Common records going for insane prices on ebay?

Discussion in 'Marketplace Discussions' started by statcat, Jul 21, 2017.

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  1. statcat

    statcat Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    New Jersey
    Last edited: Jul 21, 2017
  2. GentleSenator

    GentleSenator what if

    Location:
    Aloha, OR
    shill.

    either that, or the comic sans was hypnotizing.
     
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  3. strymeow

    strymeow Forum Resident

    Location:
    central Mass
    Well a shill being the sole explanation would imply someone bidding against the shill, right? In which case someone is out there valuing this record near-ish the winning bid, bringing us back to OP's mystification (which I share).

    Unless two shills were bidding against each other, but wouldn't that defeat the purpose? Unless the shills thought that through their overbidding gambit they would lure in a dupe, in either case they're just bad shills? Maybe I don't know enough about how eBay works. Done a lot of buying but not any selling.

    I'm going with the comic sans explanation.
     
  4. eddiel

    eddiel Senior Member

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    Whenever I see a thread with this sort of topic, the first thing I do is look at the seller. I recognise that seller. They tend to get very good prices for their stuff. I don't follow every auction, but the ones I do, I pull out of the bidding fairly early on in many cases. If you look at the sold auctions you'll see that none of the other auctions got anywhere near this price. But this one is graded M-

    NM, M, M- condition lps aren't necessarily common. How common is this title in complete and M- condition? Probably not that common.

    It's the same thing with original UK pressings of Zeppelin (as one example). Look on ebay and first pressings are plentiful. But M- ones are not and that's why they'll go for 3 times, or more, the price of the lesser graded records, which are common.

    To me this is an example of a perfect storm; amazing condition + highly reputable seller + multiple buyers that must have this. You get all those three and viola.
     
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  5. Muzyck

    Muzyck Pardon my scruffy hospitality

    Location:
    Long Island
    A couple of high bidding snipers. Happens all of the time.
     
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  6. Muzyck

    Muzyck Pardon my scruffy hospitality

    Location:
    Long Island
    At first glance I didn't think "shill", but looking at the bidding history of winner it does look odd. Close to 30 last minute bids with this same seller. Not doing much business with other sellers.

    [​IMG]
     
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  7. eddiel

    eddiel Senior Member

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    He was using a sniping service IMO. If you look at the bidding history on this particular item he basically put one bid in but it was high enough and late enough that no one had the chance to outbid him. I bet he did the same with the other auctions.
     
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  8. Muzyck

    Muzyck Pardon my scruffy hospitality

    Location:
    Long Island
    No doubt about it. You can see his / her bid history and there was only one bid within an hour of the auction end on each. Just find it odd that such a large percentage of the activity is with this one seller.
     
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  9. Raunchnroll

    Raunchnroll Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    The heavy activity with one seller could be because he (or she) is satisfied with the descriptions and the product received. A buyer whose times means more than saving nominal amounts on bids is more likely to stick with a proven seller and method.
     
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  10. Muzyck

    Muzyck Pardon my scruffy hospitality

    Location:
    Long Island
    That's plausible. Looks like the seller has top notch items.
     
  11. lightbulb

    lightbulb Not the Brightest of the Bunch

    Location:
    Smogville CA USA
    Just pure speculation -
    If there is constant activity between a Seller-Buyer pair, and the final sales bids are very high above the average sales for identical items (with possible exception for quality and condition), could there be some type of collusion?

    (How so?
    The seller may have 2 EBay accounts.
    OR
    The seller and buyer may be working as a tandem, waiting for any "uniformed impulse buyer" to try to outbid the current high bid.
    Although probably rare,
    One or a few such "sucker" sales makes their con act worthwhile...)

    Is this scenario a remote possibility ?
     
  12. AaronW

    AaronW Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
  13. Matt R.

    Matt R. Forum Resident

    Location:
    Illinois
    I see some crappy copies of common albums going for a fortune on Facebook marketplace. Guess I know where I am putting albums when I need extra cash.
     
  14. InStepWithTheStars

    InStepWithTheStars It's a miracle, let it alter you

    Location:
    North Carolina
    I guess if Comic Sans can bring the price up by $100, gaudy colors are enough to boost it by $500!

    Good to know. I think I'll list my CDs of The Rising and How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb starting at $200 and put in some flashy text effects.

    My guess is abuse of the eBay automatic bidding system. Someone wanted this for $45 or something, set their max bid at $600, and figured nobody would fight this much for it. Someone else - maybe a criminal trying to launder money, who knows - put in one for $1000.

    Or maybe that's just a really, really expensive sticker. Who knows?
     
  15. eddiel

    eddiel Senior Member

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    I don't think that happened in the bidding re: auto bidding. The person who won bid once near the end of the auction. There were a couple of buyers before that bidding back and forth. There were some auto bids but one guy really wanted it in addition to the winner.

    Couldn't tell you why those two buyers decided it was worth at least $600 but there were others who thought it was worth $300 which is still quite high. I bet the shrink wrap and sticker added $200 to the price :)

    Thing is, that record isn't really common when you consider the condition of it. Might have been a buyer not based in the US as well.

    Still, pretty crazy price.

    I still want to try a listing like this. I once added a bit more info when I went to sell my Zeppelin II RL pressing and it did go for 3 times what I assumed I'd get. I wonder how well I would've done if I used bright colours as well.
     
  16. eddiel

    eddiel Senior Member

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    Still amazes me when I see that. I get premium prices for premium product but VGs or less? What the heck is going on? I think people can't find stuff that easily locally so they're paying a premium to get their records. I know I've paid more than what many would consider normal but a big reason for that was the shipping costs rather than the actual sale price.
     
  17. bekayne

    bekayne Senior Member

     
  18. Vinyl Archaeologist

    Vinyl Archaeologist Forum Resident

    I'm blown away by the prices this guy gets. Are these really all legit bids? There were two almost identical copies of the same soul album on sunday and one went for 166 and the other one from this seller went for 596 dollars an insane price for this album. There has to be something off here. People acting in their own self interest with two nearly identical items in play shouldn't do that.
     
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  19. Vinyl Archaeologist

    Vinyl Archaeologist Forum Resident

    Thinking more about this - this one seller has sold the same incredibly rare items over and over. this would explain it. A search on popsike make this pretty easy.
     
    Last edited: Nov 20, 2017
    lightbulb likes this.
  20. Sprague Dawley

    Sprague Dawley Forum Resident

    Location:
    Japan
    often I see minor bands stuff going for high prices when I know its still in print. folks daftly go straight to ebay/discogs when instead they could go straight to the label source and get it new for $15 or so
     
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  21. Vinyl Archaeologist

    Vinyl Archaeologist Forum Resident

    Another mono promo of dark end of the street. If you search popsike by high price for this album half of the results are all from this one seller
     
  22. bekayne

    bekayne Senior Member

    It happens sometimes.
    "Celine Lomez" in Records | eBay
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 19, 2018
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