Buyer's conundrum ...

[Snapolit1]

Auction houses seem to me to more often than not land on the most reasonable, market price .... but damm those 18-20% buyer's commissions are a killer ... Even when fully and fairly disclosed they always kill me when I see the "winning" invoice. And the all night auction because someone's bidding on some lot somewhere is annoying and really chaps my ....

EBay BIN is a nice way to go ... Fast and easy ... except that most of them are about 25% minimum over fair market value, looking for someone desperate, uninformed or madly smitten to come along ..... I love when a 60 second Google search shows that the guy with the $2500 BIN bought the very card last week at an auction house for $1750. Nice profit if you can get it.

And regular eBay auctions are maddening in that the real bidding always seems to start with 25 seconds left, and somehow I always seem to lose by $1.25 to some guy who can apparently read my mind. Happens every time.

Oh, and the few card shows I've gone to tend to be ridiculously overpriced. Nice folks, cool to talk with, and 100% of the time more than eBay ....