Feel free to discuss collecting in general on eBay as well as other places…
With Ebay, I think it’s kinda lost it’s spark in recent years. I feel that it has lost it’s way with all the brand new items sold on there and the ever increasing rules they impose on sellers…I find a lot of stuff (especially rare deleted VHS videos) I’m after never appear.
Blackie I built my old thundercats collection form 2002-2009 all from ebay. I remember getting in 05 a Bengali complete for $80 and I thought that was expensive. i bought my cats lair for $80 complete and a carded mint panthro for $85.
I collect old kids shows on vhs. They are becoming very hard to come by and when they are up they are extrememly expensive. One that I may bite the bullet on is Song Of The South, i’ve seen it as low as 24 as high as 65. i stick to garage sales and flea markets for my vhs now as it’s much cheaper.
lol I got Song of the South from a charity shop (5 videos for £1/$2) and it’s in mint condition! I was shocked someone would actually toss that out to a charity shop! :eek: This was around the end of summer last year!
here’s a link to my collection, it’s one of the largest displayed on youtube
Cool collection! 
I’m slowly replacing my Disney Classics on DVD. I got a load of them last year from the charity shops (mostly the deleted DVD ones)
My collection before that was basically The Lion King, Aladdin Trilogy, The Fox And The Hound, 101 Dalmatians and Ducktales The Movie (though I’d also got it on DVD too)
Do you collect Ducktales, Chip N Dale, Talespin and Gummi Bears etc…?
I have the entire Disney Afternoon on dvd. I just finished it with the talespin set. working on the fox kids afternoon now (tiny toons, animaniacs, batman)
I have an extensive collection of tv shows. I am huge into 80s cartoons and own almost all of them on dvd with a few select that I still need.
If I get a chance ill take a pic.
Also collect animation cels.
This is my collection, well a small percentage of it. I have over 200 cels, only a handful are framed the rest are stored in a cool place. (my closet)
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2095103&id=1034910526&l=a8a035a0b2
Just to clarify from my earlier post…I meant I have the now deleted/vault DVD released films on VHS from charity shops! 
I wish getting deleted DVD’s such as The Lion King from a second hand shop for a quid!
and the notorious banned episode…lol, luckily Flying Dupes was one of the few I recorded off TV when it aired on ITV in the UK
Yep I’m always on the look out for stuff not released on official DVD. Sadly there is a lot still unavailable. It’s doubtful Disney will complete the DVD sets of Ductales etc.. 
I’ve never really been into cels to be honest, but then I’m not really into art…
blackie took your advice and hit up the thrift shops today. Got about 20+ movies for about $16 which was an amazing deal.
http://a7.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/183127_1744089755450_1034910526_31983279_6245705_n.jpg
…returning to the original topic
As both an infrequent buyer and seller on eBay, I know that eBay’s steadily rising seller fee’s prevent me from listing a lot of things that I think I can sell other ways (through chat boards or Craigslist). After the eBay/Paypal fee’s you only get to keep about 85% of your selling price.
I heard a rumor a while back that Google was going to start up a much cheaper auction service. I wish that would hurry up an happen. There really is no reason why eBay should have to charge so much (except that they can). All they provide is very temporary server space.
Ebay and collecting –
There was a time when you couldn’t convince me that eBay was not the most accurate and real time “price guide” because, ultimately, an item is only worth what someone will pay. I haven’t entirely given up this belief but there are so many scams on eBay its hard to know if you paid real market value or if the item you were bidding on was artificially inflated by the seller having multiple accounts or having friends/ relatives bidding. A few years ago this was very bad with collectable card games, I stopped using eBay for 6 months just to see if it would sort itself out, but after 6 months of not collecting MtG I realized that I actually didn’t want to collect it any further…lol. I then completed series 1 and 2 of G.I. Joe (loose) and everything seemed legit, so I started using eBay regularly again…Started collecting Thundercats and some scarce parts for my race car, one of these parts I bid 503.75 on…wouldn’t you know it? My bid of 503.75 was the EXACT ending bid, am I glad to have the part? Yes. Would I have happily paid that for a part I had been hunting for four years, nearly everyday? Yes. Do I feel like some shady stuff happened in that auction? Definitely! I think this has happened with a few high end Thundercats MOC auctions I have been involved in, when the high bid is my EXACT bid…I will probably take a break from eBay again…once I finish my 8-Back collection
I’ve had the same experience. As well as Thundercats, I have a huge video game collection and a few months back was bidding on an 80 grade VGA german stadium events from America. I put my max bid of £400 (around $600) not really wanting to pay this much but knew a normal boxed one in this condition was worth around $500 at the time so it should guarantee a win, and then sat and watched the last 5 minutes as my bid was pushed up from $400 to $601 in dollar increments as the seconds ticked away. It hit $601 with 2 minutes left, so I was outbid. Turned the computer off to get an email confirmation seconds later that I won at $600 as the winning bid was retracted. (I didn’t think bids could be retracted in the last 12 hours of an auction?) I refused to pay but at the time was a top rated seller so couldn’t risk an non payer strike as ebay take away your status and 20% fee discount I was getting at the time so had to reluctantly pay. Luckily it has increased in value, but I find I always bid a lot less than what I would pay in a private sale because of this.
The sad truth is, if your a collector, at some point, no matter how much you dislike eBay, you will turn to it to find the items you desire.
Thinking of past experiences on eBay reminded me of the time i got burned for 700 dollars…just because eBay and Paypal show all their “buyer’s Guarantee” don’t think you are safe. If the criminal (and thats what they are) is out to get your money you will never get it back. Paypal will never recover it…
The only caveat to this is maybe if you use a credit card through paypal you can file a claim with Visa or Mastercard. I always direct debit when i pay…
More than 75% of the items in my collections come from Ebay. So I’ve definetly found my self in those shady situations when the final bid is questionable.
Also the pricing. When an item first appears or rarely, rarely, appears it’s like really expensive. Then there’s a flood of that item and it’s price drops (and this items appear from different sellers). Well I was caught in the first appearance of an item. But do I regret it? No, crap happens, I had no way of knowing since a) Spin Master is horrible at sharing product release information and b) I live in a terrible place to be a collector.
Well, ultimately something is worth what you’re willing to pay for it. Even if shady stuff is going on, if you’re sitting there outbidding for it, then it’s still worth it to you. I usually wait to bid at the last minute and put a max of what I’m willing to pay. If I get out-sniped/outbid, then so be it. It does suck though if they outbid you by like a penny lol!
Sure…This is common sense and what fuels the secondary market. There are 4 or 5 MOC figures out there right now that I can tell you are worth over 1k to me. However, I do not necessarily feel that they are always worth that.
Example: IF an 8 back single Cheetara hit the open market right now, I can promise you it would go up to (pick a value) because I am willing to pay (pick a value) to add it to my collection. But once I have it, the next one that comes up for sale might sell for 1/3 or ¼ what I paid, because the next buyer does not value the same figure at the same price.
None of these pieces are written in stone…
Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t Say that Cheetara is only worth $300 to me. I have $500 that I can spend on my hobbies this month, so I put the $500 on it – Just in case – then a fake bidder (maybe even the seller) guesses at my max bid by placing bids on the item until they have pasted mine…now they retract their bids, it doesn’t matter because it’s a fake account to start with. Now I am stuck paying the $500, which is even above what I valued the figure at because eBay offers no protection for the buyer for this scenario NOT to happen…it happens all too often.
This seems to be the only safe way is to snipe in the last seconds, that way the “seller” doesn’t know that you are into their item and can’t bid it up.
I know not everyone agrees with sniping, but it does seem to be the best way I’ve found to bid what I want and not risk the pitfall you describe…because if the seller can squeeze a last bid in and outsnipe me he doesn’t have time to retract it, so I can be sure that if I am outsniped, it’s another fan that wanted it a little more than I did (the downfall of that is I have forgotten or have been unable to attend the end of an auction, and totally missed out. there were some voltron cels I could have had for cheap but I totally forgot to go back and bid! ugh!)
Of course it doesn’t stop them from driving up the bid beforehand, but in that case if it gets too high I just won’t bid - I usually have an idea of how far I will/can go for a particular item.
It’s supposed to be against ebay rules for sellers to do this type of bid inflating, but the problem is…how do you prove it?