Monster Rancher 1 for $0.01 on eBay!

[RPGD]

Believe it or not, this guy recently dumped over a dozen copies of MR1 on eBay for a penny.

Seriously. See for yourself (scroll down).

If anyone's interested, get to bidding.

[Sivart the Sloth Trencher]

Re: Monster Rancher 1 for $0.01 on eBay!

Oh. My. God. I wish I had money right now.

[hitogoroshi]

Re: Monster Rancher 1 for $0.01 on eBay!

Go sell 100 coupons, for christs sake.

[SkylureX]

Re: Monster Rancher 1 for $0.01 on eBay!

Same guy posted 7,000 other items on eBay in the past day or so, all starting at a penny. Doesn't look like he's every sold anything prior to this. Seems a little fishy to me.

http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQfgtpZ1QQ...QQsassZkdixonc

[RPGD]

Re: Monster Rancher 1 for $0.01 on eBay!

Hmm... now that you mention it, there does seem to be something a bit unusual about this.

If you take a look at his page, you'll notice that, despite being a member for six years, he's never actually sold anything. Rather, all of his feedback came from this seller called nate.gamers regarding transactions with him as the buyer.

It'd be pretty obvious if he was selling them for a fairly high price, but what has he to gain from such small transactions? Stock liquidation on behalf of nate.gamers, perhaps? Then again, he's only gotten feedback for 86 transactions. Does eBay let you buy things in bulk and let you list them as individual items?

Might as well hold off for a bit 'till we see what's going on.

[marcus]

Re: Monster Rancher 1 for $0.01 on eBay!

Actually, selling things at a really low cost is a good tactic. A decent number of people (me included) search for items based on price. I don't know what the demand is for the original Monster Rancher, but the low price causes a bidding war at the last 5 minutes of the auction and the price will rise up.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong but isn't there a price cap the seller can set where if an item doesn't make X amount of bids/bidded price then the seller can remove it from the auction? I'm pretty sure it keeps people from paying the minimum amount for an item and the off chance it actually sells for that minimum amount.

[RPGD]

Re: Monster Rancher 1 for $0.01 on eBay!

While it's a very rare and splendid game, it isn't exactly a coveted collector's item. The series is oft overlooked, you see. Regardless, not too many copies were made in its run, so shops tend to sell it for a high price.

What do the eBay experts here think?

[Nixon]

Re: Monster Rancher 1 for $0.01 on eBay!

Well, they have special deals from time to time. Perhaps this guy listed these when they had their recent "list stuff for 99 cents or less for only a cent" promotion.

I would still be wary, since he's never sold anything before. I guess it's up to the buyer.

[RPGD]

Re: Monster Rancher 1 for $0.01 on eBay!

Makes sense.

Valkysas recently brought to my attention that all the photos of the MR1 items are identical. While I think this reinforces the idea that he got them in bulk, it probably makes it seem a bit fishier.

[JPS]

Re: Monster Rancher 1 for $0.01 on eBay!

Its a pretty common thing for people to start things at a penny with no reserve, even eBay recommends doing so, it causes bidding to start a lot earlier.

Most items are dormant until its last 2 days when people starts bidding on them, having it set to a penny causes bidding to start a lot earlier, thus ending with a higher end amount the you would have if you had started at $4-$5.

Of course, this sometimes backfires, plus I dont think this is a legitimate dealer.

[Sivart the Sloth Trencher]

Re: Monster Rancher 1 for $0.01 on eBay!

Why not wait for some buyer feedback? Bids are coming in.

Unless they all end simultaneously?

[JPS]

Re: Monster Rancher 1 for $0.01 on eBay!

It tells you how much time is left for each item, theyre only minutes apart from each other.

This is going to backfire on him though because he's saturated the market, he would have been a lot better off if he had sold them 1 by 1.

I bet theyre bootlegged

[DarkwingChuck]

Re: Monster Rancher 1 for $0.01 on eBay!

This definitely doesn't look kosher to me. He listed all these items at the same time for the same length of time so he'll have collected for all of them by the time anybody has a chance to leave feedback. If he's sending bootlegs or nothing or whatever nobody will know until it's too late.

[RPGD]

Re: Monster Rancher 1 for $0.01 on eBay!

Here's what Monster Rancher Metropolis webmaster Lisa Shock and a moderator had to say on the matter:

He has 86 feedback comments, and they are from many different people, not the same guy. I see 9 pages of feedback ll given slowly over the years.

To me, it looks like someone who had a large collection liquidating it, like he says in his listings, or someone who just bought the contents of a store at a bankruptcy auction. A good number of these games are out of print and older -not desirable hot new titles.

Generally, people on ebay are genuinely good people, and I'd have to give him the benefit of the doubt.

But, that said, sometimes, if an account gets hijacked the hijackers do list a ton of stuff in an attempt to scam people. But, they usually list more valuable stuff like laptop computers or cameras for hundreds of dollars, not used old video games.

Judging from questions (and their answers) on a few of this person's other auctions, they have one copy of the game and for some reason multiple auctions were erroneously created on eBay.

I don't think there's going to be a bunch of people scoring MR1 out of this, but one might. There's a lot of other gold in there too.

ok, yeah, there's listing software that allows a person to list a whole database of items at once, so my guess is he used it but somehow duplicated everything

[Dusk Raven]

Re: Monster Rancher 1 for $0.01 on eBay!

Well, normally I'd look at the shipping costs. I've seen items with low bidding prices but rather high shipping costs, and I believe that's a way to get money while still selling it for "low" price. Here it's not too bad, but I'm not sure if sending a CD from Iowa to Nebraska would cost $4....