Early days of eBay 8 8

[plady69]

1. Who on the Golden Age boards got in early and found some unbelievable finds?  Wish i had! Thoughts?

Edited June 18, 2022 by plady69

[The Black Hand ®]

I got most of my MLJ's between 1998 and 2003. It was wide open.

[Jayman]

Got some good deals sure, but I remember when you could still see the other bidders user names. I could see when Greggy or October (Living Monolith) sniped me. I could log on the boards here and scold or congratulate them! 

[Randall Dowling]

On 6/17/2022 at 8:01 PM, Jayman said:

Got some good deals sure, but I remember when you could still see the other bidders user names. I could see when Greggy or October (Living Monolith) sniped me. I could log on the boards here and scold or congratulate them! 

And also search they're username and look at who they were buying from.  My brother had a guy stalking him for old real photo postcards and it nearly drove my brother crazy.  He spent hours scouring obscure searches only to have this guy swoop in and outbid him every time.

My best memories of buying on eBay in the early days were from certain sellers who had incredibly strict grading or were listing warehouse finds and had multiple high grade copies of late SA keys.  In regard to GA books, I mostly have regrets at not having snatched up certain books because I thought I could find a better copy later for the same money.  Spirit 22 comes to mind where I passed on several copies, only to watch it run away to prices I'm unwilling to pay.

[Point Five]

I signed up with ebay in 1998. No screaming deals come to mind, but I was able to pick off some pretty decent 50s LB Coles and ECs in the $30-100 range. In the mid-90s I was pounding the pavement looking for GA in comic stores and generally striking out, so it was exciting to discover that ebay could amp up my collecting.

I was such a dope back then, I actually used my email address as my ebay username. It stayed like that for five years, and I think ebay must have sent a note and said politely "hey, cut that stupid s**t out". On a whim I changed it to "gentleman_jon", which is where it stands today. 

 

[MB1952]

All the Baker stuff was really affordable Books for $50 or less. OA for $100. 

[Cat-Man_America]

Most of my eBay finds were early high grade SF pulps (amazing prices on high grade Gernsback era Amazing Stories, for instance), but I didn't get back into GA comics until after the gold-rush. I did manage a few good pick-ups of GA from eBay dealers, but rarely raw books that graded out better than their descriptions.

[jimbo_7071]

I bought some books on eBay back in 2000 and 2001, but I don't remember any bargains. My favorite eBay pick up was this Human Torch 19 because it had white pages.

I can see that I hadn't gotten the hang of sniping yet because I bid with 18 seconds left. I would never bid that early now.

I'm pretty sure the first bidder, actions50, was @Timely. I vaguely remember that zaq12 was a bidder on almost everything decent, but I have no idea who he was.

Edited June 18, 2022 by jimbo_7071

[rjpb]

I've been a member since '98 (so long that my username has less characters than they allow for new names). Of course everything from back then would be a screaming deal now, but I don't recall getting any amazing deals of high value, but one could score plenty of twenty dollar GA, books (back then) for $3-$5, especially in genres like war and crime. I wish I'd bought more. I rarely sniped back then. The incredible deals you'd see (after the fact) tended to be BINs where someone scored a high value book for 10% of fair market value. Never happened for me though.

You can still get great deals on ebay, and not just BINs. I sometimes win something in a 7 day auction for so little that first think I must have misread the description. Recently I won an issue of Ginger for $18 including shipping, that sold fairly easily when I put it back up on ebay for $150, but the more valuable the book the harder that kind of deal is to find. I'd love to win a $15,000 book for $1800 

[Jeffro.]

Not GA, although I did dabble in some Atlas pre-code horror, but I did get all of my OA pieces. Modest stuff by the standards of the big boys but its appreciated nicely over the years.

[buttock]

On 6/18/2022 at 2:30 AM, jimbo_7071 said:

I bought some books on eBay back in 2000 and 2001, but I don't remember any bargains. My favorite eBay pick up was this Human Torch 19 because it had white pages.

I can see that I hadn't gotten the hang of sniping yet because I bid with 18 seconds left. I would never bid that early now.

I'm pretty sure the first bidder, actions50, was @Timely. I vaguely remember that zaq12 was a bidder on almost everything decent, but I have no idea who he was.

zaq12 was Fishler. 

[GreatCaesarsGhost]

On 6/18/2022 at 3:30 AM, jimbo_7071 said:

I vaguely remember that zaq12 was a bidder on almost everything decent, but I have no idea who he was.

That was Fischler. Since I knew it was him, I was able to search out whatever he was bidding on, and I did so regularly. I remember watching him buy an AF 15 in 6.5 for $15k, thinking hey maybe I should do the same. Except for the part where I had no money.

Edited June 18, 2022 by GreatCaesarsGhost

[GreatCaesarsGhost]

I once bought a Tec 31 off the Bay for $4k. It arrived in a box with balls of wadded up newspaper around it. No Mylar sleeve, no backing board, just a naked comic book packed with balls of newspaper around it. Cgc had just come into existence around that time, so I sent it in and it came back as an unrestored 4.5. 

Edited June 18, 2022 by GreatCaesarsGhost

[Courageous Cat]

On 6/18/2022 at 8:43 AM, GreatCaesarsGhost said:

 it came back as an unrestored 4.5. 

Great Caesars Ghost!!! 

[Robot Man]

I signed up in 1998. I don’t remember any screaming deals on comics but I was able to fill out a lot of holes and runs in my GA runs. Seems I was getting packages daily.

I did get some incredible deals on old toys and premiums. Not to mention that a lot of premiums and pinback buttons were regional, I saw and had access to a lot of stuff I never knew existed.

What really blew me away was selling. I did a LOT of selling as did my wife. We would very often be blown away with the final auction prices we were getting. A goldmine.

Another observation was that stuff we thought was so rare in our area was almost common on eBay. Made us modify what we put on there as opposed to what we took to shows.

[circumstances]

I signed up in 1998, but I didn't get the itch to really browse for Gold until 2009 or 2010.

I was scarfing up a book a week (more or less).

To this day I have no idea why I did this, but I started bidding on 1950s superhero DCs (maybe because I never collected them and never had all that many around in general?).

I had some rules. I would put in a snipe for 40% of grade in Overstreet, and $200 was my max per book including shipping.

I would set up my snipes with 2 or 3 seconds left to go, at 40% of Overstreet or $200.99, whichever was less.

Did this for a couple of years! Lol

On other random (older and more valuable) stuff I had a $299 per book limit. I'd just load up the snipes and let em go (Centaurs, WWII covers, etc.).

Edited June 18, 2022 by circumstances

[Joshua33]

On 6/18/2022 at 5:43 AM, GreatCaesarsGhost said:

I once bought a Tec 31 off the Bay for $4k. It arrived in a box with balls of wadded up newspaper around it. No Mylar sleeve, no backing board, just a naked comic book packed with balls of newspaper around it. Cgc had just come into existence around that time, so I sent it in and it came back as an unrestored 4.5. 

Aaaaaaaaaaaand I hate you.

[707comics]

I have been reminded of 2 things while reading this thread:

1) I HATE snipe bidders! 

2) You are not supposed to print the internet

 

[The Black Hand ®]

I was able to connect with a lot of MLJ/Archie fans through eBay. It was also a very affordable way to fill in MLJ runs. They were still under the radar in the late 90's and even looked down on by many dealers and mainstream GA collectors. Being a tightwad I was able to find incredible deals at times. It was a lot of fun. 

[october]

eBay was incredible up until about 2016, then the air slowly went out year after year. 

I found so many good deals and got so many amazing leads that it hurts to think about. I bought five or six massive high grade OO Silver collections just from networking after a purchase. One ended up being a box truck load of 30,000 comics, Silver through Copper. Another was 1,000 virtually untouched SA comics...and when I say untouched, I mean it. The friggin distributor overspray was unbroken on some of the top edges. I was the first person to open them, ever, 50 years after printing. Tons of 9.6's and 9.8's. All sold off to finance my collection and other stuff. No regrets, just sorry the party is over! eBay is a shadow of a shadow of its former self now.