eBay

nylvseller · ‎05-10-2024

something is going on. i have been on ebay 26 years. My daughter found her old beanie baby's and some Barbie's. I was looking up other item to sell mine and was shocked to see people asking $10,000 for $25 dolls. all these sellers had either no feedback or a few. its all over, i even saw one seller asking 1,000,000 for 4 dolls. Same with beanie baby's. So what is the scam??? I sent one an msg and said i could wire $10k and they were like OK. of course the phone rep was clueless to a scam right under their nose

ajs_coins_and_alchemy · ‎05-10-2024

Are you suggesting that asking an insane price for an item is in itself a scam....?

If the item is accurately described and depicted, and the item were to be actually delivered upon successful payment and completion of a transaction ... then there is no scam.

A seller has the right to ask whatever they want for an item. A buyer may be incredibly stupid to pay such a price. However, that does not make it a scam. An insanely high price tag in and of itself does not amount to deception.

tinsoldierunderground · ‎05-10-2024

A seller can ask whatever amount they want here... it's up to the buyer to decide if they want to pay that price. Caveat emptor.

eburtonlab · ‎05-10-2024

Just because a seller lists an item with a high price does not mean that someone will actually buy it.

And just because a bidder bids a high amount or a buyer uses Buy-It-Now does not necessarily mean that the buyer ultimately paid or the seller completed the transaction.

As you may have noticed, many of those high-priced transactions seem to involve zero feedback (or no longer registered) buyers or sellers, indicating that feedback was never exchanged -- that can be an indication that the sale was never completed successfully, which would have meant someone actually paying large eBay fees. Many such items are immediately relisted -- another clear indication that a transaction was not paid for or completed successfully.

I am not sure why some buyers and sellers participate in some of those odd non-transactions; some may be sport bidders bidding up auctions for fun; some may be sellers trying to make it look like the market value of a common item is much higher than it really is. Beanie Babies, Disney Black Diamond VHS tapes and Corningware dishes seem to be common items with vastly overinflated pricing. If you examine the full range of offerings, you can see many such items changing hands for much more down-to-earth sums where feedback is actually exchanged.

When viewing sold listings for Beanie Babies on eBay, be sure to look at the entire range of prices for a particular type, and then ignore the outlier prices where buyer and seller have not exchanged feedback or where the item was sold and then immediately relisted.

Then look at current listings to see what prices are available right now. If there are dozens of a particular type that are unsold at $5, then the going price must be less than that.

mudshark61369 · ‎05-11-2024

@nylvseller,

You've been a member long enough to know how to do an Advanced search. Look up the sold prices of those items, and you'll probably find the Princes Di bear sells for between $5 and $25 on average, and The same sort of much lower pricing for the Barbies.

However, you may find that someone Supposedly sold one of those very overpriced items occasionally. Those were probably some jokester who got a friend to buy the item, knowing that shortly, other sellers would fall for that price, and start listing their like item for close to those prices.

Come to think of it, that would be a good way to take some competitors out of the market for awhile, allowing a seller to price their item over trending prices, but still selling it, for more than the average price.

"THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS FOOLPROOF, BECAUSE FOOLS ARE SO DARNED INGENIOUS!" (unknown)

kensgiftshop · ‎05-11-2024

No scam, just to many clueless people watching these get rich selling your Beanie Baby videos.

The only one making any money are the ones posting those videos.

Have a great day.

nobody*s_perfect · ‎05-11-2024

This overpricing of "collectible" items is not new, it has been going on for may years.

Certain items like Beanie Babies are often listed with ridiculous pricing. As noted in other posts, they don't really sell for those prices. It might be due to scammers, or it might just be newbie sellers who look at other listings and don't realize that the prices are unrealistic so they just copy them. This discussion board regularly sees posts from newbie sellers who have unrealistic expectations for selling their Beanie Babies.

At any rate, since this has been going on for ages, apparently eBay does not intend to do anything about it. Please do not tie up the overworked customer support staff with calls about this issue.

janet9988 · ‎05-11-2024

@nylvseller wrote:
I sent one an msg and said i could wire $10k and they were like OK. of course the phone rep was clueless to a scam right under their nose

WOW so you violated ebay policy ... LOL

For some......It seems wisdom has been chasing you, but you have always been faster.

nylvseller · ‎05-11-2024

I don't agree, they have a pattern, new sellers, no feedback, only item they are selling is it AI or a BOT and maybe they are phishing but asking 1,000x what the selling price is, is not a incident or dumb as it looks IMO. I think there is something else behind it

simba6 · ‎05-11-2024

Not so much a scam as a poor deal. Prices vary as the crow flies in venues like this. It's up to buyers to check into prices to insure the best value for their money. There are many shows on TV that quote very inflated prices for collectables. They often have "experts" I have seen be dead wrong a number of times.

Old Disney VHS tapes have been hawked for big money here too.

ajs_coins_and_alchemy · ‎05-11-2024

@nylvseller wrote:
I don't agree, they have a pattern, new sellers, no feedback, only item they are selling is it AI or a BOT and maybe they are phishing but asking 1,000x what the selling price is, is not a incident or dumb as it looks IMO. I think there is something else behind it

Yes, there is absolutely a pattern and you are right about that. The pattern is that anyone listing items for those prices are not serious sellers, and will never successfully sell anything. Hence why they are new and have zero FB. No one asking those kinds of prices will stick around for long or sell anything as they become sorely disappointed in their own failures.

You think an experienced seller would list something like that? Please. 🙄

bennotbill · ‎05-11-2024

The only thing those ads are guilty of is in convincing numerous posters to this forum that their beanies are worth more than a dollar.

mermaidtalesnsirenscales · ‎05-11-2024

Wouldn't something like this automatically fall under the authenticity guarantee??? which would protect them if they are a real seller that is because of this listing now a very tempting potential bait for a scammer or if the seller is a scammer and the buyer just like spending tons of money on a beanie baby? I think the reason eBay is doing so good and other platforms are starting to fail is because they give us all the freedom to screw up or succeed at anything we want if you start trying to "save" people under the assumption that they are blindly a victim you rob them of a valuable learning experience that could actually save them a whole lot more in the future than just a cancellation on their sale or at worst a refund of money that was really not fair for them to have and the loss of a beany baby that wasn't really "worth" the amount they were trying to charge or almost paid. 😊 However there are actual scammers that are really screwing sellers out of money and merchandise and they do have a pattern but since we as sellers can't leave anything except positive feedback is there any way we can mark these jerks?? Or any kind of list or something where the user names or address of a scammer is posted by sellers who got scammed or a way it can be checked around here??? I have a few items I really want to list but I'm not prepared to lose to a theif I really can't afford it and I can't always tell if they have hacked an account with good history has anyone got any ideas??