Musings from Brian J. Noggle

The Winner Strikes Back

I posted last Saturday about the guy who was selling the Beanie Babies for tools and beer. Well, it's turned into a he-said, she-said, wherein he might have been selling counterfeits. The winning bidder has taken action on Trader List which is apparently some sort of Internet enclave of people who buy and sell a lot of meaningless stuff through the Internet.

But while perusing this complaint, I couldn't help note:

I wrote the seller, through eBay, using my primary ID, alerting him to the fact that it was rather unlikely that the five hard-to-find beanies would turn out to be genuine and suggesting that he should pull the auction, relist the common ones, and send the others for authentication.

There is no need to explain my message further because he printed the message, without the "disclaimer" and "counterfeit" eBay rules I had included , and INCLUDED MY ID. He posted also that he had blocked me from bidding. I had also alerted eBay that the auction should be pulled because it was fraught with disclaimers. eBay paid no attention to its own rule and did nothing. I also alerted eBay that he had posted my ID, which is against eBay rules, and again, nothing was done. From the tenor of the listing, I believed the seller to be an angry person, upset by his wife leaving him, but did question that if she was such an avid collector why she would leave behind the rare and valuable beanies. I checked his feedback with over 500 positives and no negatives, his "ME" posting, and later his name and address which checked out. Based on this I bid using my glorybeeto ID. I learned later that two friends asked him questions about the beanies and he did not respond. I did not question him with my bidding ID because I felt, in light of his obvious anger, he would block that ID as well. (Emphasis mine)

Man, what drama unfolds. Counterfeit beanies! Multiple eBay IDs! Cabals of Beanie Believers! The FBI!

We all want to be heroes in some sweeping epic, but some people settle for children's books.

(Link seen on Best of the Web Today.)

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:51 AM