I’m going to start with disclosure and disclaimer.  My entire experience with Yu-Gi-Oh card transactions is on EBAY.  I don’t know anything about any other site or even how the Pojo trade forum works.  I buy and sell cards on EBAY and this article is limited to my own experience and personal opinions.  I cannot be responsible for the outcomes of your own personal EBAY experience.

I get an e-mail every week or so from someone who really wants to buy a card from me that I’m selling on EBAY but their parent’s won’t let them buy cards on EBAY because they’ve heard that people get ripped off on EBAY by sellers who never send what was advertised, if they send anything at all.  While not completely false, it’s really not true.  In the years I’ve been on EBAY, I’ve bought a lot of cards from a lot of sellers.  I’ve been happy with the outcome of nearly every auction I’ve won.  Nearly, but not all, but that’s ok.  As I see it, when shipping and stuff is all added in I end up paying about 25 to 50% less for cards I win on EBAY than I would have to pay if I bought them elsewhere.  I also figure about 95+% of the auctions I win are flawless transactions, meaning both me and the seller are happy.  So if less than 5% of the time there is a shortfall, and I’m regularly saving up to 50%, I figure I’m ahead.

Let’s look those rare occasions that I wasn’t happy.  Most all of those instances I did get the cards, but I did not agree with the grading.  Admittedly, I’m picky about grading.  Mint means Mint, it means brand new just like the card was when the pack was opened.  Sometimes folks don’t really look at cards that close and the corners are “fluffed”, meaning they’re not the same thickness as the rest of the card.  If you want to determine if a card is mint, don’t look at the face or back of the card, look all around the edges.   Other disappointments are cards that were not the ones shown in the picture.  If you are buying a lot of 50 cards, and you’re shown a picture of cards, read the entire auction to make sure that picture is exactly the cards you’re going to get.  Often the picture is there just as an example, but if that’s the case, there ought to be a disclosure that says something like, “the cards shown in the picture are not the actual cards being auctioned.  The picture is provided as an example only.”  I can only think of 2 times that I never got anything in the mail; that’s 2 out of a few hundred – this was aggravating at the time, but still a loss of pennies v/s the dollars I save on EBAY.

So you have a high, but imperfect likelihood that you will get the cards you won on EBAY.  Mom and Dad are still not convinced?  Ok, you can improve the odds of having a good bidding and winning experience by doing some detective work.  ALWAYS read the entire EBAY listing!  Sounds obvious, but most folks don’t do this.  Read every word.  Make sure the buyer accepts the form of payment you plan to pay with.  For example I only accept Pay Pal payments.  I don’t accept cash or any other form of “snail-mail” payment.  Oh, yeah, Mom and Dad don’t want to send their credit card or bank info to Pay Pal over the internet.  I can understand that and I know there are “stories” of bad things that have happened to folks, but for some mysterious reason, Amazon.com is still in business.  You’d think that if folks were recurringly being ripped off then Amazon and EBAY would be history.  Mom and Dad have to make this judgment and it’s fair if they are concerned.  But on the flip side, the internet is booming with commerce and I’ve found that so long as I DON’T click anything in those fake EBAY or fake Pay Pal e-mails, the ones that ask me for my password so that they can keep my account open (yeah how think you dumb I am) – I get along great with EBAY and Pay Pal.  DON’T reply to anything you are e-mailed that looks like a warning from EBAY or Pay Pal, rather go into the site and contact them from the links in the site.  Also, read the shipping policies, cost of shipping, and places the seller will ship to.  If you live in Canada and they only ship in the United States, don’t bid.  Or, if you do want to bid or are unclear about ANYTHING in what you have read, send the seller a question.  There is a place to do this at the top right hand side of the auction page, just click on “Ask Seller A Question”.  Maybe they will ship to Canada if you ask.

So now you’ve improved the odds of having a good experience, but Mom and Dad are still not ready to help you become an EBay’er.  My final bit of advice here is to deal with experienced sellers.  Remember that top right-hand corner box I mentioned?  It also has a feedback score and positive feedback rate.  The feedback score is the net number of positive feedbacks less negative feedbacks an EBAY’er has gotten from others on EBAY.  You can only leave feedback is you have a transaction so this is their performance history.  I like to buy from folks who have well established their EBAY presence so I generally like to buy from folks who have a score of more than 100.  I’ll also click on “Read Feedback Comments” to see if the history of comments is from buyers or sellers since experience as a seller is what I’m concerned about.  Finally, I’ll check out the positive feedback percentage.  This is a calculation of good feedback v/s bad feedback.  I generally like to buy from folks who have a positive feedback percentage of at least 99.0%  Sometimes I’ll buy from folks who have a lower percentage, but I might read though their feedback first or use “Ask Seller A Question” to find out more about their reliability and why they have negative feedback.

If Mom and Dad are still not ready, I’m not sure there is much else you can do.  I suppose you’re stuck paying exorbitant prices at the card shop or buying packs for four bucks a shot.  However, if Mom and Dad are ready to EBAY together with you, then I’ll give you some thoughts on working the deal to maximize what you get for your money.

First, find sellers who offer a shipping discount.  If you win 2, 3, or more auctions, you ought to get a break on shipping.  Don’t assume you’ll get a discount for winning multiple auctions.  If it’s not typed out for you in the auction listing, ASK the seller BEFORE you bid.  If you find a seller that has a really great deal on multiple auction shipping, check out that top right-hand corner box again and click “View Sellers Other Items”, you never know what else you might find.

Second, learn good search techniques.  If you want first edition cards, most folks put “1^st” in the listing and not “first edition”.  This is because EBAY limits the length of your description so sellers will use the shortest possible descriptions to maximize the terms that will be searched.  On the other hand, folks don’t normally list BLS, I usually see it typed out as Black Luster Soldier.  Searching is an art, be creative and look at the listing search results for more words that might be helpful to search on.

Third, figure out when the auction will end.  If you really want to win the auction, you want to be online looking at it 5 minutes before it ends!  I’m very serious about this.  I do this and it can really pay off.  Suppose you find a real bargain on a card and the auction is going to close at 9 pm 3 days from now.  Someone else just might think to wait until just before the auction ends to bid 50 cents more and win the bargain from you.  This also can work if you find a seller who lists a lot of auctions in short time spans so that 20, 30 or more auctions all end within a given hour.  You can camp.  Sit there and watch the bidding for an hour and win several auctions then take advantage of multiple win shipping discounts.  One problem is that this doesn’t work out so well if you have a dial up internet connection because it can take 20 or more seconds for the screen to refresh.

So there you have it.  My EBAY buying experience and what you might want to know if you’re trying to talk Mom and Dad into becoming EBAY’ers with you.  Good Luck.

notasperfectasyou

It’s easy to find me on the message board, e-mail is ok, but I like open discussion better.

napay’s prior articles and why you’d want to read them:

“The Exodia FTK” presents an example of applying calculated mathematical probabilities to Yu-Gi-Oh in demonstration of why a deck 40 cards is a good idea.

“Fake/counterfeit Yu-Gi-Oh cards” presents a summarized version of my own experience buying fake cards and what I learned from it.

“The Star Circle” presents a very visual way to think about the components of your deck and how to think about card flow as a way to improving your deck.

“How Big is your Monster” is about why you need to stop thinking about how to get big ATK monsters in your deck and why you do need to think about how cards work synergistically.
 

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