Buying old consoles off ebay

[chadtower]

Okay, I just bought a boxed Odyssey2 off ebay. The joysticks are rusted, the whole thing is dirty, and I'm just pretty teed off since none of this was mentioned. Is this common with older hardware off ebay? This is my first older hardware purchase from ebay and I'm really hoping that this guy who sold it to me is just a dildo...

Not only that, but the dildo shipped it by merely wrapping the O2 box in brown paper! The box took a good amount of damage along the way.

Damn, relooking at the pic from ebay, it DID take some good damage, and it looks like between then and shipping he freakin' spilled something on the box!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...013909185&rd=1

[Achika]

NONE of the consoles I've ever bought off of eBay have looked like that. Unless you keep the systems in a garage or under a leaky faucet, they usually don't have rust. I'm just gonna guess he's a plain old dildo that doesn't know any better since he's rather new. Or he thinks he's innocent enough to get away with "forgetting" to describe something to a T. (probably not the latter, but who really knows?) Well, I take that back, if he's smart enough to realize there are differences in the O2, then he probably realized that he shouldn't put all the facts in or it wouldn't sell. The only thing I've had shipped in brown paper wrapper is my Jaguar set, but then, it didn't take much of a beating luckily.

[Pop Culture Portal]

I'll go with the dildo thing, too...wrapped in the remnants of a brown paper bag or something similar? Good God!

[Sylentwulf]

BE a prick and try to get your money back, that's unacceptable.

[Raedon]

yea..get your money back and leave negative feedback. I don't buy hardware off ebay period. learned my lesson on my first auction win, a C64 and 1541 way back when.. dude shipped it loose in a huge box no packing. The c64 was in 2 parts, sheered down the center. (the 1541 survived though) Guy had 2 feedback and lived in Canada. Of course he never returned my emails and even though I left negative that account closed like 6 months later.

In the end I used parts off the c64 to fix at least 4 other c64's from dead memory to missing keys so it wasn't a loss, just a learning experience about Ebay.

even pictures can be decieving, I've heard of people photoshopping items in an attempt to downplay label, console physical defects. There was someone complaining about a vader 2600 that arrived all greyed as if left in the sun, but the picture looked fine. Apparently the seller had used Photoshop to change the contrast of the image to mask the defect.

Of course all the hardware I sell on ebay is great! at least I say what problems it has.. Like this I have up.. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...018759303&rd=1

Now I could have sold it AS IS. but I'm no used car salesman..

[chadtower]

It's not worth the effort to get my money back. It's a $10 item that I spent $10 to ship... to ship it back, another $10, to get my original $10 back? Forget that! I'll fire the unit up, make sure it works, and then hunt for a better unit. Then I can trade this one, honestly describing it, to someone else. I left him a neutral since his description really didn't say anything about the condition and I just assumed it was good.

[badinsults]

*shrugs*

I bought a boxed pal snes with 4 boxed games off ebay last November, and the person only charged $7 for shipping... I was kind of worried about that as people have charged me that much for one boxed game. Meanwhile, 4 days after winning the auction, I recieved it, everything was bubblewrapped inside a cardboard computer box, and in perfect condition (I had only sent payment 1 day before receiving it)! The best ebay seller ever, IMO!

[mcgrail0007@netzero.net]

I have bought a lot of hardware off of eBay. Some items have been great and some have been crap. I bought 4 systems that were advertised new. The "new" Arcadia 2001 and "new" Astrocade ended up being slightly used and not in working condition. The "new" Odyssey that I bought seemed like it had flood damage. The new Channel F system was perfect. It still had the new system smell.

I also have bought several used systems with better success. I was able to get practically brand new Astrocades, Vectrex, and Atari 5200 systems. All of these were in better shape than my original system.

You just never know what you will get when dealing with eBay. Some people also use pictures of "similar" items.

[MyNameIsBoB]

I recently bought a Nintendo and in the description for it it says: "System works, but games usually require re-adjusting and blowing on them a few times, but I am saying sold as is as a precaution." System did not work, except for 1 out of 100 times, and even then the screen was messed up where the game was hardly playable. Of course, the guy never left me a feedback like half the asses on ebay, so I'm giving him a negitave for saying the system works when it doesn't even if he did say sold as is. I will continue to buy on ebay, but there are just too many asses that will lie to get more money than they deserve.

[Phosphor Dot Fossils]

I've recently been gathering the Odyssey dedicated consoles that Magnavox put out between the original Odyssey and the O2, and the varying quality on these things has been one of my most exasperating eBay collecting experiences ever. Some are dirty, some are spotlessly clean, they all work, but one seller just slapped it into a box with no packaging, meaning the damn thing was sliding around for the whole trip (thank God for solid state technology, eh?). Another one was kinda funny - the auction said it was boxed, but I guess I now need to ask "which box?" as it arrived in the box for a printer.