I just learnt a expensive lesson..
 

Like always I search eBay for Reboot figures since my collection is not complete. I search both eBay.ca and eBay.com. Why both you ask? Well some people post things on eBay.com that are listed as only ships to the US and not to Canada. Unlike eBay.ca will only show the things that will ship to Canada.

Well just over a week ago I came across a auction for 2 figures, Color Changing Bob and Color Changing Hack. No one had bid on it yet. So like usual I put it on my Watch list so I can snipe it at the end. (Sorry if you are the seller, yes I snipe) A few days passed and still couldn't find anything else.. nothing new there... Then all of a sudden I came across a MOC Special Edition BOB in his White uniform! LIKE OMG!!! I was freaking out. But then I knew He was going to go for a pretty penny. So I watched it. The day it was ending I was planned to go over to one of my gf's family friends for dinner for the birthday of their little girl. I was ticked off because I couldn't be infront of the computer at the time of the auction ending so I could put my bid in at the last minute. I had to go regardless lol.

Well leading up to the end 2 people had already started a small bidding war on it. I thought to myself, I am screwed.

So the day came, and I was about to bid. Never sniped using my iPhone before.. well, never again.. I missed it cause of loading time.. damn it.

Surprising enough, I wasn't upset. On the way home I started thinking, "I hope it is going to a good home, I hope they are not opening it!". So when I got home I started to snoop. Well I went into the Sellers Feedback and saw he had just left feedback for the "person" who had won the Bob. So out of shear consern of such a rare MOC figure, I sent him a message.

Note: I will only Quote what I said on my side of the convo. I will mention things they said, but not quote them.
"I see your the winner of the White outfit Bob, good job. I wanted it so bad. Oh well another time. Hope you are keeping it Mint On Card for being such a collector piece. Do you have a big collection? or are you just starting out?"

Nothing rude. I Believed I was really polite. They wrote back to me telling me that it was never going to be opened (THANK GOD! lol) and some of what he was collecting (I say "he" but I never really 100% found out the sex of the person, but to make it easier to write I will say He). Well, one of the things he mentioned was that he had 1 color changer but hopefully 3 soon.. Flags went off in my head.. "Oh no, does this mean he is going to go after the other auction I was looking at?!?!?" and sure enough the same coded eBay user ID showed up there. Damn it. But that did not stop me. I continued to talk with him sharing my collection with him. He didn't notice then that I didn't have any color changers yet, so not thinking I was after the same auction.

A few days past, and guess what???? The seller that had posted the first White suited Bob had posted another... HE HAD 2!!! lol... So I put it on my watch list.

The color changers were listed to end before the newly posted Bob. The auction for the color changers ended with me having just enough time to sneak in there and fire away at the last second winning the auction. I had to pay quite a high price for 2 figures since the other guy had his maximum quite high. Oh well I needed those figures, since I had never saw them on eBay before.

Well the Bob was coming to an end, and guess who started to bid on the bob.. HIM!.. I'm like "Oh great, Im in deep trouble now!". The auction ended today, I was able to win it.. Cost me a fortune!.. As soon as the auction ended I got a message from Him.. Basicly telling me he jack up the price cause he didn't want the second one, he just wanted me to pay more than he did..

:O

ouch.

I wrote him back apologizing for snatching out from under him the other auction.

Quote: "Sounds like you are upset with me. I am really sorry for snatching out from you the Color Changing Bob and Hack, I know you needed it. I also showed you that I needed it too by letting you see my collection. I knew you were not going to be happy after words, but like I said I needed it too :(. I did find it a bit unfair to jack up the price of the White Suit Bob when you didn't want it. I didn't jack up the auction that was for 60$ that had the black hex, grey megabyte, and the car in it. I don't bid unless I need it to complete or add to my set. I don't buy doubles enless the "lot" has something that I am missing. But I know I would be pissed if I paid over 100$ and then found out someone else got it for 20$. But whats done is done. I am not upset. I still would like to be friends, Reboot figure Collectors are like none existent. I still really want to see your collection. I also would like to see your ghostbuster collection, more the retro ones thou. I used to play hours with them when I was little. Anyways, if you don't want to comunicate I understand. I won't bother you anymore. But if you do, that would be awesome!Take care, and good luck."

He replied me basicly warning me that I'd better have deep pockets. But he wasn't against being my friend.

wow.

I consider myself to be a nice person. Who likes to come on here, talk about figures and see other's collections. I guess this is the ONLY place to go.


It is not fair to blast the other person behind his back. So this is not meant to be that. My little rant is geared towards me. The most expensive lesson I learned, don't talk with fellow collectors that collect the same things as you through eBay. They will make you pay dearly..

That's not really a collector in my books. Making you pay out the ass is a low blow. Another reason why I only use eBay as a last resort. Good on you for being polite about it though, but that's in our Canadian blood haha. Either way, just be careful and regardless of the price, if you are comfortable with paying a high price for a MOC figure to round out your collection, then no matter what, YOU WIN.

how much did you spend? :)

Im not comfortable paying such high prices, but with looking for old figure MOC I kind of get stuck paying them. He was canadian too eh.

He knocked me up to 135$ for a 6" figure!!!! F___! lol

Dear lord almighty...

I say you open it and send him a picture like, pssshhh look at what i did its nothin to me! Thats how I roll!! LOL im jk if you paid that much leave it MOC

I've never heard of a bidder messaging the winner of the auction or caring what the other person did with what they won. Their money, their choice. Kind of childish IMO.

bidding on something you dont want just so someone you dont know has to pay more is probably the most cu*ty thing you can do on ebay. its unfair, childish, pointless and personal, trying to hit someone where it hurts for no reason.

at the moment im very tight on money, so on the odd occasion when i really want something and have to scrape my pennies together to buy it, if i found out someone did that to me just so i either couldnt have the item or had to pay more (which i probably couldnt afford) i would literally have to hunt them down (costing me even more money in travel and the cost of a new aluminum baseball bat)

he has no right to do that. i dont know if there is a rule against that on ebay, but if in an ebay message he has freely admitted he was only bidding to bump the price up for you and didnt even want the item, surely thats not etiquette and fair play.

i know for a fact sellers arent allowed to use another account to bump up the price, its illegal. but probably different if its just an a-hole who is not selling the item wanting you to pay more...

the seller sounds like a douche with attachment issues.

wow that sucks but I thought Ebay had it set up were you couldn't see the real usernames anymore. all I can see is random letters and numbers except my own ebay account in the bid list and I kinda figured it was put into place to kind of avoid things like this happening

Your first email to him was just weird to begin with. I don't care how valuable or rare you considered the toy..bidders names are blanked out for a reason..so you don't bother other bidders. Respect his anonymity. (and I dislike solicitors..phone or door to door..I didn't invite them over!!!..but that's another thread) :-) He didn't ask for you to track him down..so leave him alone..you lost the auction. As innocent as you make it out to be ..it sounds like you wanted the last "word".

He may have made you pay for that reason alone.

Oh well..you both got your figure and maybe established a new "going rate" for that figure in the process. :-) lol

I think that that is the rub here..it looks like the OP tracked the poor guy down by the feedback system..which sucks if it is indeed the chain of events.

Agree with everything you said there. The seller has nothing to do with an auction going for a certain amount and any bidder is open to bidding hence the auction style bidding. Emailing another bidder is childish and foolish. I've emailed a seller when ive lost an item to tell them that if the winning bidder backs out then im interested but contacted another person who chooses to bid is kinda ridiculous.

This reminds me of what happened when one of our fellow Arkers tried to make friends with a scalper while waiting for a store to open. He told the scalper what he was looking for and the next thing you know he scooped them all up on him.

It sucks he rode the bid up on something he didn't want. Would he have done it even if you had not contacted him just to protect his initial investment? Sorry you had to pay so much. I've never messaged another buyer before but I guess ebay is not good for making friends who have the same interests. That's what the Ark is for. Enjoy your bad ass Reboot collection.

Lesson learned. I was in the wrong. It won't happen again.

I want to see this $135 Bob figure :P

Eh. On eBay, it's snipe or be sniped. There are no friends on eBay.

Never thought of this thanks for that I would have been thinking about it everytime I came to this thread. at first I thought it was something to do with the Canadian Ebay but yours is a more plausible explaination.

This is the only thing I would have done with a lost auction, but to each his own

Call it my quaint english sensibilities....but messaging someone who beat me on an ebay item,to ask about their intentions is just a little creepy....and i just cant understand what you were thinking?? if you chatted up a girl in a bar,got blown out,and some other guy took her home,would you message him asking his intentions towards her??

Im not looking to get confrontational,and i dont want to be harsh to you because i dont know you,or your circumstances at all,i think you were naive in reaching out to this person, you totally overstepped the mark,and you came off looking like a weird toy stalker.

Its not right of this other guy to be such a dick either,but remember,this IS the internet home of power-tripping toy-jerk man-babies. My advice to you would be:

In future think twice,post once.

At that point, I would have backed out and let him have it. I've not found any toy that's worth paying that much for, no matter how badly I wanted it.
And you would have inadvertantly taught him a very expensive lesson for his troubles. But of course, anyone with that kind of ethics would have not honored his commitment and backed out of the auction.

What an asshole.

Call me creepy, weird, or whatever, names don't hunt :P. I know it was wrong to contact someone I didn't know to find out weather or not they were going to open a 120$ toy that they had just won off of ebay.

Ive been hunting down Reboot toys since last year in October 2010. I had never seen anyone else but me on here post pics of Reboot toys or even saying they had any, but if you have and I missed it than I am sorry. With me seeing someone willing to spend that much on a Reboot figure got me thinking that they were a big Reboot collector. It wasn't 100% geared towards the figure, but to find someone else who really likes these figures. And to see what they had been able to hunt down. Isn't what this site tries to promote? To band together the fellow collector. So I tried reaching out, and failed.

But whatever. What done is done. Like I have said it before, I Learnt My Lesson.

I can kinda see you just wanting to make contact with a fellow collector. Especially when you didn't know anyone else that collects the line. I don't think it was necessarily creepy or weird. Glad you learned your lesson, though.

Best well rounded answer so far.

I'm going to have to agree with you on this one. Occasionally I interact with a seller who goes well beyond the norm for eBay, but that is rather rare. If someone jacked up the price for a figure like that to over $100, shame on them for being such an asshole. That said, roadrevenge, you should know better than to contact random people, and even more, you are naive for playing into his game like that. I am in no way trying to offend you, I just want to make sure you learned from this.

^^^ What he said. I've also interacted with sellers beyond the regular ways on several occasions. This guy's a DICK for what he did. But, like you said lesson learned.

P.S. I didn't even know there were Reboot toys!!! I'd love to see some pics!!!!