eBay

Casey Parris, the ‘RockstarFlipper’ was wrong

Casey Parris, the person who plays the character RockstarFlipper on YouTube, entered my thoughts yesterday. I was reminded of a video he made last summer encouraging people to buy the Super Nintendo Entertainment System Classic Edition when they went on sale September 29, 2017. The reason? So people could resell them at a markup. The practice is known as scalping.

Scalping is highly frowned upon in most civilized societies and communities.

I was reminded of Casey Parris yesterday because while stopping at the Hagerstown Target, I noticed they had not one but two of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System Classic Edition games on sale for the suggested retail price of $79.99.

It wasn’t the first the first time I’ve seen them for sale at retail. Nintendo has been really great about meeting demand for these game consoles.

Kaitlyn Hedenstad and Casey Parris aka RockstarFlipper (Photo: Twitter)

It just shows how wrong Casey Parris was. He was almost as wrong as the time he and his fiancé Kaitlyn Hedenstad were when they purchased subsidized Sprint phones for use in the United States, jailbroke them, and then sold them as new for use overseas in markets Sprint doesn’t subsidize the price of the phones. Sprint sued Casey Parris and Kaitlyn Hedenstad in federal court. The judge ruled in favor of Sprint and ordered the RockstarFlipper and his significant other to pay Sprint $5 million.

Casey Parris is someone to avoid. Any advice the man dishes out should be ignored. His videos on YouTube should only be watched for their unintentional entertainment value.

You can sell ‘disc only’ DVDs on eBay

As I go deeper and deeper into my version of minimalism, I’ve been selling stuff on eBay. When you start cleaning out drawers, cabinets, closets and other places extraneous things like to hide, you will become shocked at just how much stuff there is taking up space.

I’ve been throwing stuff out, donating some things to Goodwill, and posting other things to eBay. Since I’ve started this journey into minimalism, I sold 22 items on eBay for $457.35. Not too shabby for stuff I was never going to use again.

Looking for more things to post on eBay, I discovered there’s a market for used “disc only” DVDs. A buyer gets only the DVD and a sleeve for the DVD to reside in. No case, no printed material. It’s just the disc.

I have a lot of DVD and Blu-ray movies. All are sitting in a storage container. None of them have the plastic case they had when I bought them. These plastic storage cases take up way too much room. I would buy the case and put the disc in a special sleeve for storage and I would then file the movie alphabetically in a container.

I haven’t watched a movie on DVD or Blu-ray in years.
I never thought I could sell these movies because they lacked the plastic case they had when I bought them. Learning about this “disc only” marketplace on eBay changed my mind. I went to the chest and just grabbed a movie from the front. I wanted to sell one as an experiment. It was the 2001 movie Thir13en Ghosts starring Tony Shalhoub.

It’s a good movie. At least that’s how I remember it.

I listed it as Buy it Now for $4.99 with free USPS First Class shipping. I did this because that’s what an overwhelming majority of “disc only” movies go for on eBay. It sold almost immediately. I realized purchasing the First Class shipping that I wouldn’t be making a profit on this sale. Altogether, this is how the financials broke down:

USPS First Class Shipping: $2.61
eBay: $.50
PayPal: $.44
Envelope: $1.58
TOTAL: $5.13

All said and done, I lost fourteen cents on this sale. I didn’t attend the Wharton School of Business, but that doesn’t sound like a good business model.

I didn’t realize USPS First Class shipping was so expensive. I’m used to sending boxes USPS Priority where the buyer pays for the shipping. The boxes themselves are free from the Post Office. The envelope I used was a photo mailer I bought at Target. Going forward, if I go forward, I need to come up with a cheaper container for shipping.

I need to do more research. I don’t understand how other people sell “disc only” DVDs and Blu-rays on eBay and make any money.

I’ve become a snitch and I’m proud of it

I made a decision last night that when I see a fake NFL jersey on eBay, I will report it to eBay. That’s right, I’ve become a snitch.

I have an email alert set up with eBay so that when someone posts a Nike Elite NFL jersey in my size, I get an immediate email alerting me to this fact. I got one of these emails like night. I looked at it and immediately knew it was a counterfeit jersey. I have a real Nike Elite NFL jersey. I bought it from the NFL Shop. I know what a real Nike Elite NFL jersey looks like.

It wasn’t even a good counterfeit jersey. So I reported it.

I use to have a negative view on snitching. I never wanted to be thought of as a snitch. The older I get, the more I just don’t care. I don’t care what people think of me, especially people who are not in my life in a meaningful way. I care what my wife thinks about me. I care what my brother and his wife think about me. I care what my wife’s family thinks about me.

That’s about it.

If you don’t want me to snitch on you, whether it’s on eBay or anywhere else, then don’t do bad shit in front of me. If you decide to do something immoral or unethical in my presence and you’re worried that I may tell someone what you did, it’s a valid concern to have. I will snitch on you.

You can count on it.

2013 Topps Heritage Derek Jeter hand numbered mini card

I picked up a jumbo pack of 2013 Topps Heritage Baseball at Wal-Mart this past Sunday afternoon. After I got home that day, I opened the pack to see what I had. One of the cards I pulled was a tiny, micro version of a regular Derek Jeter card. It also had “062/100” written in what appeared to be blue ballpoint ink on the front of the card, to the right of Jeter’s head.

tiny-jeter

I put the card aside and didn’t think too much about it. I had recently purchased a hobby box of 2013 Topps Series 1 Baseball on eBay and pulled a number of mini cards from the packs. I think they were seeded 1:3 in the packs, but I may be wrong. Those mini cards were a bit different in that they didn’t mimic the regular sized cards in the series.

This Jeter card was just like the regular sized cards in the set, plus it had ballpoint ink writing on it.

I did some research and discovered that it is a special insert card. Each regular card in 2013 Topps Heritage Baseball has a parallel mini version limited to only 100 copies. Unlike other numbered parallel cards released by Topps which are machine stamped with a serial number, these cards were hand numbered.

I checked eBay and found out that card 031/100 went for $124.50.

I listed my card on eBay Sunday night with a starting bid of $20. It’s currently at $26. There’s also 13 people watching it. It should be interesting to see how much it ends up going for. Just my luck, it will end at $26 and turn out to be the lowest priced Derek Jeter mini card to go on eBay.

Update: The card ended up going for $102.50. Needless to say, I was quite pleased.

When it comes to comic books on eBay, buy low and sell high

I recently sold a comic book on eBay. It was The Walking Dead #19 and it sold for over $230. The United States Postal Service damaged it during transit, but they paid the insurance claim in full, so I guess it all worked out. It did cause some unneeded stress, so I had been reluctant to list any others on eBay.

I’ve sold another one of my back issues of The Walking Dead on eBay. This one was issue #6 and it sold for $87. The ironic thing is that I started the bidding at $30 with a Buy it Now price of $80. As soon as someone bid the $30 minimum, the Buy it Now price became irrelevant. Silly eBay.

I’m not taking any chances when it comes to mailing this comic to the high bidder. I packed it with the complete understanding that it will be subjected to a massive amount of abuse at the hands of the various incompetent, overpaid USPS employees who manhandle the U.S. mail on a daily basis.

As I’ve said, I’m not taking any chances. The comic is being sent not in a bag with a backing board, but one of those plastic CD-type cases made especially for comic books.

I’ve got more copies of The Walking Dead that I’m planning on putting on eBay. The prices some of theme are going for is downright ridiculous. Issue #27, the first issue with The Governor, is going for around $120 on eBay. I paid less than the cover price of $3 for each issue I have. They’re all sitting bagged and boarded in long boxes in the garage. I’ll probably never read them again, but if I do, I’ll probably just read the trades like a civilized person.