eBay Bidding Wars

eBay: HARRY POTTER - DANIEL RADCLIFFE/GRINT/WATSON SIGNED (item 6550915381 end time Aug-05-05 19:47:12 PDT)

Ever since coming back from the San Diego Comic Con I've been bit with the autograph hound bug. People who are autograph hounds tend to be considered annoying nerds, people who's lives are a bane on people's exsistence, because they stalk all the celebraties in hopes of getting an autograph from someone even remotely famous. They do have some useful purposes though. The main thing they do right is provide International Comic Con a reason to get celebraties over in autograph booths, as these hounds are willing to pay money for movie star sigs. The other useful purpose they serve is that once they waste all their money on autographs, they sell them on eBay.

For awhile now I've wanted signatures of the kids who are in the Harry Potter films. This includes Emma Watson (Hermione), Daniel Radcliffe (Harry), and (to a lesser extent) Rupert Grint (Ron). One guy was selling several of these autographs: A Radcliffe sig, a Grint sig, a Radcliffe and Watson sig, and all three of the kids on one picture. There were no bids on any of them, so I put $5 bucks on all of them, thinking that if I got outbid on all of them, I would focus my energy on just one. Well a few days later the Radcliffe/Watson photo went past $5. Now I still had bids on all of them, but I did really like this one, so I bid $15 on it. Shortly afterwards I was outbid on the Grint photo.

I didn't bid on it again, as I just didn't care as much for his sig as much as I did Radcliffes and Watsons (I actually don't really think Grint is all that great an actor to be honest with you). I notice the bid goes up for the Radcliffe photo, but it only goes up to $4 dollars, so I'm still safe with that one. A couple days later I get several e-mails saying I've been outbid on ALL the auctions! Now this is natural, and I kind of expected it to happen, but the way it happened actually annoyed me quite a bit. You see, if this was a bunch of random bidders I wouldn't mind too much, but I lost the winning bids on all the photos by the EXACT SAME PERSON!!! Not only did one person outbid me on everything, but this was the same guy who already outbid me the last two times.

Well, I can live without most of these, but I still want the triple signed picture and the Radcliffe/Watson pictures (though to some credit, the later was becoming less important to me by now). I bid $30 on each of them and just barely manage to outbid him. Then a couple hours later he outbids me again. I decide to focus all my energies on the triple signature, and I bid $50 on it. Then I get outbid on that again. This is getting ridiculous. This guy is already winning a three other photographs at this point, and he's already GOT a complete set of the kids sigs! So why is he still fighting with me on this one photo? This is starting to tick me off since he doesn't need this photo, and I'm sure I would appreciate it much more then he would.

I e-mail this guy explaining my view on things, that I understand that this is a bidding thing, but asking if he would just back off from this one item. In exchange, I even tell him that I'll back off from the other photographs, since all I really wanted was this one in the first place. His response was, in a nutshell, "Screw you! I'll big whatever I want to." This actually makes me mad, and I put $60.00 on the triple photo, and I bid on the all the other photographs he's bidding on. I know I won't win them, but this will jack up the price of the photos if nothing else. Finally, someone OTHER then this guy outbids me on the photo I want. The price it at $69 dollars at this point. I, at long last, admit defeat.

I'm sure I could've gone higher, but at that point it really wouldn't have been worth it anymore. I could have gone up to $100 dollars, but that would buy me food for a month, so I'm better off saving my money at this point. Still, I really did want that photograph, and I'm annoyed that some prick (who's never actually bought anything on eBay before) decided to be a greedy jerk just for the fun of it. I'm sure I'll have other chances to get these signatures, but this was one bidding war that got ugly. And to think this was the biggest problem I had this week. God I need a life.