http://www.ebay.com/itm/250965622502?ss ... 1423.l2649

Looks like someone got them to end the auction early - anyone we know?
Nice Hawaii edition Bullmark Godzilla.....

Probably the same "A helpful EBayer wrote to say this is a "super rare Godzilla. It a Hawaii version. Notice the nice metallic green spray on the body and the gold spray on his back of the spine. The Japan version is more plain in color." I don't know enough to confirm this for sure, but thought it might be helpful information." was the person who made an offer.....

i deal with stuff like this all the time in the action figure world. collectors taking advantage of someone who doesn't know what they have. i came across a "80s fantasy action figures" lot once that included 2 speclatron figures. the auction had 6 bids, making the auction up to around ten bucks and some change. i realized these 6 bidders knew what they were going for even though the seller didn't. granted, i could have attempted to get some high-ball figures for cheap doing the whole low-b all offers. but, for some reason, i felt generous, and kind of vindictive, screwing over these other bidders (i was relatively broke at this time). i let the seller know what they had in the lot. they changed the auction title, bringing in more search hits, and the lot went for way more than these first 6 bidders probably expected. i felt both good and bod for doing this. i felt it the only fair way to keep both seller and potential buyer happy... admittedly, i have become somewhat of an action figure flipper. i search out poorly listed lots for that hidden gold, and turn around the few rare pieces with properly identified auctions and make a killing. i felt bad at first, but then i realized it was all about being paid for knowledge. take, for example, the show jeopardy. are you going to tell your opponent the proper answers during their turn, if you know them? its all semantics, and is useless trying to figure it out. i don't know if this is relevant to the auction scenario or not. just wanted to share my 2 cents. awesome goji, by the way....

Apparently she is going to hold on to it for a while. This is the response I got:

"Hi. We haven't sold it. The Godzilla belongs to my son and was given to him by my sister when he was a child. Our family always thought it was a fun toy but to be honest had no idea how rare and even valuable this toy is (as you could probably tell from my terrible description!). After much agonizing we have decided to remove the listing, do some more research, and then make a decision about whether or not to re-list with a better description.

I'm terribly sorry, I know this is disappointing to a lot of collectors, please accept my apologies."

So now they know its worth a shit ton of money they need to maximize profits.

Thanks helpful EBayer!

Finding underpriced/mislisted gems is kind of the point of eBay. It's not taking advantage of the seller; it's the responsibility of the seller to determine the value of the item that they are selling. If you don't want to deal with the time and costs of researching the item, then you live with the consequences of potentially underpricing it. Frankly, people that tip the seller off kind of ruin it for everyone else. Unless you know the seller personally, I don't really understand the motivation for people that do this.

I agree with Daniel 100%. How rare is it to find a listing where the seller absolutely has no idea and you could possibly get a good deal? Not often. I mean even if you know nothing of the item you're selling, in this modern age with shows like Antiques Roadshow all over etc etc, people have to assume old= might equal cash. If you don't do research than you deserve to not make the money. I know nothing of say old cookie jars but I'd be damned if I found a bunch I would not research the value before listing.

Man this is such a hard area to weigh in on.

On one hand, if people are desperate for money and are turning to ebay to painfully sell anything and everything as a last resort... yes they probably deserve optimization of their listings.

On another - sounds like this auction was just a way to get rid of some old things, and ebay is a great way to remove unwanted clutter. Same as craigslist,etc.

I spend countless hours of each day combing physical locations, online auction listings, and every possible thing I can imagine to keep an eye out so nothing gets missed. I DO THE WORK. I'm hunting shit down. So I would never tip someone off if the thousands of hours finally pay of FOR MY HARD WORK in the form of a find.

Sadly, with the mix of views of this and possible routes one may come in contact, most people list an item for way too much or pull it and sit on it.
Or worse, send it to the AFA.

Run a search on Daltanious Godaikin on ebay right now... and see what happens when an old toy warehouse get's cleaned out by un-informed idiots who only care about turning a buck out of toys they know nothing of.

This toy should have went to one of us who could treasure it and let it continue in her son's tradition of care.
Before someone spilled the beans, it was only valuable to us.
To her it was just an old toy.

And there is nothing wrong with that. It lived a happy life with their family.

Gotta agree with Sean. If you want to find a deal, spend the time doing the searches. You deserve to reap the profit for your hard work. But this auction had Godzilla and Bullmark in the title. There was no way it was not going to get fair market value. The seller should have just let it run its course.

that's what i was kind of trying to get at. bidding on something that is poorly listed is one thing, but throwing that low-ball, tongue-in-cheek offer to end early is the shady stuff i disagree with. its good to hear they decided to pull the item instead of selling it for a measly $20, imo.

But that's not the example you used. In your example, there was a poorly titled auction with several bidders and a low current bid. You then tipped the seller off, which led the seller to change the auction title and which in turn led to the final bid going higher than it likely would have originally. One of the initial bidders could have found a bargain due to the seller's lack of diligence, if not for your intervention. To rephrase: rather than allow a bidder to reap the reward of thorough auction searches, you chose to give the seller a windfall for being ignorant and lazy. And for what? Good feelings for you?

At any rate, $20 was the starting bid here. I agree with Kingboy; it probably would have gone much higher if left alone anyway.

^^^
i apologize for this post. the whole thing was worded wrong. now reading it, i realize that the transgression from what i had done in the past (1st part of post) to how i handle these situations/auctions now (last part of my post) was completely lost. the whole thing made more sense in my head, just didn't make it to the typed form properly. forget it was even said.

This is a hard one to way in on, as honestly, I can see both sides of the situation. I think for the majority of people who see this as the buyer's responsibility have also been inundated with all the other crap and bad experiences that come with using the 'bay, and other re-selling markets, so a degree of jaded-ness and tough love attitude comes with that. At the same time, not everyone in the world is fully internet savvy, and no one should really be 'ripped off' for not having expert knowledge of something. Sure there is an amount of legwork that ought to be done, but I wouldn't also buy an old widow's war medals for a dime at a yard sale. It works both ways. I do think that ending ebay auctions early is pretty lame in any case, but again, has become a sad fact of the current system.

At any rate, I bought this for 19.99, and will be stroking it while laughing maniacally to myself at your disfortune for many years to come

It will be interesting to se what happens to this figure. If they do indeed relist it, how many people are seriously going to charge after it and pay the "going rate" for this figure? Justifying those kind of price tags is a difficult thing for most people to do, and most of the super serious collectors already have it. If left alone, it would have gone for more than they expected, but probably pretty cheap (relatively speaking). It is a tricky road. Are you amped you got something for less than value, but just because someone does not know what something is, do they deserve less than its true value? Ideally a nice middle ground would happen, but you never know. We'll see what happens when it pops back up! (and yes, I got multiple emails assuming I had managed to end this auction and get this toy, but I didn't even see this auction early on!) Luckily, I already have one!

damn, Baller-Blocking. that's some cold, pricky, shit.

We all dream of getting that great deal, but the people here are nice folks; taking advantage of the old, infirm and ignorant is not really part of the dream. Now, if you run into someone having a rummage/garage sale who is snobby or arrogant or just plain rude, well then, the dream is pretty valid. Tipping off strangers? Hmm, kind of a coin toss. I think that it must be a semi-random feeling of the moment deal.

I'm crying that I didn't even see that listing. Damn.

If you're smart enough to make eBay listings, I think you're savvy enough to run a few Google searches. You guys make it sound like we're hustling desperate old ladies selling their last possessions. This is an eBay seller that is trying to make a quick buck selling their kids' toys. Moreover, they actually knew enough to list it as a "Bullmark." The real question is whether they deserve to make $20 or $2,000 (just an example, not an appraisal) of spending cash. I'd say you deserve the extra zeros if you do the work, if you get it otherwise, you're just lucky.

Fascinating issue. I don't think it makes sense to draw a moral line in the sand on this one. There are compelling motivations behind either approach.

yet selling RxH Chaos adults on Skullbrain for @ the same price as Rotofugi, Myplasticheart, and Lulubell somehow makes you a bad guy.


Thanks helpful Skullbrainer!

Those are online retailers. Apples and oranges. Thanks for taking the time to stalk me.

got it. so the purpose of ebay is to rip off naive sellers and skullbrain is for selling at the retail equivalent or lower but not US online retail price because that makes you a flipper. Thank you again for straightening this out, I appreciate your efforts to regulate pricing... is that an elected position on this forum or did you take it upon yourself ?

clap, clap, clap...

Thanks for bringing your bitching here.

This forum sucks more and more everyday.

By bitching, do you mean showing support for fair market value ?

Not sure how that makes this forum worse than someone actively dumping on a For Sale thread but I guess his join date comes before mine so I must be in the wrong.

Dude, Flynn posted a question about a Godzilla auction. You couldn't get enough slambashing in over on the other guys sales thread? I think the winter's got us all a little testy, but let's just try to keep our farting (yes I did actually write farting) in it's respective place. We all understood what you were saying over there.

UUgghh, Republicans, am I right guys...<chirp, chirp>

pointing out the hypocrisy of ripping off naive ebay sellers yet going above and beyond to call out another Skullbrain forum member repeatedly in their own sales post for asking the average US retail price... I guess the irony is lost on you.