Mahalo!

Oh and research what your item is worth. That's what I did when buying that computer system I mention above. I wasn't willing to pay higher than a 20% discount from retail. That includes shipping.

as mentioned earlier albeit without the URL, www.justnsipe.com is useful for bidding for automated last minute bidding.

@Troy F.: You are absolutely right. Figure what you are willing to pay (and then snipe).

What I like about ebay is that it's such an efficient marketplace. What price something goes for is what it's worth to the buyer at that time. (Usually.)

I suppose if you misspell your item the same way the average moron who's willing to significantly overpay for whatever used junk you're selling, you'll get more of them finding your item when they misspell on the search. Talk about a black art! I wonder how much eye of newt you have to use for the incantations...

So far it's lit every single time.

If you are willing to accept small problems with stuff you need, eBay can be a good place to buy stuff that can't be sold as new in a store but works just as well.

I just laughed, and bought the 100% plastic playing cards I was there to buy for a fair price.

In hindsight, I should have reported that seller for trying to scam buyers.

Side rant: I wanted to support local businesses and buy from someone local, but no one seems to sell KEM cards that last forever but they'll sell cheap Bicycle decks that you have to replace over and over and over and over ...

The corporate conspiracy theorist in me thinks they sell the planned-obsolecence stuff on purpose and MAKE you work to buy the good stuff. The only other places that had the good stuff other than the manufacturer (which as usual sells at MSRP which is higher than the real world) or online ...

It's like sometimes they WANT to lose their business to the Internet ...

In fact, try not to think of the auction as something that you "win" or "lose." You are naming your price - anything more is a ripoff. Master the art of determining the value of things before buying them. It's useful in most purchasing situations.

And what is with the jackasses who set a Buy It Now price of $50.00 and place the starting bid at $49.99?

I've seen this on eBay too -- people enter high max bids to ensure they get the item and then the price gets run up when lower bidders try to get the item. I even had someone try to weasel out of paying when this happened to them -- but since my auction was a "no cancellations" auction, they had to pay. And that was the only negative feedback I've ever received ...

I like the idea of the in-game auction house above, though -- they put the money in escrow and are not just an intermediary the way eBay is so there is no such thing as a nonpaying buyer, and since the items are all electronic and are also placed in escrow, no such thing as a non-shipping seller. But eBay isn't going to do that -- no way could they handle warehousing all that stuff.

General advice to all: Go through escrow.com if you're buying/selling anything big. Don't get ripped off.

Just like real life, I mostly use the auction system to dump crap I don't want.

And what's really scary is that people overpay for this crap. I sold an item and listed it for 10,000 in-game money units. The auction system chewed on it for a second and then spit out 40,000 minus the listing fee... so I got something like 3.5x what I expected.

Too many suckers out there are willing to overpay for stuff because they get the "I gotta have it" syndrome instead of waiting for a good deal.

The last few items I bought on eBay I bought by placing the minimum bid rather than using the buy-it-now price. On the most recent sale, the few bucks I saved (it was a small item) meant I could request faster shipping, so as to receive it by the deadline of when I actually need it - for the same price as the BiN price + slow shipping. Not bad ...

One "caveat emptor" aspect to this is if someone is dumb enough to list an item when it's spelled wrong, they might have made a few other mistakes in their listing.

Enter (x,y,z) into eBay's search and it has the same effect as using OR in a Google search. (Phyfe, Fife, fyfe) would increase your chance of finding a good deal even more.

It's also a great way to search for clothing or accessories when there are only specific brands you are interested in. Instead of looking at Jeans -> Levis and only getting Levis, go into the main Jeans section and stick (levis, dickies, etc.) into the search and you'll be able to filter through a list of just the brands you're interested in. Try it sometime, it's helpful.

Cheers

If I were more ambitious, I would resell it all correctly spelled.

That takes away all the fun.

Next tip... save yourself $$ and SNIPE.

At least it used to.

Ebay is getting so popular that deals are getting harder and harder to find. I haven't found a spectacular deal in years.