RKMBs Forums .::Robegories::. Comic Books Comic book buyers can be such annoying turds

Ok, so since losing my job a few months ago, I have been hitting eBay really heavily, selling off my old collection.
Most stuff I sell individually, but some stuff I find is better selling in bulk if its a long run of a title or a complete set, for instance.

Now while most people seem to be reasonable, and quite happy with the fact that I grade fairly, sell for below market value and that my packaging is more than adequate, I do still get some right royal pains in the neck.

For instance, last night all my auctions finished, and after they finished, I got a message from someone saying he might be interested in one of the sets, but only if I could sell it for less.
Now considering its the complete 149 issue set of X-Factor, which I had up for £30 (which is probably around 20p an issue), I dont think its unreasonably priced, and probably a fraction of what I paid and the market value.
So anyway, I tell the guy that I could not sell it for any less than £25.
He comes back with "Are they individually bagged?"
Now for fucksake, you have been offered a set of comics for way below what the seller paid for them, and you expect the seller to bag everything?
Fer fucksake, if I had bagged everything, no way would I be able to sell at these prices as I'd be even more out of pocket.

I have had cunts leave neutral despite the comic being perfect, because the packaging, in their eyes, was inadequate (despite the 1000 or more other people saying the packaging is great).

I have had cunts make up their own gradings.

I have had cunts complain that the item wasnt bagged and boarded, despite paying only 49p and there not being anything in the description to say it was bagged and boarded.

I have had cunts try to tell me that I should pay for extra packaging out of my own pocket, and not charge them for it. Guy bought a 99p comic, paid £1.50 for postage. Explained to him that postage of his item cost me £1.58 already, plus 10p final fee to eBay, and 5p to PayPal for transaction, so I was already out of pocket, not including the fact the item cost me twice that. And he still countered that I should have swallowed extra cost of bagging and boarding comic.


Fuck me, when I bought second hand comics years ago, I didnt care if they were bagged and boarded, I didnt care if they were slightly below grade, I didnt care if they were slightly overpriced, I was just glad to get the comic I wanted.
These cunts want something for nothing.

I sold a run of 20 or so 1960's Thor comics for a friend on ebay a few years ago. He bought them at a flea market for $150 and when strapped for cash decided to unload them.

I posted pictures of each individual issue and received a question as to wther they had been trimmed(a practice i wasnt aware of at the time), I told the asker that I had no idea if they were look at the pictures and decide for themselves explaining how i came into possession and i had no track record with these books.

A week later they sold for $60 and the buyer emails me and say he received them and they look awesome and he is so happy to finish his whole Thor run. i leave him feedback and two days later get an email from him irate that the issues had been trimmed. He wanted all his money including S&H back. he said he went to the store got some silver age bags and the books were too small. I said I thought you loved the books, and he said he did till he found out they were trimmed.

WTF? If I had a book and I loved the freaking book I could care less if it was trimmed as long as nthing was obscured which this wasnt, I had no idea it was trimmed myself.

Obviously from the pics a silver age collector did that is why the question was asked, and it was posted o my ebay posting. also why the bidding topped out $60. these books without trimming questions would have went in the hundreds of dollars. this guy either didnt read the whole listing or was just geek embarrassed that the shop owner cracked on him for buying trimmed books. my guess is he new they were trimmed and wanted to brag about getting the run for $60 and instead he got ragged on by the local geekdom.

Simple fact is, if you get something way below the market value, you have to expect that there is a chance you wont get a bells a whistles comic book.
To be honest, I have never hear of trimmed comics and really wouldnt have cared (or probably noticed) if they were.
As long as the issue completed my collection, was complete, readable and not majorly overpriced for the condition, I was fucking well happy.

I've sold comics in very fine to near mint condition, that other sellers have up for £20 or more, and I have priced them at £5 or less.
If you still expect that comic to come with bags n boards n shit, then you are a fucking moron quite frankly.
If I bought it bagged and boarded, thats how they will get it, but if not, then unless it goes for decent money, I am not paying out of my pocket to do so.
And lets face it, if the comic shop sold it without bags and boards, why the fuck should a private seller be obligated to do so?

Comic book nerds seriously fuck me off.

If I had know the books would have went for $60 I would have bought them off my friend myself. If I had represented the books as guaranteed NM or whatever and asked the market price I could see the gripe but it was clearly stated I had no idea.

I sold books like you, if I had a bag and board on them they went bagged and boarded if not I packaged them securely with cardboard and off they went.

I've started selling shit online lately and have come upon a couple of shitheads. I was selling a lot of 300 National Geographic mags my grandpa left (starting at the lowest price) and a guy posted saying he really needed 20 of the issues I had. I said OK, make your bid (at the time there were no bids) and if you win the auction you can take whatever you want. So he makes the lowest possible bid and for days he was the winner...

Then a couple of other guys came along and upped the price (the whole lot was going for like 20 bucks by then). The guy from before came back and asked me how much I wanted for the 20 issues he needed. I said I'll sell the lot for whatever the winning bid amounts to, so if he really wants this stuff he should make a higher offer to play it safe. Again he makes the lowest possible bid (close to 21 bucks).

The guy who won ended up taking the lot for like 30 bucks (to be honest I naively thought I'd get 10 times that). Days later the wanker from before posted in another one of my auctions (some Nintendo 64 games) calling me an idiot for selling the mags for 30 bucks, when he was willing to pay 40 for the issues he needed if I'd asked for that. Obviously he really wanted these magazines, but he lost them for making the lowest possible bid and is now blaming me for it. Fuck it, it would've been a pain in the ass to sell the mags by small lots anyway.

It always pisses me off when people message you asking how much you want for something, or would you be willing to put them up as buy it now etc.
I always point out that I purposely dont list my items as buy it now for two reasons. One being that it actually costs you more to list an item as buy it now, and secondly that I purposely list all my items below supposed market value as I prefer to let the market decide what they are worth.
Sometimes I get less, sometimes I get more, but chances are, if I listed them at supposed market value, they wouldnt sell at all.
And lets be honest, why would you list something as a buy it now or accept the first offer that comes along when you may get more if you suddenly get a bid frenzy (its happened to me on items that have been listed four or five times, that on the fifth time round, suddenly 3 or 4 people start a bidding war, where there has never been any previous interest).

Oh and another classic I had was a guy who took nearly a week to pay, and then started messaging me two days after that he hadnt recieved the item, like its ok for him to make me wait, but I should run out and post it the minute I recieve his payment.

Simple fact is, the rules that eBay suggest is that the item should reach buyer within 5 days of payment, not within 2.


Another twat, emails me nearly two weeks after he paid to ask where his item was.
Told me he had just got back from vacation, and he still hadnt got it.
Said if he was not there, his wife always was, and she said nothing had come.

Now being that it was a reasonably big box full of comics, for a reasonably high price, I always send via a trackable service (of which he got sent the details as I booked it through paypal, and they alway email the buyer to tell them its been dispatched and by what service etc).
I went to the website, checked out the details, and as expected, failed delivery as nobody was in and was waiting to be collected or have delivery date re-arranged.
Emailed the guy back, told him all this, gave him the tracking details again and told him to either collect it from his local depot or phone them to arrange delivery.
He never replied.
I kept checking the post office website every few days for just over a week, and it was still there.
Finally, nearly two weeks later, he left me positive feedback and the package was collected.
Just pisses me off that he was at fault, and couldnt even be bothered replying to appologise for accusing me of ripping him off.

That's fucking annoying. It happened to me a lot when I was selling my Gamecube with a Zelda game... that was a fucking nightmare, because it's a popular item so there are a lot of fuckwits bidding. One time, when the Gamecube was up to 80 bucks, a guy bids 100 and leaves a post asking me if I can GO TO HIS CITY to sell him the console (the auction clearly states where I live). I tell him no and explaim that if he wins, he needs to pay for shipping. He didn't reply.

Later, another guy bids 105 bucks, but leaves a message saying "MY 80 DOLLAR OFFER STILL STANDS". What the fuck does that mean?! Are you bidding more than 100 to win the auction when you're only willing to pay 80?! Then, the guy from before, the one who never replied when I told him he needed to pay for shipping, offers 110 bucks. I took that as a sign that he understood that I couldn't travel to his city to give him the fucking thing. I was wrong. He won the auction but never replied to my e-mails, so after a week I had to republish it.

The second time around the Gamecube was up to 70 bucks again, when a guy bid 80 and posted saying he was willing to go up to 100. Over the next hour he got into a bidding war with another guy, who ended up offering 101. THE SAME DAY, the guys messages me saying he doesn't actually have the 101 bucks and apologizes. Thankfully there's a way to undo your last bid (which costs reputation points), so now the 100 bucks guy was winning. He eventually won the auction... but again, he didn't answer my e-mails. When I noticed he wasn't answering I sent him another e-mail asking nicely to just tell me if he can't pay for the fucking thing (I didn't wanna waste more time). He replied confessing he bought a Gamecube from someone else during the few hours when the other guy was winning my auction. I said thanks for telling me, but next time do it right away you fucking turd.

I ended up putting the Gamecube and the Zelda game up separately for 50 bucks each, as "buy it now", and selling them almost instantly. The problem with the combo offer was that it was too attractive, so it attracted too many shitheads.

Some people are just fucking morons.

The other thing is people who piss and moan about postage.
When I sell bulk items, I charge the cheapest cost possible, and you still get people complaining.
I just tell them the weight of the item, and tell em to see if they can find it cheaper...they never reply.

I purposely list big sets as UK only, but in my auctions it states that international bidders should contact me first for postal costs.
I still get international bidders bidding without contacting me, and I always email them before the auction ends to tell them the item was listed as UK only because of the postage costs, but if they are willing to pay them, I am happy to ship abroad. They nearly always pull out when they realise how much it will cost to ship to them.

I didn't read most of this thread, but FUCK selling on ebay.

It's good for buying, horrible for selling.

I sold a lot of 50 books once for 5 FUCKING dollars. 10 cents a book, when I foolishly paid about 1.50 a piece for them.

Dude who won the auction got over big time, and only left "thanks" for the feedback...it was positive feedback, but the shithead really could have left a nice message considering how he made off like a bandit.

It wasn't even worth my time packaging the books, going to the post office, etc. It was my fault for starting the bidding so low, so I learned it's just better to throw some stuff out rather than piss around with ebay...matter of fact, I finally threw out two long boxes of books, after years of debating on whether I wanted to keep them.

you fuckers should just send me my free comics.

I agree. I have one ass who wants me to bag and board his book then spend extra money to buy a specialty mailer because his mailman will bend it. And he has threatned to give me a bad review if that happens. I had posted in all of my sales and reminded him that I have no control over the USPS. He is bitching and crying that the $5 I am charging him for shipping and handling is too much. When to ship to him (flat rate) is 5.38 and he is wanting me to insure it and wants confiramtion/tracking, without paying extra. WTF. You paid $10 for this comic! I understand you want it in as good a shape as possible, but then pay for it!

I had totally forgotten about paypal's cut. Gerrr...

I for one can't stand it when they contact you during the auction to make you an offer when you have no current bids. That's why my auctions now say "This item is listed on eBay and is for the highest bidder ONLY; ALL requests to take this deal outside of eBay and eBay's safeharbor policies will be ignored and unanswered." Since I started saying that I only received one of those fishy offers.

And yes, it's usually better to list comics in groups, because if you don't make enough money to cover listing, final value, and paypal fees then there's no point in listing them. I especially had a rough time selling Shadow of the Bat and Legends of the Dark Knight issues from the mid 90's and ended up giving those away to a friend.

I've only bought on e-bay, never sold, and I've been amazed at the nerve of people who send me stuff. Many times, I've had someone send me comics in just a white envelope, no protective cardboard or anything. It usually arrives dented on every corner, but sometimes, amazingly, it arrives pristine.

A guy at my local comic store has a name for it, when you buy something in mint condition, and they give it next to no protective packing and mail it, and it arrives dented on every corner. He calls that "E-bay mint".

As you say, most of the stuff I get at incredible prices, and I figure that even if slightly dented it doesn't warrant negative feedback. I've never left negative feedback, even though I have complained privately by e-mail to them, telling them they're lucky they sent it to me, because someone else would have trashed them in comments, and they should take my advice and pack it better next time. Which of course, they probably won't.

I've had some very gracious people, who have compensated for their errors. I got a copy of CANCELLED COMIC CAVALCADE that had pages missing, and I had to e-mail him like 4 times (as politely and patiently as I could) before he finally sent me the missing pages. Unasked, he comped me the full price of the item.

My best deal on e-bay was a GENTLEMEN OF ADVENTURE print, signed and numbered by Wrightson. I recall when it first came out in bud plant's catalog 20 years ago, it was 80.00 signed and like 45.00 unsigned. The starting bid was 20.00 and I gave a max bid of 60.00. I got it for 20.00, no one else even bid !!
But then it took him over 30 days to mail it to me, and multiple e-mails from me politely saying where the hell is my print?
Again, unasked, he e-mailed me and said he refunded the full amount for the item and postage for my having to wait so long. I was on my knees worshipping him with praise for the transaction in my comments. Several comments I've said something to the effect of "error by post office, seller bent over backward to make it right!"

My biggest concern is that it's in a box with balled-up newspaper to prevent books, or whatever, from sliding around inside the box, and possibly getting damaged by its own protective container. And crumpled-up newspaper is so easy, and costs virtually nothing.

My second concern is delivery time. My standard is as follows:
1-6 days: wow, fast delivery
7-10 days: average, very acceptable
11-14 days: a bit slow, but still within the window of acceptable
over 14 days: WHERE THE HELL IS MY PACKAGE !

At 14 days, I make an inquiry by e-mail to politely ask if it's been shipped yet. They usually have forgotten to mail it. Most are honest about it. The ones who lie I can tell because it's postmarked the day after my inquiry.

I've been lucky. 8 years buying on e-bay, I've never not received what I paid for, and I've never received a neutral or negative feedback comment. And I've never had to write negative comments for anyone (although I've been tempted!)
But about one time in 25, it takes one hell of a lot of e-mails and haggling to get it right.