Honor Among Ebayers

I've had an eBay account for years and years and years, but only since January did it actually occur to me to look through it to see if there was cool stuff. I'm not really an "early adopter" I guess you could say....

So I find some cool things, I bought little golden books for my nephew, I found a cute little antique wood plant stand, and I even came across a postcard of the ship "Kronprinz Wilhelm" which is the ship one of my ancestors came over on at the beginning of the 20th century. I put it in a little frame and hung it - voila, instant history!

And all the transactions were pleasant, and the bidding process went easy.

BUT....when it comes to genealogy/history books....there are some RUDE people out there! Or maybe it just proves again why I am not cut out to be one of those shoppers that bargains with people or cuts other people out of the bargaining process. (Explains why the first car I ever bought was a Saturn - no bargaining process - thanks Saturn!!)

A couple months ago I found this book about New Haven Connecticut and since I have a lot of ancestors from there I thought it would be nice to have. I put in my bid, waited patiently and literally, literally with less than one minute to go, some person out of nowhere bids higher and I lost it!

I was SO upset!! How rude! You swoop in here at the last moment and steal my book? If you had any kind of manners you would have put your bid in like a normal person and waited patiently.

I know, this just shows how much I am not cut out for this kind of thing. But I don't do that!! I don't swoop in on other people's bidding and suddenly steal it out from under them!! I mean, there should be rules or something.

Of course, I just went to Alibris.com and found the same book there (signed by the author by the way) and got it for CHEAP, so THERE!

Last night the same thing almost happened again!!! I found this set of books on genealogy in New England - very helpful to have as a book, since when you buy these old books on CD you end up just printing it all out anyway because you have to make notes on it. Or you end up not being able to read the CD, thank you so much whatever dumb company did that to me. I have these CDs from the late 90s - unreadable. And this set of books was on one of them.

So I put a bid in - and I made it painfully high for myself. So the bidding continues, I'm in the lead and THEN, with less than a MINUTE to go, someone tries to swoop in and STEAL MY BOOKS!!! That I waited patiently 2 days for!!!

But, HAHA, my high bid was higher than yours jerk-o. The books are mine (and still for a reasonable price, all things considered).

I hope all you swoopers out there get the karma that is coming to you. AND, don't think I don't know it's just friends of the seller out to raise the price and if it backfires they just put it back out for sale. I didn't fall of the turnip truck yesterday buster.

Meanwhile though I'm going to go gloat over my win. Mwuah-ha-ha-ha-hah!!!!!!