Misclassified ebay auctions, good game deals to be had

[sloan]

Once in a while, I stumble upon a misclassified game on ebay, and the rewards can be nice.

Case in point: I was doing a search for some game I cannot remember and Tempest 2000 for Sega Saturn turned up in the results for no good reason that I could tell. I clicked on the auction link and looked it over and there was no mention whatsoever of my originally searched-for game, nor was the picture of that game. No, this was, indeed an auction for Tempest 2000 for Saturn, in mint condition I might add. I was happy to be the only bidder on this and won the auction for $15.95, far less than the lowest properly classified Saturn Tempest 2000, at $45.00 with case and manual. I used ebay search tool to search for "Saturn Tempest 2000" and this auction did not turn up in the results, so am guessing that most others interested in this game never saw the auction I won.

Has this happened to anyone else?

[djshok]

Yeah it happened to me with The Punisher for Genesis which I scored CIB for $20. Also you know what else is awesome, is when people misspell the name of their item and it doesn't show up on most searchers.

[sloan]

Y, but to find the misspelled games, don't you have to purposely misspell the name in your search field?

[jb143]

Y, but to find the misspelled games, don't you have to purposely misspell the name in your search field?

There are online programs where you can enter what you're searching for and it will find all the misspelled variation listings on eBay for you. But now with built in spell check so common, I'd think there'd be much fewer deals to be had than there used to be.

[SpaceFlea]

Yeah, I scored Champ Soccer '94 for Sega CD CIB on a $10 BIN when it was selling regularly for $90-100 because the guy had it listed under "Beyond the Limit." He had forgotten to change the title when he copied another auction listing, but had the inner details stating it was for the soccer game. I sent him a query about it, and he confirmed it was for the soccer game - I bought it immediately.

I also scored Final Fantasy for the MSX2 CIB for a very good price. The guy had it listed as "Final Fntasy."

[sloan]

I sent him a query about it, and he confirmed it was for the soccer game - I bought it immediately.

I contacted the seller on a misclassified NES rarity once, I think it was S.C.A.T. listed for something really low like $5. I was confused because the auction description was for another game, but the heading and picture were for S.C.A.T. He replied, confirming it was indeed an auction for S.C.A.T., but also corrected the auction listing and description, alerting all the other searches for this game. After that, the bidding went like crazy on this game and I dropped out of the running. Since then, I never contact the sellers on these anymore. Just place my bid and hope for the best.

[djshok]

Y, but to find the misspelled games, don't you have to purposely misspell the name in your search field?

Well if you're intentionally searching for them, yes you'd have to. But say you're just searching for a general thing like Sega Genesis games, and they spelled Sega and Genesis correctly but misspell the game title, then it'll show up, and you'll feel so lucky if you score some awesome deal this way. It's happened to me a few times. Once with Lunar for Sega CD which I got for $10, and another time with some other stupidly expensive game that sold for cheap because no one saw the listing.

[Zama]

A few years ago, while searching a Japanese copy of Star Ocean for the Super Famicom, I came across an auction that misspelled Ocean and I brought it complete for $10 including shipping