Definition of "undercutting":

Me:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120163294055
Starting time: Sep-27-07 19:45:00 PDT (scheduled, so as to begin after other auctions ended)
Starting bid: US $49.99
Duration: 7-day listing

The other guy:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=170153862318
Starting time: Sep-27-07 20:27:48 PDT
Starting bid: US $0.89
Duration: 7-day listing

I've been so busy with work and trying to sell cards that I haven't had time to do much photography.  I did get some great pix in Hyannis a couple weeks ago and some more good stuff at a reception for a christening I went to last weekend, but I haven't had time to photoshop the photos, clean them up, organize them, and so forth.  It's just been either work or eBay the last couple weeks.  Here's one picture I took (at the office, of couse).  Somebody in my building went out and got one of those "Dream Cruisers".  Isn't it gorgeous?  Wow.

On the eBay front I continue to sell and sell.  Part of my unlimited set is gone now, and I've gotten the right price for it, and I continue to identify rarities or obscurities in my collection and put them up for sale.  I am happy to report that I am at 90% of stage one and expect to make it there by the end of the week.  Cool beans!

But I have learned one important lesson about selling.  Selling in bulk may allow you to ship more product, but it definitely costs you money.  I sold a set of 8 revised dual lands back on the tenth of September for $122.50.  In preparation for the end of that auction I got another 7 dual lands together and was prepared to sell them as a batch.  But I decided not to.  As an experiment I decided to sell the 7 duals as individual auctions (here they are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7).  They went for a total of $139.60.

Sold as a batch, they went for $15.31 apiece.  Sold individually? $19.94.  That's 30% difference!!!  Viewed from that perspective it makes sense to sell individually unless you have a very small market (say you are selling on a table on your front lawn... maybe a couple dozen people swing by and look at the items, chances of selling them all individually are remote.)  But on eBay the market is huge, millions of potential buyers, so go for it right?

Well there *are* the eBay fees to consider.  eBay will charge you for absolutely anything you can think of and plenty of things that wouldn't even occur to you.  Back in the early days of eBay there was a listing fee and a sale fee.  The listing fee used to be 30 cents.  That was it.  Then if the item sold there was a sale fee which was this sliding scale thing that was very complicated but generally worked out to about 4% to 5% of your sale.  Nowadays everything costs money.  No longer is the listing fee flat, but it is based on the minimum bid of your auction.  If your minimum bid is a dollar, the listing fee is 20 cents.  If your minimum bid is $49.99 your listing fee is $1.20, and if your minimum bid is $59.99 the fee is $2.40.  As you can see the fee is determined inside some sort of bracketed structure.  Want to add a reserve price?  You'll be charged 1% of your reserve price.  Want to add a buy-it-now price?  There's a fee for that.  Want to schedule your auction to start later in the day or later in the week?  There's a fee for that.  And so on and so on and so on.  Sale fees aside, eBay takes a hefty chunk out of you up front just for listing the item.  To the point where it makes no sense at all to sell anything for under say, 5 dollars.  Ebay will simply eat so much of it that it becomes pointless to sell it.

And of course once your item sells, eBay charges you for a percentage of the sale price, this you would pay no matter how many items you are selling, but the listing fees are paid for each item.  My listing fees for the first dual land auction was 30 cents (I had no minimum bid, no buy it now).  The 7 individual auctions cost 40 cents apiece to list (probably because I set a minimum bid of $9.99, otherwise it would have been 30 cents).  But that is $2.80 to list 7 individual items instead of 30 cents to list one.

Then come the PayPal fees, which generally work out to about 3.5% of the sale price but which have overhead costs causing them to be at least 30 cents as a minimum.  I read an amusing story about a guy who overcharged his customer about 90 cents for shipping, and offered the customer a refund via PayPal.  So the customer got sixty cents.  Ouch.  For items worth about $20 each, the overhead is not really all that relevant, but it would be for inexpensive items.  The PayPal fees would be easier to stomach if PayPal wasn't owned by eBay.  Yes, that's right, you pay eBay to list your item, you pay eBay to sell your item, and you pay eBay to collect the payment for the sale of your item.  Yeesh.  And, to make it even more annoying, PayPal fees are instantaneously applied to any cash transferred, but eBay fees are simply billed to you at the end of the month.  That way, PayPal can charge you a percentage off of the $100 you were paid, instead of the $100 you were paid minus the eBay listing and sale fees.  I hasten to point out again that PayPal *is* eBay.  Double dipping anyone?

After correcting for eBay listing fees, eBay sale fees, and eBay PayPal fees, the group lot went for $14.20 per card, and the individual lot for $17.80.  That's still a 25% improvement in price, even after being robbed charged for eBay's fine services.  Altogether the 8 auctions sold for $262.10, which isn't bad, even if eBay took $23.92 in total fees.  My state government charges 5% in sales tax.  eBay?  9.13%.  Yikes!!!

So from now on I'm going to sell individually and try not to think about the fact that I might as well just set every tenth item on fire since I'm not going to end up with any money for it.

Looking down the notes/status on my selling/sold auctions, they read like something out of "How to be Obnoxious -- A Practitioner's Guide".  Let's run through them, shall we?

Item 1 is a very rare set which did not sell because some rather clueless sellers all decided to run auctions for the same item at the same time as mine, and undercut me.  As a result they all hurt each other and nobody made what the set was worth.  One guy had an extremely low minimum bid and got no bids.  After his auction ended, there was only one auction left to bid on, it shot way up over the first guy's minimum despite having poorer quality cards.  Thinking about that makes my brain shrivel.  Now I have to wait around for all of these shmoes to finish relisting and selling their sets so I can get a fair price for mine.  And they appear to be waiting for me.  Greaaaaaaat.

Item 2 is my most valuable set, wouldn't sell for 80% of the retail price.  I received the most ridiculous offers, promises from people who then disappeared, and got strung along by people who eventually just backed out as if surprised when I repeated stuff to them which was clearly stated in the auction description.  Meanwhile the auction has had hundreds of views and dozens of people watching it.  I've now relisted (cha-ching! extra ebay fees!) lowered the price to 70% and it still isn't selling.  Jesus.  I'm going to have to split it up and sell it in pieces (cha-ching! more fees!)... and I'll end up making way more than the current asking price.  Had one buyer offer the full price if I would ship to Spain (auction says shipping to USA only.)  He assured me up and down that it was perfectly safe and he does it all the time.  Then I told him that he would have to assume the shipping risk (i.e. item goes missing, he has to wait for the UPS refund, up to 6 months).  And suddenly it's no longer something he feels comfortable doing.  (Guess he doesn't have as much faith in the Spanish courier services after all.)  Currently I have one offer from a guy who "is trying to get the money together".  We'll see... past history is not a good indicator.

Item 3, a set so rare that only a handful exist in the world.  I set a reserve and have people who expect me to sell it to them for one tenth of the reserve.  One bidder offered to buy it for the reserve price, but insists I cancel the auction and relist it with a buy it now option first!!  (For those wondering, it cost about $9 to list it the first time, and would cost another $9 to list it again.)  Guy refuses to just bid the goddamned reserve amount.  I refused to end the auction for him.

Item 4, fixed price/best offer auction.  I accepted an offer of $150, only to discover that the buyer was from Japan (you don't get buyer's location until you accept their offer.)  Auction description says shipping to USA only.  Genius.  I recalculating the shipping charges, and they tripled.  Sent buyer an invoice and pointed out that he should have contacted me first before he bid because that's exactly what the auction description says.  I hope he doesn't back out, but I suspect he will (and I lose $5 in listing fees... cha-ching!)

Item 5, sold Aug-31.  No contact from buyer.  Invoice sent 9/1.  Reminder sent 9/4.  Still no contact.  Standard eBay grace period is 3 days from end of auction.  Going to have to send buyer a warning tomorrow and if he doesn't pay within a day after that it will be negative feedback and relist the item (cha-ching! more listing fees...)

Item 6, shipping to USA only.  Bidder from Germany pleaded with me to ship to him, and eventually I agreed and let him bid.  Then after winning the item he argued with me about the shipping costs and insisted I ship USPS instead of UPS.

Item 7, buyer asked repeatedly about card condition despite pictures of the cards being in auction description, and then took his sweet time getting his payment together after he won (took 5 days to make an instant electronic payment.)  At least he apologized for taking so long.  He'd be the first.

What next???

As you know I am selling some of my MTG collection (the oldest and the bestest stuff) to finance photographic gear.  I spent awhile researching prices so my stuff could be competitively priced--which was a little challenging because for some of the hotter stuff (the Unlimited and Arabian Nights sets) there hasn't been an auction on ebay for months on these items.  I finally figured out why.  Potential sellers are waiting for a price to beat.  After months with very little in the way of complete sets of Unlimited/Arabians, within a day of me listing my sets for auction, a bunch of other sellers crawled out of the woodwork and listed their sets for auction, all undercutting me by small amounts (typically about $50), or by setting high reserves and no minimum bid.  Since all these auctions are now running simultaneously, there is suddenly a lot of options for the prospective buyer, and since mine is ending before the others, the lower-priced auctions are going to see all the action.

So at this point I don't expect the Arabians or Unlimited sets to sell, and now I'm going to have to sit around like the other campers and wait for some other seller to come along so I can undercut him or her.

Pain in the ass.  The amusing thing is, sets this rare sell so infrequently that if a seller waited until my auction was over, he'd end up doing better than he would if they all try to sell at the same time and undercut each other.  Oh well... I guess the buyers win!

Well, after years of collecting, I've finally begun selling off pieces of my Magic: the Gathering trading card collection.  The collection is enormous, and I'm hopeful that I can wring enough cash out of it to get the camera gear I feel is necessary to start attempting to supplement my income.  Wish me luck!

This week's gonna be rough because I'm having my teeth taken out and replaced with dentures. Therefore I'll be spending most of the week out of my head on pain meds. It was important to me therefore to do some things I haven't done in a long time this weekend, and just to enjoy myself.

Saturday

So on Saturday morning, me and the family went to Wachusett Meadow in Princeton, MA for birdwatching and other attractions. The sanctuary administrators were shearing a ewe when we got there, so we watched some of that. Lynnea really enjoyed the sheep, especially the little lambs.

The birding was good, we racked up 35 species by 11 AM. The highlights were extensive views of a Rose-breasted Grosbeak (hadn't seen one in 10 years), an Eastern Phoebe on the nest (never seen one on the nest before), and my little friend, the Yellow Warbler, who found me while I was resting on a bench and sang to me from a nearby shrub. The Bobolinks aren't back yet. I'll have to go back sometime soon to see them.

The complete list was:

1. House Sparrow
    
2. Blue Jay
    
3. European Starling
    
4. Northern Cardinal
    
5. White-breasted Nuthatch (heard only)
    
6. Dark-eyed Junco
    
7. Downy Woodpecker
    
8. American Crow
    
9. American Robin
    
10. Common Grackle
     
11. Red-winged Blackbird
     
12. Black-capped Chickadee
     
13. Rose-breasted Grosbeak (A rare treat for me! Was feeding at the sanctuary feeders.)
     
14. Barn Swallow
     
15. American Goldfinch
     
16. Mourning Dove
     
17. Brown-headed Cowbird (at least three pairs of M & F)
     
18. Red-tailed Hawk
     
19. Tree Swallow
     
20. Eastern Phoebe (saw one nesting!)
     
21. White-throated Sparrow
     
22. House Wren
     
23. Song Sparrow
     
24. Eastern Bluebird (what a nice surprise, got to see a couple)
     
25. Common Merganser (pair, M & F)
     
26. Hooded Merganser
     
27. Canada Goose (pair, presumably M & F)
     
28. Yellow Warbler
     
29. Northern Flicker
     
30. Bufflehead (pair, M & F, took awhile for me to identify, male not in full breeding plumage)
     
31. Chipping Sparrow
     
32. Tufted Titmouse
     
33. Yellow-rumped Warbler
     
34. Northern Mockingbird
     
35. Flycatcher, Empidomax Species (Beats me, I can never tell these guys apart. Its eye-ring was very pronounced so I'd venture it was either Acadian, Alder, or Least, or maybe even a Yellow-bellied migrating through. Probably not a Willow.)

After heading back home and eating leftovers for lunch, the family rested. I was sore and tired from the hiking. So I spent the afternoon reading The God Delusion by Dr. Richard Dawkins. It's very dry, and so far there are no surprises (most of the content therein I've heard from watching Dawkins speak, so it's largely an expansion on arguments I've already heard), but I am getting some reasonable enjoyment from it.

My neighbor Mark came over to ask if I would be able to help him move a giant boulder he had unearthed while working in his yard. He wanted me to come over on Sunday when he would have another person to help, but I told him I was visiting my Mom on Sunday. He didn't know my Dad had passed away and expressed his condolences.

Around dusk I decided to head out to L.A.N. Games in Leominster to play some Magic: the Gathering with friends I hadn't seen in a long time. I can't remember the last time I made it out there. Certainly before my pneumonia set in (February 5) and probably not in January because I was on the project from hell at work. I'd say I probably got out there sometime in December so it has been quite a while.

My old friend Rich was there, as well as my friend Dave (who is also the proprietor). Later on my friends Dillon, Mike, and some others showed up and we all played cards. I had a really good time. Before I knew it, it was coming up on 10 PM, and I needed to get home and get some sleep because I was heading out to see my Mom in the morning. Once I got home I read a little more Dawkins and then went to bed.

Sunday

I discovered Patty was sick when I got up Sunday morning. It might just be allergies, but she was very uncomfortable, so I planned on going to my Mom's alone. After I took my shower I decided to shave off my beard. It was getting quite thick, and I didn't want it to get in the way of the oral surgeon this week. While I was shaving my wife brought my cell phone to me in the bathroom. My Mom was calling to tell me she had a lot of work to do today, and why don't I just stay home?

So after chatting with my Mom, I decided to stay home. I finished shaving and went next door to tell Mark and Heather that if they needed help moving the boulder, I was going to be available after all.

Around 11 or so, Heather's Dad John came by with his pickup truck and various chains, and winch-like contraptions with which we got the stone out of its hole in short order. It was a huge boulder, roughly triangular, perhaps about 3 feet wide by 2.5 feet long by about 2 feet thick in the thickest spot. John felt it was around a thousand pounds or so. Heather wanted to stand it up in front of her house and build a small rock garden around it, so we spent the next 2 hours or so getting it from the backyard, around the house, up onto the driveway, across the front lawn, precariously around the front walkway railing which was very old and rickety and up to the spot where the garden was going to be. It was hard work and it took all four of us to move. We kept laying down planks of wood and plywood for it to slide across so as to minimize the damage to the front lawn.

We were all exhausted when it was finally close to where it needed to be, and we were too tired to jockey it the last couple feet and stand it up. Project for another day, I think. Moving a thousand pound boulder really makes you think about how people long gone moved far bigger stones to make the pyramids, stonehenge, or other ancient structures.

I thought I was tired the day before, but after helping to lug around that fat-ass rock, when I got back home and sat in my comfy chair I immediately passed out. Later I got up (ow) and trief to play a little Oblivion on my xbox 360 but fell asleep again. Eventually I recovered and became incredibly hungry. I just couldn't get enough to eat! I had some toast, and then some baked beans, and then some beefaroni, and finally ate a few rice cakes with peanut butter. I washed this down with alternating glasses of apple juice and ginger ale and followed it up with a pair of fig newtons for dessert.

Later in the evening I read more Dawkins and tried not to think about my upcoming oral surgery. And that was my weekend. It was a pretty good one as weekends go, and nice weather to boot. Hope everyone else enjoyed theirs!

So while convalescing here in my study, I went on MTGO to play a couple games of cards, when this stupid discussion happened.

2:54 Tobleron: hmm I was 16 when that came out anyone want to take a gander at my age? hehe
2:54 pdragon616: a "gander"? Gander does not equal "guess".
2:54 Dork: lol @ pdragon for not knowing what gander means
2:55 pdragon616: gander == "look" or "the mate of a goose", but not "a guess"
2:56 pdragon616: Look it up before you laugh at me, Dork, and learn the language. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/gander

At this point, I received a private message from the MTGO adept (basically, a room moderator, who's sad existence largely consists of telling people to stop talking.).  He told me I was not allowed to post links to anything other than Wizard's website, it's a violation of MTGO policy.  This policy was established to prevent people from posting links to competing sites, or inappropriate sites.  I informed the moderator of that fact and went on to say that the policy was never intended to be enforced in a knee-jerk fashion... a link to the dictionary should be pretty safe.  I'm just pissing off everyone today, I guess.  Anyway I figured the conversation was over, but Tobleron and Dork were not through with me:

2:56 Tobleron: you can take a gander however
2:56 Dork: 2.Slang. a look: Take a gander at his new shoes.
2:56 Dork: You look it up, moron

Are you as mystified as I? Tobleron clearly used it to mean "take a guess" and here Dork calling me a moron because it can be used to mean "take a look" which is, unless I'm mistaken, what I just said.  But you know me, I'll say it again:

2:56 pdragon616: No duh you can "take a gander", but that means "TAKE A LOOK", silly!
2:57 Boyardee: take a gander= take a look or have a look-see!
2:57 pdragon616: thank you
2:57 Tobleron: I was the one that used it lol. scroll up
2:57 pdragon616: yes, you are the one who used it WRONG
2:57 Dork: were in america, people use words in slang forms, we use words in other ways than they are meant

So a person chimes in to agree with me, Tobleron seems to think I'm confused about who said what, and Dork thinks the entire internet is in America, and that I don't know what "slang" is.  I expected that at this point, other people might start jumping on Dork.  I was right. It was also time for more chiming in of relevant and irrelevant commentary:

2:57 Tobleron: we're where?
2:58 Campton: Dork talk for yourself
2:58 OceanBreeze: a gander is a male goose
2:58 Boyardee: Dork you're an idiot, but when i say that i mean "idiot" as in "cool guy"
2:58 pdragon616: Dork, in american slang "take a gander" does not mean "take a guess" no matter how bad you want it to mean that, foo
2:58 Campton: take a gander means have a look
2:58 OceanBreeze: its means retrieve a male goose
2:59 pdragon616: 'take a gander at' - Look at, glance at, as in 'Will you take a gander at that woman's red hair!' This slangy idiom, dating from the early 1900s, presumably came from the verb gander, meaning "stretch one's neck to see," possibly alluding to the long neck of the male goose. For a synonym, see 'take a look at'.
2:59 Tobleron: k I am glad I made you all debate and look in the dictionary I am off to the lake!!
2:59 Boyardee: whats good for the goose is good for the guess?
2:59 Durante: All right now, who's stealing geese?

Durante wants to know who's taking all the ganders.    Conversation over, right?  Nope.  First comes more PM's from the moderator.  I'm having a discussion again, and that's not permitted, and apparently I'm harassing Dork.  As you can tell, my patience for the MTGO moderators is pretty thin.  Let me describe for you the MTGO casual room window.  At the top of the screen is a list of all the active "tables" (games), you can sort this list in any manner you like, although the most sensible way to sort it is by "Status" as this puts games that are waiting to start at the top where you can easily see them and decide what game you'd like to play.  Beneath this is a list of completed games, and beneath that is the chat window, where all the players can post chat messages.  However from the moderator's perspective this is what that window should look like:

Joe: std
Barney: ext
Alice: std
Fred: classic
Dork: std
Peanuts: ext
Jank: prismatic
Bored: ext
Kablooie: singleton

This exciting conversation is players posting a note to say that they just opened up a new table (game) and the format of game they've started... std=standard, ext=extended, etc.  This is, however, inherently stupid, since all open games can be sorted in the game list window, so there really is no need to advertise games in the chat window.  And therefore players tend to ignore the moderator and have discussions until he threatens to ban someone, and it's a good thing too, because otherwise hanging out in the casual room would be pretty dull.  According to the moderators, discussing MTG is acceptable, but any discussion that lasts for more than a minute, even one about MTG, will result in the moderator telling people to be quiet or take it to another room.  Anyway while I'm getting harangued by the moderator, the conversation continues, Dork isn't going to give up, and he's got iron-clad proof:

2:59 Dork: 5. gander 4 up, 6 down a guess based on only assumptions, www.urbandictionary.com
2:59 Dork: look for your self Gander - a guess based on only assumptions
3:00 Durante: pdragon is right
3:00 OceanBreeze: best conversation ever
3:00 Dork: urbandictionary is a user submitted dictionary, word submitted on December 18th, proving that OTHER people use it as a form of "guess"
3:00 Dork: therefore, you're WRONG
3:00 Durante: other people are idiots...
3:01 Abrogate: nobody says gander anymore cause we are too urban to think about geese
3:01 LoinGirder: Newsflash: Just because you can find other idiots who use a phrase incorrectly does not make it correct
3:01 Durante: I would go with standard usage over one person
3:01 Dork: 2:58 pdragon616: Dork, in american slang "take a gander" does not mean "take a guess" no matter how bad you want it to mean that, foo ---- you wanna say that again? make your self look like more of an idiot, you got really quiet really fast

Apparently during this two minutes while I was dealing with the moderator, I didn't post anything, and Dork took this as some sort of triumph.  In the meantime another couple people have chimed in to tell him he's wrong, and Abrogate's post still makes me laugh.  We are too urban to think about geese.  It's kind of hard to take 'urbandictionary' seriously since all the defnitions are user submitted, and there is even less oversight there than at wikipedia.  It certainly isn't like a real dictionary of slang.

3:02 pdragon616: urbandictionary is created by popular submission you twit, it isn't an authoritative source!!! YOU could submit your ignorant definition there. Big deal, proves nothing.
3:02 Abrogate: lol take a look and take a guess are obviously different in meaning
3:02 OneRingToRuleThemAll: of course
3:02 Orbital: probably did submit his own definition while you were all chatting, lol
3:02 Dork: exactly, you said no one uses it as guess, I proved you wrong, people do use it as a form of "guess"
3:03 OneRingToRuleThemAll: Dork,no one uses the words guess and look interchangably
3:03 pdragon616: urbandictionary also says that "Gander = Dander", as in "gets my gander up", obviously submitted by a halfwit who doesn't know what he's talking about and misheard the phrase... urbandictionary is the toilet-bug of dictionaries... Don't waste my time.
3:04 Orbital: urbandictionary = joke
3:04 Orbital: this argument is really getting my gander up
3:04 PutzModerator: Please stop this discussion now

At this point Dork finally went away.  Probably because he too was getting harangued by the moderator.  And I pondered this conversation for a bit and decided to share it here.  I hate trying to have discussions on the 'net anyway.  Nobody ever understands anyone and it usually devolves into pointless quibbling.  So anyone here think I was wrong to disparage UrbanDictionary.com?