I'd bought a case (36 packs ... it's a humbling experience the first time you get a "case" as the box is 5.5"x5.5"x2" ... yet, at three to four bucks retail a piece, that little package "worth" well over $100.00) of the "first movie" cards a while back, and had been doling these out to #2 whenever I had packs for her sis. I was getting low on these, and she'd been expressing her displeasure with the bounty recently being bestowed on her sibing, so I went in search of more of the Topps cards. I found one auction (for a case of the TV cards) that looked promising, and had hoped to bring that in for close to the minimum bid (even writing the seller up front to clarify what the unspecified shipping charges were likely to be).
This is a lesson in "Why I don't bid until the last minute" ... even though I had been watching this one for several days, and there had been NO bids on it, I was still going to wait until about five minutes left to put in the bid. Well, at 8:25 left to go, I found out that somebody else must have also been watching this one, as there was suddenly a bid up there. I did let the clock wind down a bit, but at 5:51 to go, I put in my "preferred" (reflecting the shipping info) bid ... which was quickly countered by my competition, with exploratory bids ratcheting up two bucks each over the next couple of minutes, at 4:18 to go she'd taken the lead, but I'd gotten a pretty good sense of her "style" so I figured I'd hold my breath and wait. With 0:34 to go (I'd already put in the bid but was waiting to punch through the confirmaiton page) I put in a bid that reflected pretty much the maximum I'd be willing to pay, which ended up being over 50% more than her then-high bid. She was, obviously, also not going to go down without a fight, but she stuck to her previous strategy and went in with a $2 up bid with 0:14 to go, and I ended up winning the case for more than I'd hoped for, but considerably less than I was willing to go (even if the shipping ends up on the high end of the range the seller had indicated, I'm getting the packs at about $0.66 each, which is not a bad cost for keeping Daughter #2 from getting a complex!
Like you care ...
