Gotta realize that ever since you guys foisted a certain fiscally irresponsible Texan off on the rest of us, the global strength of the dollar has been in the toilet.  That means Cougar has a built-in advantage going into every single auction.  Imagine if you only had to pay .80 out of every dollar you bid - that's what it's like for him right now.

Got curious and looked - I was extremely close with my guess.

Graph of £/$ exchange rate (1940 - today)

The pound has gone from being worth ~$1.50 at the start of the term to ~$1.90 now.  Comparitively, that means the dollar has dropped in value around 21%.

Well what I don't understand is why anyone would buy from the guy, he outbids his own customers on items then turns around and trys to sell them the same item they just got outbid on for twise what he paid for it....  Example his H1 auctions guy push's up the price of every single decent H1 on ebay so he can try to sell his for twise what he paid for it.  I just think its funny he has relisted the same one like 4 times and its had good bids but never meets his reserve.

I presume that cougar does a lot of business offline to those people who prefer not to waste their time on eBay.  He has a subscription list with outrageous prices and he stocks new 3E stuff.

I've just sent him an email asking for the list.  If anyone else is curious about his pricing PM me and I will forward it to you.

My advice is don't bid normally against cougar, snipe him.  Providing that no one else gets in the way, he will not up his original bid.  So, providing that you know his usual bid increments, you will always win at a much lower price.  

If you simply high bid straight away on an item he wants, expect counter bids of 11,22,33,44,55, etc.

mordrin wrote:Got curious and looked - I was extremely close with my guess.

Graph of £/$ exchange rate (1940 - today)

The pound has gone from being worth ~$1.50 at the start of the term to ~$1.90 now.  Comparitively, that means the dollar has dropped in value around 21%.

The euro is about twice as much as the dollar too, hence those seemingly crazy Italian bidders like Renters.

when I bought from him (once) he was pretty good and the condition was pretty much as described.

BUT he did get a bit snooty over me refusing to post feedback for him until he did first (as seller).  I was amazed at the time he spent writing me long rambling emails taking issue with my stance.

Until he caved in.

I think he is pretty worried about -ve feedback.

That's no wonder IMO. If he has one negative feedback this could have some impact on his business. If you deal with high price items like he does people get very cautious if they see only one negative feedback in his history.

I am just guessing here but if I would go and bid on a high price item I would certainly back off a bit should I see a negative feedback comment on the sellers history.  But perhaps I am just too paranoid


Jupp

Hehe, yes our very own cougarrinard (to get the thread kind of back on topic.) I`m wondering how he finances all his ebay fees alone. He has to have quite deep pockets too. And a very big inventory.

As for overseas shipping the 4-6 weeks of surface shipping are not that long. Most of the times negotiation the terms eats up one or two weeks anyways. I`ll perhaps be trying that M-Bag thing that was mentioned in another thread soon. If I`d have known about that 3 years ago I`d have saved a lot on postage.

Those were the days when the $ was worth 1,25 Euro. Fortunately i was selling big at that time.  IMO prices have dropped considerably on the low-collectable AD&D items anyways even not considering $/Euro rates. If I`d be buying my collection now (many reading copies, condition doesn`t matter so much), I`d probably pay much less than i did at the time.  

That reminds me: Will there be an update to the State of the Hobby article in the acaeum library? It sure would interest me how the experts think about it...

Just to set the record straight, I never intended for this thread to be meant as a way to tarnish or defame in any way any specific person. Although I did use an on-line name in the threads title, I did so without thinking of possible consequences. I now recognize that it was not very sporting of me to do so.

Again my intentions were NOT to downgrade or denigrate a specific person.

I was simply down in the dumps in that nearly every auction I have become involved in lately, I must bid against an apparently bottomless money pit.

As a way of elucidation of my quandary, please allow me to elaborate a bit more as to my line of thinking.

As a simple man and a simply collector of old things D&D I am only allowed so much in the way of funds to keep my habit from sending my family out on the street with no place to lay their little heads to sleep at night.

I am in no way a dealer/reseller, so I must pick and choose what I buy and for how much. Therefore, I obviously cannot compete against bidders for whom money is apparently not a problem......

This thread was born of pure frustration at seeing so many of my bids go for naught and knowing that of them all, most of the items up for auction that I was bidding on are truly rare items and that I might possible never see them up for auction again, or at least not any time soon and then for far more than they might sell for at this time.