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Shady Dealers
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Xaxaxe
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Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2007 2:28 pm

Keep in mind it's Saturday ... a time when many businesses, large and small, operate with either no staff or just a skeleton crew. It's also not known as a huge news day.

I wouldn't be surprised if there's no mention of this at NK.com until Monday ... maybe even Tuesday.

Badmike
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Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2007 4:35 pm

JohnGaunt wrote:Got this in my e-mail today:

Subject: Titan Games Important News
From: [email protected]
Date: Sat, June 16, 2007 9:25 am
To: [my e-mail address removed]

Dear Customers of Titan Games!!

I have long enjoyed your patronage, input, and business at TitanGames.com. I want to thank you one and all.

Effective Noon on Thursday, June 14th, 2007, TitanGames.com has been sold to NobleKnight.com - and Aaron Leeder has taken ownership of the URL, and the inventory which was listed on titangames.com.

You will begin seeing your weekly updates coming from Aaron now. Aaron is a gamer, just like all of us. He has a couple really cool pieces in his collection, including the original artwork for the AD&D Dieties & Demigods hardcover book!! Aaron has been in business not quite as long as TitanGames.com has, but then - as most of you know - I was not the guy who started titangames.com, either - that was Quincey Koziol (whom I bought the company from 7 or 8 years ago).

To be completely frank - I had to simplify my life. I am going to start a couple new websites for selling "entertainment stuff" - Movies, Music, Games&Comics. But, I want to do that at my own pace, and not have to feel like I was competing with an operation like NobleKnight.com - whose site is better than the titangames.com site.

I will leave you in Aarons capable hands. I am sure you will find LOTS of cool stuff to buy from Aaron, and will love his site.

As always, if you have questions or comments about TitanGames&Music, email me at [email protected]. My retail store is keeping the name, and we are likely to start a new website for our store, which I will announce a bit later. You will still see my ramblings on rpg.net, I am still a director at large for the Game Manufacturers Association's Retail Division, and we will be at Origins and GenCon in force!!

Oh! And, of note - if you had store credit with TitanGames - you still do. The credit is usable in the store, or on 3FREEGAMES.com, or - if you wait a few weeks, on our new website (where we will offer DVDs, Music, Comics, Games and Video Games, and much more!!).

Thanks again,

Marcus King
Titan Games - Owner
637 Capital Ave SW
Battle Creek, MI 49015

Just got the same post. I have to say, this is good news for the hobby, for RPG buyers, and hopefully for Marcus. I don't think he was able to keep up the tremendous pace with all the personal events going on in his life. I have to say he was pretty gracious in his email....I wish him luck. At this point, NK Games is much more well equipped to handle the amount of stock that Titan Games has, without all the hassles, messed up orders, etc.
Interesting to see what happens with Tonya and her division of the game store at this point....if she continues, or everything is folded in with her dad's sell out.

Mike B.

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FormCritic
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Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2007 4:53 pm

I will miss Titan Games...which probably makes me an army of one.

They occupied a niche that sometimes included some good things.

I wonder if they are planning to keep selling on Ebay?

Noble Knight may have them beat in the service department, but not in price, even when counting in shipping.

Best of luck to Marcus King in the next phase of his business. At least Titan Games remains as a brick and mortar store...a brick and mortar store is something we can cheer for, I think.

Mark

"But I have watched the dragons come, fire-eyed, across the world."

Xaxaxe
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Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2007 5:43 pm

FormCritic wrote:Noble Knight may have them beat in the service department, but not in price, even when counting in shipping.

Except that with NK, you also get the correct order, in the condition stated, shipped the next day. I'll happily pay a little bit extra for those three things.

jasonw1239
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Posted: Sun Jun 17, 2007 9:43 am

Has anybody dealt with a seller called tarumil?

I was watching two Judge's Guild listings of his for valuation purposes.

http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie ... 0123385589

and

http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie ... 0116513209

(the winner of his May auction has already left feedback so it is not a relist)

Note the image used in each auction, plus they were two weeks apart.

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bclarkie
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Posted: Sun Jun 17, 2007 9:54 am

jasonw1239 wrote:Has anybody dealt with a seller called tarumil?
I was watching two Judge's Guild listings of his for valuation purposes.

** expired/removed eBay auction **

and

** expired/removed eBay auction **

(the winner of his May auction has already left feedback so it is not a relist)
Note the image used in each auction, plus they were two weeks apart.

I have dealt with Tarumil on a couple of occassions and had no issues at all.

I am fairly certain he is just like Fencert in that he is sitting on a large pile of common JG items(amongst a large variety of other things as well), as he has been auctioning off lots and lots of them over the last couple years and that what you are likely seeing are just reused photos for the purposes of saving time.. I am sure Shane and Al can confiirm this as well.

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." -Neitzche

NetRodent
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Posted: Sun Jun 17, 2007 9:57 am

I've bought a few things from tarumil. I don't remember anything overly negative or positive about the transactions.

"Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats."
--H.L. Mencken

jasonw1239
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Posted: Sun Jun 17, 2007 9:59 am

Thanks for the info bclarkie. The reuse of a photo kind of waved a warning flag at me.
I realize that a lot of sellers use stock photos, but I was thinking about why somebody would use one again with heavy staple rust.

Check out my Chaosium sourcebook.
Secrets of Tibet

bclarkie
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Posted: Sun Jun 17, 2007 10:02 am

jasonw1239 wrote:Thanks for the info bclarkie. The reuse of a photo kind of waved a warning flag at me.
I realize that a lot of sellers use stock photos, but I was thinking about why somebody would use one again with heavy staple rust.

One word----> L-A-Z-Y. :wink:

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." -Neitzche

killjoy32
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Posted: Sun Jun 17, 2007 11:08 am

jasonw1239 wrote:Has anybody dealt with a seller called tarumil?
I was watching two Judge's Guild listings of his for valuation purposes.

** expired/removed eBay auction **

and

** expired/removed eBay auction **

(the winner of his May auction has already left feedback so it is not a relist)
Note the image used in each auction, plus they were two weeks apart.

Jason, i have never dealt with him, but i do know the name. he has loads of JG stuff and am more than sure he has multiples of the dungeoneer packs. so have i

he's prb just using a stock photo, as they all look pretty much the same. with things like that, i do the same.

Al

Are we nearly there yet?

killjoy32
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Posted: Sun Jun 17, 2007 11:10 am

bclarkie wrote:
One word----> L-A-Z-Y.

i agree. i use the same photo if my multiples look the same. if its different, i will change the photo.

Al

Are we nearly there yet?

Plaag
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Posted: Sun Jun 17, 2007 11:13 am

bclarkie wrote:
I have dealt with Tarumil on a couple of occassions and had no issues at all.

I am fairly certain he is just like Fencert in that he is sitting on a large pile of common JG items(amongst a large variety of other things as well), as he has been auctioning off lots and lots of them over the last couple years and that what you are likely seeing are just reused photos for the purposes of saving time.. I am sure Shane and Al can confiirm this as well.

Yep..I actually think he bought a bunch of stuff from Fencert when he was offering 'become a salesperson' type thing for Judges Guild year or so back, but don't know. Tarumil used to dumb multiple auctions of the same item on at once, though think he has wised up to that practice.

ShaneG.

I reject your reality and substitute my own

FormCritic
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Posted: Sun Jun 17, 2007 8:58 pm

There was a small, small issue about staple rust on three Dragontree items I bought from him.

There is nothing shady about Tarumil...and using the same photo when one has boxes full of the same items is not an illegitimate practice.

"But I have watched the dragons come, fire-eyed, across the world."

jasonw1239
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Posted: Sun Jun 17, 2007 9:12 pm

Thanks for the feedback guys.
He is a seller that I had not dealt with before or even paid much attention to his auctions until I started doing the JG Valuation thing.
I had been trying to figure out why a seller would stick with a photo showing heavy staple rust.
The only thing that I could think of is that most of those items have some and if a buyer receives one with less than that shown they would be somewhat pleased.
Glad to hear that he is not one of the "outlaws".

Check out my Chaosium sourcebook.
Secrets of Tibet

Afrika Corps
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Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 1:05 am

Do these auctions look highly suspicious? shillbidding perhaps or is it just me. Look closely. The 2 auctions are almost identical except one ended a week ago, they both have the same high bidder:bobokii and the same seller:rphoenixgames both ids were registered 2 months apart. These are fairly uncommon items too. Here are the links:

** expired/removed eBay auction **

** expired/removed eBay auction **

Contrarian
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Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 10:57 pm

Some shady dealer news: Noble Knight just bought out titangames.com!

Not sure exactly when it happened (I just found out via a thread at RPGnet), but it's on the titangames.com homepage:

Titangames.com and all of its inventory have been sold to Noble Knight Games of Janesville, WI. Titan Games (owned by Marcus King) is still in business, but no longer using this webpage.

Apparently, threefreegames.com (Titan's closeout store) and the physical store are sticking around. I guess this means Titan's out of the vintage game market -- maybe that means Tonya King will go away now?

Badmike
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Posted: Tue Jul 10, 2007 9:13 pm

Time to bring back the thread. I reported this dealer today. Look at the similarities between our scans (mine was first), and the descriptions (again mine was first, and I didn't copy descriptive text, I wrote it myself). Not earthshattering, but pretty sleazy I thought:

My item:

** expired/removed eBay auction **

Shady Dealer's Item:

http://cgi.ebay.com/D-D-Dungeon-Crawl-5 ... dZViewItem

Notice the faint white "band" to the right of the Goodman games symbol....seems to be something unique to my scanner, but I can't be positive. At any rate, I thought it was a bit lazy on the dealer's part to just lift my very sparse descriptive text instead of just writing their own....

Mike B.

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"The Acaeum hates fun" Sir Allen
"I had a collecting emergency" Nogrod
Co-founder of the North Texas RPG Con
NTRPGCON

JohnGaunt
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Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2007 8:15 am

Badmike wrote:Shady Dealer's Item:

** expired/removed eBay auction **

The auction already ended; did he have a 3-day auction to cut in front of the other 51.5 auctions? Did he steal your scan, steal your text, and sell the first 51.5 on eBay?

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