longshot at obscure auction fail

kstillin

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Well, Chip called the other day pointing out this auction at a Christmas tree farm and store that had a couple of arcade games.

It was a 3-day thing and Chip couldn't get there until Friday. I figured out the games would probably be auctioned today (Thursday). Only 30 miles or so, and we thought the crowd might be disinterested in the games. I've seen this happen before, so since I could escape for a while, I ran for it.

A Donkey Kong and a Ghosts N Goblins. Both worked. DK could use some attention- side art, cp, joystick, t-molding, etc.
GNG looks like a dedicated cab. I'm kind of meh about both, but would take them at a cheap price. DK would have made good trade bait with Chip.

Anyway, TONS of people. Lots of farm stuff, not the usual arcade crowd. About 200 people and crap that I would have figured for $20-$30 items is going for 200-300. Maybe I know nothing about collectibles.

Maybe these peeps have been watching too much American Pickers.

Anyway, I'm trying to get a top price in my head for the pair of games. Finally, they come up and the auctioneer wants to bid for choice. Great.

To keep it short, the DK fetched $525 and the GNG fetched $500.
Far more than I would have went for the pair.

At least I could walk away at that point, but not before grabbing one of the winning bidders and striking up a conversation about my games for sale and exchanging info.

Sometimes you just can't tell how something is going to play out. Anyway, I had to try. Not knowing would have been worse.

Kerry
 

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The last time I went to a auction there was a John Deer riding mower I was looking at. It was a couple of years old and looked nice. My dad showed me a Home Depot ad before we went to show me how much a new one was going for. The one at the auction went for $300 more then a new. Some people will just bid to win no matter how much it goes for.
 
Exactly, my wife and I enjoy going to auctions and sometimes stuff goes extremely cheap and other times way over priced. Its kind of the nature of the beast to be honest. I have also witnessed people paying more for used beat up items than you could go and buy it for new. I'm not sure what that is about to be honest.
 
It's always interesting when there is an item at an auction that's totally different from the rest of the lots, like a big RC airplane at an auto auction, or arcade games at a farm sale.

Either they go dirt cheap since the crowd is uninformed, or they go sky high because the crowd is uninformed. I've never seen oddball items sell for the correct price in those situations.
 
auctions

i was looking for a spare ipad and decided to look on ebay. i figured used ipads would be really cheap with the intro of the ipad 3. well it is crazy out there! ipad 2 64gb new sell for 649.00 and you see them selling for 525.00 on fleabay! are folks nuts? i would rather buy it new if i am only saving 125.00 dollars. i seen buy it now for 550.00 - 650.00 range. sometimes the people bidding on auctions dont do their research and think they are getting a bargain! i went ahead to the ipad 1 auctions and found a minty ipad 1 64gb with leather case original boxes and mint for 315.00 with shipping. i thought this was a good deal, i really dont need the camera. although online actions you dont see the folks that are bidding against you, in regular auctions it sometimes gets personal and people end up paying alot more just to "win". sometimes you got some bad eggs that run up the auctions, they get a kick out of screwing people over.
 
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