Delusional Sellers

A couple of years ago one of my favorite blogs was Bad Wax run by Mike Levine, also known as Chemgod on his blog (He was a chemist). One of his long running popular serials was “Craigslist Idiots” where he contacted people posting card related items for insane prices on Craigslist. Too often people responded to him negatively because they always claimed to know best.

 

I don’t pay much attention to Craigslist but I do keep an eye on strange eBay postings, what I call eBay toads. The other day I came across a seriously overpriced lot that included an Ultra 3-ring binder, nine 9-pocket sleeves and 129 cards. The cards were all 1990-1992 made up of Upper Deck, Score and Hi-Pro Marketing. There were big named players at the time like Griffey, Ripken, Gwynn and Rickey Henderson plus an Ivan Calderon autograph. All for the unbelievably low price of $250 or best offer.

 

I emailed them and being as polite as possible I let them know that the prices are well over valued. I gave them a rough estimate of what they could realistically expect (@$25-30) and explained that most of the cards can be found for .25-.50 cents each and that the binder was the most valuable item in the auction.

 

Here is the response I received
“I appreciate you letting me know. I did take a lot of time researching, and let's not forget it is "Or Best Offer" so the price is not $250. But due to the time I took to research them all, I am keeping it the way that it is.”

 

I love how people equate their time in to value, I was trying to help someone who doesn’t deal with sports cards and I get a “No help needed” response.