedy and won't trade off games cause of their eBay value, or we can't decide on what we want, or they overvalue their games, or they want to trade shitty games for my rare stuff. I've had people offer me $10 in trade for a rare japanese game that would easily sell for $80+ before. And I've had people try to sell me games for $90-100 per game to my store and expect me to pay top eBay prices for them. People don't understand that if you sell games on a site, you can't pay top dollar, or you go out of business for lack of profit. Anyway, the long and the short of it is that most traders think too highly of their games, and won't haggle, and it leaves me out in the cold, so I don't trade often. If people wanted to trade fairly straight across for stuff, no problem. but few do. So eBay is the way to go for me. I just wait till an item shows up at the price I want. If it goes too high, another one will ALWAYS be forthcoming anyway :)

[omnedon]

I share your pain maxlords.. BUT.. mattpfeil here on this message board once told me nothing was to be found at the Goodwills.Since then, he's got a complete SNES, and a SMS from Goodwills and Value Villages in the last 2 weeks. And he just started going with me. Minimum once a week I hit the three closest Goodwills and VV's. I go to a street with lots of pawns, and park. An hours walking neteed matt and I a pile of loot, including that NES Final fantasy complete for $5CDN.

Truth is, we need both kinds of collectors. Those with the time and patience to find this stuff in the wild, and those to bid on my finds on E-bay. :) The Ebay stuff doesn't simly "spawn" there right? Someone is finding this stuff.

[Mr. NEStalgia]

I dont have a HUGE collection, or even a rare one, but I still have never bought a single game off of eBay. Nearly all of it has come from garage sales...I just love it when I go to one, look around, and dont see anything - so I just plain out ask the seller...What do you know?!?!?! HE HAS 30 GAMES BOXED UP IN HIS CLOSET!!! You just gotta love that feeling.

Sure I look on eBay, but I am never gonna spend some of those ridiculous prices...but if I ever see a good deal on eBay, I wont be afraid to take it ;)

-=Mr. NEStalgia=-

[maxlords]

I share your pain maxlords.. BUT.. mattpfeil here on this message board once told me nothing was to be found at the Goodwills.Since then, he's got a complete SNES, and a SMS from Goodwills and Value Villages in the last 2 weeks. And he just started going with me. Minimum once a week I hit the three closest Goodwills and VV's. I go to a street with lots of pawns, and park. An hours walking neteed matt and I a pile of loot, including that NES Final fantasy complete for $5CDN.

Truth is, we need both kinds of collectors. Those with the time and patience to find this stuff in the wild, and those to bid on my finds on E-bay. :) The Ebay stuff doesn't simly "spawn" there right? Someone is finding this stuff.

I hit em as much as I can, but there's just totally slim pickings in Ontario compared to Oregon. I can't find anything hardly. My best scores were a Famicom adaptor for $5, Starcraft 64 for $25, and a sealed Super Bomberman 2 and Super Metroid for $15 each. Back home in Oregon I was finding boxed Nomads for $25, Mega Man 1-6 for $3 each, Lunar Eternal Blue for Sega CD for $10, Chrono Trigger, Lufia 2, Mega Man X3, and Castlevania X for $10 each, stuff like that, EVERY week! I got a boxed mint CDX for $40! I find nothing even remotely that good here in Ontario, and what I do find takes WORK to find. It's just not as good of a market at all here. Thing is, you'll find a deal or three once, and then nothing for a month or more sometimes. Speaking of which, where in Canada are you searching? Maybe it's just this area. I have some other gamer friends here locally, and they don't find much either....this is a dry area for gamers :( I'm near London, Ontario.

As for the stuff on eBay, it comes from places like back home in Oregon, where the "rare" stuff is far more plentiful than it is here. There are lots of treasure troves around the US and I'm sure Canada, but I'm just not near any of em. The Goodwills here never have ANYTHING, whereas I found some GREAT stuff back home. Ah well.

I won't pay top dollar on eBay though...I only get stuff I can get for deals. I'm patient :)

[nesman85]

where in oregon did you live? there seems to be hardly any collectors here, but i hardly ever find anything good in the wild.

[maxlords]

I was just outside of Roseburg, Oregon. I used to scour up and down the whole I-5 corridor. The places I found the least stuff were Portland and Salem, but when I hit Roseburg and Eugene, I'd find all kind of great stuff all the time.

In Roseburg, all the pawn shop guys and thrift store people knew me by name and held anything they didn't recognize for me, so I got stuff before it made it to the shelves. I hit them anlost every day in Roseburg too.

Portland and Salem are pretty much picked clean, but I could hit Eugene and find stuff like a mint boxed Pirates Gold w/map for $10. A lot of the stores in southwest Oregon don't know what they have and sell it all dirt cheap cause they buy it for cheap. The local game store in Roseburg got a Dragonball GT Final Bout for $15 in credit while I stood there one day...mint and US. I always found great stuff in Oregon.

There aren't a lot of collectors in Southern Oregon, and the ones there are mostly stick to the later stuff, so if you collect pre-PSX/PS2 stuff, it's great pickings. No one collects the older stuff there so it sells for pennies. Most of the collectors in Oregon are in Portland and Salem, so that's why there's almost nothing. Not to mention there are virtually NO game stores in Southern Oregon, so there's a LOT more old stuff at the pawn shops and thrift stores. I ran into a lady with a Sega CD and 20 games that she wanted to dump for $20 one time. Didn't manage to get it, but I did find a Sega CD/Genesis combo with 35 games including a mint Snatcher, New Horizons, and Shining Force CD for $50 :) Snapped that up!

Just depends on where you are I guess....

[geelw]

plain and simple, it's hard to get good deals in certain places (noo yawk city, for example) because folks know they can get more on ebay (despite the fees and hassle). the import business has dried up a lot, with the exception of stuff one can find online. there are a few quality import dealers, but tracking down older games is a bit time-consuming. that and the fact that i'll see a game on ebay for a few bucks less and grab it then.


ebay is a hell if you don't like it and try to use it or use it improperly. after about 2 years, i almost always buy from the same sellers or deal with new people once in a while. i have a 229 feedback with 800+ tranactions, which doesn't include the 100 or so deals sellers i frequent have offered me off ebay because they don't want to deal with non-payers.

i once had to explain very patiently to one japanese seller just WHY someone would back out on a bid- he had posted some tough to get psx and famicom stuff, and some guy won 8 auctions and decided not to pay up after winning. this shocked him somewhat, especially after he was used to working with folks like me- no b.s., pay up as soon as possible, etc. i used to use yahoo auctions a lot, but i stopped after the hassle of dealing with all those bootleggers there trying to pass of copies as real games. ebay has a lot of them as well, but i'm NOT going to sit on my ass and point out every scumbag- last time i did, i got a form e-mail from them saying i should "contact the origainal copyright holder" and let them know of any "possible" offending items... :roll:

[nesman85]

i live in grants pass. i sometimes go to medford where there are 2 gameshops i know of, i find a lot of games that i already have at the thrift shops, but every once in a while i find something semi uncommon.

[kevincure]

Wow...I live in Eugene (I'm in Boston for college now, but I'll be back soon) and there are certainly slim pickings, though no more so than anywhere else. My bud found a toploader at Goodwill, but that's about it. I've spent a good time looking, but recently, stores like St Vincent want $5 for Genesis Maddens and 10 bucks for common Sega CD games. I think Oregon is best for *newer* stuff. I picked up Tactics Ogre and Ogre Battle for 10 bucks each, for instance.

[Skatepunk60]

I personally love getting packages in the mail and the hunt is cool too but eBay i only use the BIN button cause im lazy

Ive traded with Ianoid though and it went very smooth , how those paddles holdin out by the way ian?

[christianscott27]

i used to find more stuff because i didnt have so much, thats the thing about collecting, after the third copy "space jockey" the thrill is gone but no matter i just keep on shopping and trading. likewise trading becomes harder too since i'm 75% complete on most systems but thats not so bad. i enjoy thrifting and fleas for reasons beyond game collecting so i'd be doing that anyways. as for ebay i can only use it to build my obscure collections like handheld arcade classics and lynx games. ebay is ok as long as you dont go nuts but it'll never approach the thrill of finding "the box of old games" in the wild.

the more systems you collect for the more you'll find thats for sure...for further rants on this topic visit our site and read my collecting tips.
________
Bbw Facehumpers (http://www.fucktube.com/categories/209/facehumpers/videos/1)

[ClubNinja]

I too try to avoid for game collecting most of the time. I only use it for specific stuff like Sonic or Mega Man junk that I want, or the obscure/foreign stuff that I dig. I'll also buy games that I actually want to *play* on there. I save stuff like Sears Asteroids for the fleas or trades. It just gets way too pricey on there for my blood 98% of the time.

[Mayhem]

Thrift stores, pawn shops, Goodwill type places... don't really exist much down this half of my country. Further up north you see more of them (think about it... less income) plus the boot sales have far greater pickings as well. Seeing as I'm a C64 geezer and a lot of the C64 carts were US only... easy to figure out there...

C64 cart collection w/ internet/eBay: almost 300
C64 cart collection if no net access: probably less than 30

Nuff said :P

[Sylentwulf]

I'm in exactly the same situation as Nespit. I have never found any games at a thriftstore,fleamarket or something. And specialized gamestores are rare here and usually don't carry classic stuff. There are no meetings that I know of.
The internet is the best place for me to get my stuff. Usually ebay, but also other sites.

Sums it up perfectly without any useless babble. Perfectly stating my feelings on the situation :)

[Rogmeister]

Ebay is one of several places I get games. My policy these days is to never bid over $10 on a game there, however, so I don't get burned too much if someone offering a game turns out to be dishonest. I recently wound up the high bidder on these...I think I was the lone bidder on all but one...

Global Gladiators (Genesis)--This arrived today. I actually went looking for this due it's getting a mention on Judgment Day (G4).

Virtua Tennis (Dreamcast)--I have the followup, Tennis 2K2, so I didn't really need this but it was cheap...less than $5.

40 Winks (Playstation)--This is the one title of the four that's brand new, still in shrinkwrap. It didn't get a lot of praise in reviews but I decided to take a chance on t.

Kickle Cubicle (NES)--A woman I know on the net isn't a hardcore gamer but she said she used to like playing this so I went looking for it...again, it's cheap so if I hate it, no biggie...

[ianoid]

Ahh, it seems my point is well taken.

Most of you get at least 50% of your stuff outside of eBay, and almost all of you get at least 10% of your stuff outside of eBay.

I use everything I can to get the goods, it's opportunism all the way. I prefer the local hunt, but I'll go to eBay for searching fun and specific needs. There have only been a couple things I've gone out of my way for on eBay recently(i.e. in the last year), with the rest being random scores and searches.

Without eBay, I'd have fewer protos and a few less super rares, but I'm probably 97% eBay free in the collection zone. I admit that eBay can be great fun and really helps you get the games you want, if you're willing to pay. I'm certainly not trying to attack it as a resource.

I'm happy to see everyone's so resourceful around here and at least tries to get away from their computer long enough to find something in the wild or in their attic or wherever.

Would it be unreasonable to create a survey?

ian
the other Bewlay Brother

[omnedon]

Hey ianoid!

If you are the other Bewlay Brother, what am I?

( <-see my tag under my name)

A free SMB/DH NES cart to the person who know what the hell I'm talking about, other than ianoid.

[ianoid]

There just aren't enough 'Real Cool Traders' around here, I guess.

[omnedon]

guess not. 8)

Perhaps we're the men who sold the world.

[ianoid]

Actually, that would be Sylentwulf. Have you seen how many listings he puts up on eBay? That guy has sold the world twice over.

[omnedon]

True enough. As it happens, sylentwulf was my "first time".

:wink: