Sometimes on eBay you're relieved to get beat ... and I just had one of those experiences. There was an auction for 92 reverse holo cards from the "Legendary Collection", the first Pokemon set to have reverse holo cards. The set has been out of print for quite a while, so these cards are getting harder to come by, and the 46 cards out of the 92 that Daughter #1 didn't have came to a "street value" (via the low-ball on-line site's pricing) of $165.00 ... and I figured that the whole thing was worth about $250.00 give-or-take. I had figured my "target" bid and waited and waited ... unfortunately, about an hour out from the auction close, several bids ran it up to almost (but not quite) twice what my bid was going to be, but it was still going for less than 1/5th of what all 92 cards were "worth". With about 8 minutes left, I "threw caution to the winds" and put in a bid that, with shipping, would have been over twice what "I was willing to pay", and, much to my shock, found out that I was the high bidder! And I hit reload ... and I hit reload ... and I hit reload ... and I was still the high bidder ... I finally couldn't stand it and ran off to take my shower.
When I got back to the computer I found, with an odd mix of relief and disappointment, that I had been out-bid ... one guy who'd bid on it a few days ago came in 10% higher than my bid, and then, just 3 seconds after his bid, another guy (I'm assuming via a bot) came in with a bid a buck higher (with only six seconds left on the auction) and won it.
Now, we're not talking huge sums of money here ... the winning bid was just a bit less than twenty bucks more than my "target" ... but I'm usually more disciplined about this! While I'm sure Daughter #1 would have been thrilled to have gotten these cards, I'm also pretty sure that there are a lot of other Xmas goodies that she'd list ahead of them for the same dollars .. so I guess this was just some free adrenaline rush for me. I am a bit peeved, though, as this is the fifth auction from this seller which I've lost in the last few seconds (the same seller had those four auctions that I wrote about a couple of days ago), even though being beat by different bidders this time.
