Doohickamabob

No, they're more like industrial-grade scissors, but larger and thicker than scissors. I think they're for things like cutting sheet metal or chicken wire, but they work great on cardboard. Home Depot would have them in the same area as box cutters and such. (I wouldn't want kids to have access to them either.)

Your last sentence is the key part... Most sellers do not know that a non-paying buyer "eventually will pay."

Any follow-up on this? Original poster: Did he post anything more on Facebook? I hope the police catch or caught the thieves. If he has a list of the most valuable comics stolen, or if he has scans/photos of the covers (with creases or other elements that make the comics identifiable if they're sold), then please post them here.

Okay, gotta follow up on this wondercc transaction. I got ahead of things and assumed the worst because the transaction was going so poorly. (It was a low-value transaction but I was happy to find the comic, and disappointed that the transaction seemed to be going wrong.) The seller did make a number of mistakes. Since he apparently has a history of backing out of sales (at least that's what people were saying a few years ago), I thought it was probably that, but now it seems more like sloppiness.

When you're trimming cardboard edges and whatnot, clippers are a good choice. Just my expert (non-expert) advice.

Not a comic book, but I remember as a kid really looking forward to reading "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe." I had heard how it was one of the greats and I wanted to escape into a big fantasy world. Then a couple chapters in, there's a scene where the kids are in Narnia, and they see or hear Santa Claus ("Father Christmas") in his sleigh. I was like, "What the hell is this???" Of course, I was quite okay with talking beavers and stuff.

What are you using, scissors? If so, upgrade to clippers -- it works way better on cardboard.

I've been seeing a lot more auctions that have a starting bid and also a Best Offer. If you're browsing it can be confusing, because usually it's a BIN and Best Offer. Maybe what happened is somebody thought they were looking at an auction and Best Offer when it was a BIN and Best Offer. If so, they probably were trying to offer a little more than the starting bid.

Doodlin'

The gal in green, once noticed, steals the show. She should get her own comic cover.

Funny, the guy is now completely contradicting his story. First it was one story, now it's a revised story. First it's a valid tracking and item sent; now it's an invalid tracking and shipping level was never created. Bizarre. I've never been given the run-around like this before. The entire thing is suspicious. Of course, again, if the seller makes it right and does the right thing, I'll gladly admit that I overreacted and was wrong.

Thanks for reminding me about toolhaus.org. I used to have it in my bookmarks and will put it back again.

Yeah I'm inclined to. I suspect they are in the habit of calling eBay to get negs removed or reduced to neutrals. Really sorry to see that this hobby is still tainted by people who fail at basic life skills, such as honesty, the Golden Rule, etc. I also had a comic stolen from me this past month in a shady way. The books, the art, the stories, the history, the culture -- that's what I love about comics. Not so much the people in the hobby who think fellow hobbyists are their personal toilets to on.

Just posting this here since it's relevant to the subject. This copy of Nellie the Nurse #11 was stolen from me. If anybody here sees it (for sale or otherwise), please contact me. Thank you.

What's the big deal? They only missed the fact that several pages were missing...

Well at this point I consider the comic to be stolen from me. I am out the comic and out $53.76, so basically that's theft. I don't know who took it. Could be the buyer scamming me 1.5 months after the fact, or could be some other buyer not admitting he got the wrong comic, or could be it was stolen from the mail. Either way, it's theft. If you see a copy of Nellie the Nurse #11 like the one in this photo, please let me know. I figure the person who stole it might try to resell it eventually.

You had more than 30 minutes to thank them profusely, package, ship, provide tracking, etc., but you did NOTHING -- NOTHING! -- and therefore just forget it, yo.

A little over $50. The time period doesn't make a big difference to me other than the fact that my memory is hazier, and it (1) gives more time for confusion on my end, and (2) gives more time for the other person to have made their own mistakes (like if he had opened it and forgotten where he put stuff). I mean, if somebody honestly were missing an item I wouldn't want to say, "Sorry, you passed the deadline, too bad sucker!" (I am probably going to refund the full $50-something and chalk it up to the usual Murphy's Law of eBay.) The other thing that makes me feel suspicious (perhaps just paranoid) is that this coincidentally happened the day after I came on the forums and complained about a couple of sellers I felt were dishonest. One is somebody who seems to have a pattern of backing out of sales (a history of doing so and lying about the reasons), and another is somebody who pretty obviously shill-bidded their own item. The very day after I posted about these two, one of my own buyers comes out of the woodwork to say an item is missing. Most likely just a coincidence, but the timing sure made me feel suspicious. I am leaning toward thinking that I accidentally shipped to the wrong person (which is hard to admit because I am rigorous and rarely screw up, and when I do screw up, it makes me pissed off at myself!), and the person who received it doesn't want to have to ship it back (a free book is cool and it's not their fault it was sent to them, right?) and so has lied about not receiving it. The whole thing kind of made my Christmas Eve weekend with family a little bit sucky. Either I am getting scammed, or I did something incompetent when I thought I had things under control.

Christmas week is also pretty busy for most people. He should alter the invoice if he has a chance to do so. Probably give the dude some time.

Here's a "What Would You Do?" scenario: You have a bunch of auctions for about 20 different items. Some of the items are combined-shipping deals (individuals who win more than 1 item can pay one shipping cost for all items). Your auctions end, you carefully (you think) ship everything, and it's a done deal. All is sold, all is shipped. Then, 1.5 months later (about 6 weeks), you hear from one of the buyers: "Hello there, I've been on the road for the last month and hadn't had a chance to inspect the items you shipped. I bought 2 items, but it seems I've only received 1. I assume this was some sort of oversight. Please let me know how to proceed." You think to yourself, "What?!??!" You have a very methodical packaging/shipping process, one package at a time, sealed up before moving on to the next package, double-checking everything as you go. But it's possible you made a mistake. So you contact all the people who you've shipped to at that time, asking "Did you receive an extra item?" Eventually they all write back to say, "No, I did not receive anything extra." So you're still confused. The buyer still says "I only received 1 item, not the 2 that I purchased." You've searched high and low in your own items. Tracking shows everything was shipped and arrived, and the buyer did receive the package. Nobody else will cop to receiving an accidental bonus item. Your own methods of shipping are pretty rigorous and there's a low possibility you made a mistake (though it's not impossible). What do you do? Do you refund? Do you partially refund? Do you conclude that you're being scammed? Or that you made a mistake and one of the other buyers is lying about receiving an extra item? Just curious what you would do.

Is it some sort of high-volume seller? Or just an ordinary schmo? They at least should communicate...

I can't stand that browbeating #(@)*^. Had it happen several times. One time I was just trying to be polite to this guy who was aggressively trying to set up a BIN on an auction item, and he kept saying, 'So do we have a deal here?' trying to pin it down to a deal that I never had hinted I'd make, and trying to pressure me by saying he was going to be out of town when the auction ended and couldn't bid normally, etc. Just one thing after another of trying to rush the decision, pre-emptively create all these excuses for not bidding, and so on. I've politely declined to do BIN's with such people, and I can recall at least one case where the person waited until the auction ended and purposely messaged me just to taunt me for the ending auction price not being as much as he supposedly would have been willing to offer. As if to say "Hah heh!" in some sort of childish resentment. You really get a view of humanity through the selling process. Some people are utter saints, and some people are the lowest turds imaginable.

Gosh, what is going on here... Auction was for Archie Comics #50 (link), CGC restored 1.8. Seller is "imfun2kis," an eBay member since 2001, 688 feedback rating, 100% positive in past year, located in Bronx, NY. I was watching the auction. I noticed two bidders going back and forth, one with a 0-feedback rating, the other with a 1-feedback rating. Each bidder has 100% bidding activity with the seller, "imfun2kis." Auction ends with final price of $388. A few minutes later, "imfun2kis" posts the same comic as a Buy-It-Now (link) with an asking price of $650 (or best offer). I sent the seller a message: "What happened here?" and he replied, "The buyer asked to cancel because they thought they’d be outbid, guess they weren’t serious buyer". Some images below. The bidding-history graphics are of the top two bidders (I'm not sure why the "u***q" turns into "u***v," etc., but it's the same bidder). You can draw your own conclusions here. I just think it's something worth documenting. I'm sorry to see this stuff still happening.

Some recent finds:

You really know how to shop... Just focus on the good stuff.