Anyway, as you can tell from the icon, this is NOT a post about that stuff ... but about my Pokemon/eBay adventures!
I took The Girls up to Dojo this evening, and after feeding them and finding parking (The Wife having rented a car for some A.M. appointments), we got home pretty late. Daughter #1 had me pull together some cards from her "trading binder" for her to take in to "camp" with her. One of the kids in her group is as avid a Pokemon collector as she is, and they have been looking to make some trades. This took me a while, and everybody was in bed by the time I got done organizing the cards for her.
So, I come into my office and decide to "just take a peek" at eBay. How nice to stumble over a much-undervalued auction! I found an auction that was for 53 reverse holo cards from the newest Pokemon set (Emerald) that was closing in about 15 minutes. I quickly pulled out the "needs" list and saw that of the 53 cards, #1 didn't have 30 of them. As the reverse holos run anywhere from $2 to $8 a piece, I usually figure that I'm doing OK if I can get them (delivered) for fifty cents per, which gave me a "target" of around $15 for the set.
Having a ballpark figured in hand, I kept hitting "re-load" on the bid history page. I was, frankly, pretty sure that some of the "dealers" would swoop in on this at the last moment, so didn't want to "play my hand" too soon. When the count-down got under 2 minutes I hit, with a bid that would have come out to $15.01 with the shipping. This did not, unfotunately, put me in the lead, but it did reveal the high bid, so at that point I knew what I was going up against. So, I waited for it to hit thirty seconds and re-bid, with a bid that was just a penny over the minimum up-bid, which put me on top by fifty cents. I hit reload-reload-reload-reload just waiting for somebody to swoop in and bid on the "overall value" of the lot (I bid, of course, on our "needs" value), but nobody bid, and I won. While I did go seventy-five cents over my "target" I ended up getting 53 cards that on my "low reference retail" site would have been $175.00 ... putting my outlay at nine cents on the dollar ... such a deal!
I can't wait to tell Daugther #1 in the morning. Not only does this fill a huge part of the Emerald set, it also gives her 23 "hot cards" for trades!
Hey, at least one thing went right today!
