Mike Wheat

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Posted By: Chris

I don't want to stir up trouble but I guess this kind of bothered me since this is supposed to be one of the big dealers. He has a 1915 Cracker Jack Evers that seems to be an obvious trim job and lists the condition as VG+. I'm a wrong here?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=213&item=5118972173&rd=

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Posted By: Davis

Might be miscut-I bought a card from Mike Wheat years ago and he actually undergraded it-I was very pleased with his service.

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Posted By: Joe Spinelli

This guy is a nutjob, how can you consider him a serious dealer when the only time that he posts things it when it is half off beer night at the hall of tight wads? Not to mention the simple fact that he creates, yes... CREATES reprints of countless cards from the vintage era... a SIN!!!! Not as if the market isn't flooded with junk reprint cards, he just adds to the pool of garbage. If you cannot afford the real thing, it just isn't meant to be. "Want in one hand, poo in the other..."

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Posted By: The other One (Julie)

.....

Wheat's stuff is never explained--and you never see a back scan. He'd probasby respond to an e-mail, though...

Boy, is that card WHITE!

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Posted By: Davis

One thing I can't figure out about Mike Wheat is how he gets on hundreds of cards during freebie days on US and Uk ebay. Does Ebay post these dates in advance-I would doubt it.

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Posted By: Chris

I'm sure he uses Turbo Lister and just saves them for freebie day.

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Posted By: DENNIS

TRIMMED: PROBABLY NOT, OVER-PRICED: WITHOUT A DOUBT!

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Posted By: Davis

Thanks Chris-don't know turbolister, I'll have to look it up.


Davis

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Posted By: Anonymous

You could get tetanus off this Domino Disc and it's listed as an EX+!!!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=213&item=5118970856

Anyone think this is better than VG?

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Posted By: The other One (Julie)

.......

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Posted By: Jeff S

...in advance, at least by a day or two. I frequently get e-mails from them about different types of listing sales. Right now, there are a lot of deals like that for books & music, as they're encouraging half.com sellers to switch.

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Posted By: Judge Dred

My opinion - for what it's worth... not much...

Mike Wheat has a heck of an inventory and perhaps his prices are a bit high and the stated conditions may be his subjective interpretation but this whole thing about ebay and freebies has got to be thrown at ebay... let them know that the freebie postings are an intrusion and that it's a pain to have to go through all of it so you wont miss something that gets stuck in the middle...

Offer ebay an alternative solution... suggest to them that freebie days are good but they might want to consider a few restrictions:

1) NO BUY IT NOW STUFF
2) NO MINIMUM PRICE SET ON THE ITEM (LETS SAY IT CAN'T BE MORE THAN $9.99 TO START)
3) NO RESERVE PRICE

Remind them that they are an auction site and that in the spirit of it all it would be neat to see ebay limit there freebies to true auction material.

I can almost figure out how ebay would feel about this - lost potential revenue on the sale of items. I figure in the spirit of it all it would be nice to let a little goodwill take place of a few bucks (ok, maybe it's a lot of bucks).

By the way, a little rustoleum just might clean up that Cobb disc...

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Posted By: jay behrens

The freebie/reduced rate days vary each time. One day it is free BIN day, the next, it's auctions with gallery listings, etc.

The thing that puzzles me is that if these freebie days really are good for business, then why not do them all the time if it making so much money for them. I am sure eBay has thousands of other sellers just like Wheat that clog up catagories and take up bandwidth with their overpriced stuff that never sells and eBay makes no money off of.

Jay

I like to sit outside, drink beer and yell at people. If I did this at home I would be arrested, so I go to baseball games and fit right in.

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Posted By: honus3415

That listing is in British pounds.....that should be $402 for WHAT?(tetanus is right).

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Posted By: Josh K.

Where does one find out about free listing days - or are they only available to certain sellers? Thanks.

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Posted By: Anonymous

Judge Dred, it ain't gonna happen. eBay will continue to have discount days for a few reasons:


1) It's just plain good business to throw out the promotion here and there. Essentially, it's no different than couponing or sample give-aways.

2) The MikeWheats of the world bring in a lot of revenue, and the revenue they bring in on these discount days with their high volume, high-value stuff. Honestly, they're not going to care enough that a couple of their customers are too lazy to wade through the listings to cancel them.

3) While the annoying Mike Wheats of the world may clutter up the site with their inventory, there are tens (hundreds?) of thousands of other sellers also taking advantage of these discount days. Again, I don't think the griping about a message board punchline (Mike Wheat) is going to be enough to stop eBay from offering their discounts.

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Posted By: jay behrens

peter, do you even look at Wheat's auctions? He offer the same cards over and over. Where are the high volume of sales and revenue generated for eBay? People gripe about Wheat because he rarely sells a card on these promotional days and we have to see the cards over and over again. He has large number of OJs that have not sold in over a year. How do I know he's had cards for over a year? Becuase I have been saving the scans of OJs for over a year and can tell when the same scan and card are used over and over.

Jay

I like to sit outside, drink beer and yell at people. If I did this at home I would be arrested, so I go to baseball games and fit right in.

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Posted By: John(z28jd)

The reason they wont stop doing free days is not everyone is Mike Wheat,some people actually put good prices up and its a good way to reward sellers.

Wheat doesnt sell much but he does sell some stuff,hes sold 10 items from the list free day so far.Obvioulsy for him it makes alot of sense.Its not only ebay but the advertising for his business

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Posted By: Anonymous

Jay, considering I was the one who came on here a couple days ago asking about his E-121 Frank Baker, I am pretty familiar with Wheat, in that he likes to list things periodically, from eBay Canada or eBay UK. I know he's an inventory dumper. Even if he only sells 10% of his inventory, he sells high value items, so eBay is making a nice penny on the Final Value Fees. He's also who they had in mind with their discounts. If you or I list 3 cards, that's nice. But if the Mike Wheats of the world list 400, then eBay is still making out even with the discounts.

Besides, like someone else said, there are many other sellers taking advantage and rolling in the revenue for eBay.

eBay does not exist for our personal pleasure, or to make sure our precious eyes are not blinded by Mike Wheat's inventory. They exist to make money and please their other customers (which in turn makes eBay money).

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Posted By: Judge Dred

If you do a search on the MWCARDS items sold in the past week you will find that he has sold about 11 items out of 35 pages of stuff listed. That would be about 11 out of 1740 items, not bad. I guess there are 4-5 days left in the freebie auctions (or BIN sales) so there's still a chance that he may actually get to sell 1% of the items that were listed.

I still think in the spirit of an on-line auction that ebay might consider limiting the freebie stuff for the reasons previously listed. The main reason would be to have a true auction where people actually wanted to bid on the items (like a real auction). I realize that ebay probably wouldn't like this idea because it takes away from the bottom line.

In any case you can't blame MWCARDS for dumping the same inventory on freebie day because there isn't a reason "not to do this." If I were in business I'd probably do the same thing.

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Posted By: Monty

I think this could all be sound business strategy on the part of MW --I am ready to buy some of those $200 Allen & Ginters so I don't have to see them again-Sweet Jesus!

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Posted By: jay behrens

peter, Judge beat me to the punch about Wheat's turnover being less than 1%. I have a really hard time believing that eBay making money on him considering the bandwidth and server space that is required to deal with his auctions. I'd be thrill if Wheat did have a 10% turnove, then we wouldn't be staring at the same cards all the time.

Jay

I like to sit outside, drink beer and yell at people. If I did this at home I would be arrested, so I go to baseball games and fit right in.

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Posted By: Jeff S

Josh,
I'm not sure exactly why I get e-mails from eBay about their various freebie offers. I'm pretty sure that somewhere in My eBay, you can turn on or off various options regarding what e-mails eBay sends you. Any sensible person these days turns all those sorts of things off, but apparently I didn't. There must be some source I'm not aware of, too, that alerts folks like Mike Wheat about the freebie days in other countries. I certainly don't want to be on that many mailing lists.

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Posted By: Tim M

while I admit, sorting through Mikes cards is a pain,

i don't undertstand the complaining.

it makes perfect sense to me....he has a service that lists the cards for him.,...it costs nothing for him to list them, so if 1% of his cards sell, and sell for a large premium, i can clearly see why he does it,,,,

ebay is a way for people to make sales and money, and it's his living,,,he has a right to sell things as cheaply as possible for as much as he can,,,why begrudge him for that?

thats the way the business world works

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Posted By: Pete

Tim, as I'm learning on this board, doing things for profit is wrong, hence Wheat's a creep and eBay are bad for letting him list his many items, since it makes some of our auction searches take an extra 5 seconds.

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Posted By: jay behrens

Gotta love people like peterp that buy into the Gordon Gecko greed is good at all costs mentality. I don't begrudge anyone making a profit, but there has to be some point at which morals and personal ethics need to step up and supercede the need to make a buck. This is broad, general statement and not one about Wheat, or his practices.

The perfect example was a discussion I had with a stock broker many moons ago. I asked him how he would like it if someone got his mother to invest in a crappy stock? He said he wouldn't and that he make sure to that it wouldn't happened to her. I then asked him why he felt it was OK for him to sell crappy stocks to someone else's mother. He said that was different because it was his job and he needed to make a living too. I then asked him why his mother should be exempt and he stumped for an answer that made any sense.

Or how about the execs that have no qualms about polluting the air and water but would never be caught dead living anywhere near their plants for that same exact reason.

I'll get off my soap box now.

Jay- is the hippie in me showing thru yet?

I like to sit outside, drink beer and yell at people. If I did this at home I would be arrested, so I go to baseball games and fit right in.

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Posted By: Steve McQ

To me, it's just that Mike's prices are very high and they
are never adjusted once the cards don't sell. It's like going
to the ballgame and being charged $10 for a hot dog, do you
want people to pay a reasonable price and enjoy some food during
the game, or do you want to make $9 profit on every sale.

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Posted By: warshawlaw

not greed; sloth. We just don't like spending time wading through MW's entire inventory of overpriced cards...

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Posted By: andy becker

...see this:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5118981284

mike's wonderfull response was "i made a mistake, i'll cancel the auction"
my response is "thanks for nothing"
i wouldn't buy a mike wheat card if he was the last dealer on earth.
i make a mistake in business, i live with it or at the very least offer a potential customer something to smooth things over.
AND, when i list on ebay i take the time to check my auctions for accuracy...but then again i don't use turbo lister.
BAD BUSINESS BY A BAD BUSINESSMAN

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Posted By: Pcelli60

Ive delt with him before. I feel that both the grades and prices for his items are too high..Now I just avoid him altogether..As for that E card- you pays your money and you takes your chances....

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Posted By: leon

Was it the fact that he mis-calculated the winning bid in his description? The $$ USD next to the auction was correct........just curious....I also had a very bad experience one time with Mike. I informed him that he had a tainted very high end card on his website with no mention of altering or trimming ( I had sent it to PSA and SGC before he got it through the guy I returned it to ) He said I didn't know what I was talking about. Sometimes I don't but this time I did..... I have since had several good transactions with him and just let bygones be bygones. Our hobby is all about "caveat emptor" unfortunately......best regards

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Posted By: andy becker

hi leon
no it was the fact the the turbo listing messed up a bunch of his auctions. the ebay "bid button" prices was in gbp and converted correctly to usd. in the item description mike added "this is part of a uk ebay promotion, we are a u.s. based company, you must pay $140 plus shipping for this item".
it was an honest mistake, but how could you possibly catch it when listing 1500 items at once.
so as a seller, who is obviosly in BUSINESS to make a buck...why would you want to alienate a potential customer?
like i said previously, make a business mistake...a good business person will make it right by their customer.
well, if you want to be a bad business person....mike wheat has the perfect model.

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Posted By: Tom Boblitt

I've bought quite a few items from Mike over the years dating back to early 1990's at the big show in Cincinnati every year. A few of the T206's from my set are from him, some nice Exhibits in my exhibit set are from him and other items. I've found his service to be EXCELLENT. The turnaround time from order to receipt is great. I also won a lot of items in his online auctions that he did that were priced very fairly. His static website prices are generally 20-40% too high and even more in some cases for cards that are often 1-2 grades lower or trimmed in some cases. I have never had a problem with returning items to Mike and feel he is fair in that regards. Much like some of the old time players in the market (Frisch, Kit Young, et al.....), I think the approach to grading/pricing equation is a little off but as Leon says, caveat emptor. Some of this stuff is such that if he has it no one else might not, so for pre-war you may have to pay more than what you think you should for somewhat inferior cards. But.......we aren't being forced to buy anything from him. This thread is definitely proof that his 'tactics' turn off enough people that he loses business.

As for the mass posts on ebay.....until they change their rules, he's well within them. I, like everyone else out there, have to WADE through them but they are generally fixed price auctions and done so they can be easily gone through. In the big scheme of things if he sells ANYTHING from listing 5000 items, he's done well because he either has software to dump his whole inventory out there or has it set up some way to get it on there in a hurry! Ebay loses minor bandwidth, which doesn't cost them really anything.....

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Posted By: Dumpin' Daniel

It must be FREE LISTING day in the US. Look at all the stuff from our buddy Mikey Wheat that's up for grabs - BYE IT NOW!!!

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Posted By: jay behrens

It's half price listing day today.

Jay

I like to sit outside, drink beer and yell at people. If I did this at home I would be arrested, so I go to baseball games and fit right in.

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Posted By: dummyhoy

thanks for the tip-off, I was able to fire up turbo lister.--dummy

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Posted By: Anonymous

Gotta love people like peterp that buy into the Gordon Gecko greed is good at all costs mentality.

>>>>LOL, yikes. Lighten up, Jay. You're applying the "evil capitalist" argument to an eBay discount day. I think you're losing perspective here. No need to be insulting either.

I don't begrudge anyone making a profit, but there has to be some point at which morals and personal ethics need to step up and supercede the need to make a buck. This is broad, general statement and not one about Wheat, or his practices.

>>>>Well, since we're talking specifically about Wheat and eBay here, I'm assuming this statement does apply (or at least include) these two parties. I'm not sure why Wheat is lacking in morals and ethics for taking advantage of discount days. I took advantage of eBay US's anniversary discount day last night and listed some auctions I was thinking about listing sometime this week. Now, if we want to talk about Wheat not being the best businessman by refusing to budge on his prices, that's a different story. And eBay discounting is no different than any company putting coupons in the Sunday paper or marking down prices for a week in the supermarket.


The perfect example was a discussion I had with a stock broker many moons ago. I asked him how he would like it if someone got his mother to invest in a crappy stock? He said he wouldn't and that he make sure to that it wouldn't happened to her. I then asked him why he felt it was OK for him to sell crappy stocks to someone else's mother. He said that was different because it was his job and he needed to make a living too. I then asked him why his mother should be exempt and he stumped for an answer that made any sense.

>>>>>Well, there you go, that proves....uh....something, I think.


Or how about the execs that have no qualms about polluting the air and water but would never be caught dead living anywhere near their plants for that same exact reason.

I'll get off my soap box now.

>>>>>Yes, please.


Jay- is the hippie in me showing thru yet?

>>>>>A hippie who likes money enough to spend lots of it on vintage stuff, yeah.

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Posted By: Cy

I'm sorry. I don't get this thread. I truly don't understand this bashing.

First of all, I have dealt with Mike Wheat and he is great to work with. He is very cordial and very professional. He doesn't waiver on his prices. So what. That is his perogative. If the price doesn't suit you, don't buy the card(s).

Another thought on prices, how many of you have bid on a lot in a major auction with an absolute ceiling bid that you in no way would go any higher, only to raise the bar $2K later on in the night. So minds do change if you want the card(s). Also I have had members of this board offer me cards at 10X book value at the grade level. That wasn't a typo. I was truly offered 10X book value. I have never been that insulted by Mike Wheat in my dealings with him.

I hear a lot of talk about Mike Wheat's grading. Once again let's bring up the major auction sites. How many of you fully expect some auction house to grade their cards 1/2, 1 or even 1 1/2 grades higher than what the card is and you still bid on the card? Mike Wheat has a grading scheme that he goes by. You know it. I know it. Get over it. Buy accordingly or don't buy accordingly.

Lastly the notion that he clogs up ebay on free days. What is the deal with this? Ebay was set up to help buyers AND sellers extend the free enterprise system and the perks given are there to do these types of things.

How many of you would love to sell 1% of your merchandise with little or no cost to you? Mike Wheat is a businessman using business tools to make a living. Period. I truly don't see a problem. If you truly feel inconvenienced by his listings, use Yahoo, THEN you will truly be inconvenienced.

Regards.

Cy

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Posted By: Glen V

I have no problem looking at real cards, much better than trying to filter out all the paper cut-outs on Ebay.

His grading and prices don't seem out-of-line when compared to any other dealer, and sometimes he has some very good deals. I'll admit to being part of that 1% that bought something from his BIN auctions. Without the listings, I probably wouldn't have gone to his web site and found the T212 150 series card, which seemed very reasonably priced.

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Posted By: jay behrens

I don't think most have a real problem with the prices on rare and tough issues, even if overpriced according to 'bbok vaue'. The real issue is with "common" stuff like Goudeys, t206, etc that he has over priced and will never sell because there are so many cheaper alternatives available.

Jay

I like to sit outside, drink beer and yell at people. If I did this at home I would be arrested, so I go to baseball games and fit right in.

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Posted By: Donald T.

In the immortal words of Iggy Pop "there's a very fine line between being a good businessman and being a d***" [not choosing sides either way]

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Posted By: tbob

If the guy just adjusted his prices down to try and sell them instead of having them sit on ebay and his website month after month after month I think he'd make a profit and be able to turn over his inventory because as someone else mentioned he often comes up with stuff no one else has. Mike seems to be insistent on his prices though. His grading is too high but he has a good record (with me at least) of being fairly prompt and courteous with his service. I cring at some of the prices though, especially the M116s which are triple what they should be going for. On the other hand I bought some g/vg killer T207s that noone else had anywhere for peanuts a couple of years ago. I was able to upgrade most of them but they were definitely welcome additions.