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The rarest GameCube game has been put up for auction. How high do ya think it’ll go?


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I actually follow your Instagram, love seeing the cool variants.  My cubix is unfortunately not sealed, but it took some time to find it so it’ll do.

i bought a sealed hot wheels off dealtavern and have been considering opening it to see after I saw that auction end.   I always assumed it did, as nitendotwizers excellent cube list doesn’t list a variant.

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For the record I also don't think the seller is shilling, actually disappointed someone would accuse him of that.  When you run a lot of like items, as he has about 100 Gamecube items up, of course many people are going to bid on several.  This is quite literally the best run of open auction Gamecube games to ever hit the market simultaneously.  You're watching history and the seller timed it absolutely perfect.  Gamecube hype is absolutely insane at the moment. 

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33 minutes ago, jonebone said:

For the record I also don't think the seller is shilling, actually disappointed someone would accuse him of that.  When you run a lot of like items, as he has about 100 Gamecube items up, of course many people are going to bid on several.  This is quite literally the best run of open auction Gamecube games to ever hit the market simultaneously.  You're watching history and the seller timed it absolutely perfect.  Gamecube hype is absolutely insane at the moment. 

Thanks for the counter point. I know you sell a ton on eBay, but you actually think that someone with that many bids and as a bid percent to one person isn't shilling. I'm not arguing but I'd like a strong counter-observation. Most of the other bidders have a high bid percent for this guy, but considering many of them have bid less that 10 times, that makes sense. I assume they've just started to buy on eBay. However many of them have higher feedback ratings which means they've sold a couple of items. I wouldn't expect this guy to have multiple sell accounts, but a shill account makes sense.

Can you reasonably justify the one bidder I posted. It seems to me if you were going to go in heavy on a buy up, you'd buy anything, from anyone, if it's in good shape. This guy's is camping out on this seller. That seems very sus to me.

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8 minutes ago, RH said:

Thanks for the counter point. I know you sell a ton on eBay, but you actually think that someone with that many bids and as a bid percent to one person isn't shilling. I'm not arguing but I'd like a strong counter-observation. Most of the other bidders have a high bid percent for this guy, but considering many of them have bid less that 10 times, that makes sense. I assume they've just started to buy on eBay. However many of them have higher feedback ratings which means they've sold a couple of items. I wouldn't expect this guy to have multiple sell accounts, but a shill account makes sense.

Can you reasonably justify the one bidder I posted. It seems to me if you were going to go in heavy on a buy up, you'd buy anything, from anyone, if it's in good shape. This guy's is camping out on this seller. That seems very sus to me.

I suppose it depends on your definition of shilling.

Shill bidding as I understand it is when the seller himself (via an alternate account) or an extremely close friend / family member of the seller is intentionally bidding on the items and boosting them to the max extend possible.

Now if there is some completely random bidder who maybe owns a Gamecube set and is trying to boost the value of all the items, but has absolutely no affiliation with the seller, then that is not shill bidding.  The effect could be the same, but this is completely outside of the seller control and unfair to cast him in a bad light.

Shilling is a serious accusation and has a distinct connotation with a seller who is untrustworthy.  There is no conclusive evidence here that is the case.

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30 minutes ago, jonebone said:

I suppose it depends on your definition of shilling.

Shill bidding as I understand it is when the seller himself (via an alternate account) or an extremely close friend / family member of the seller is intentionally bidding on the items and boosting them to the max extend possible.

Now if there is some completely random bidder who maybe owns a Gamecube set and is trying to boost the value of all the items, but has absolutely no affiliation with the seller, then that is not shill bidding.  The effect could be the same, but this is completely outside of the seller control and unfair to cast him in a bad light.

Shilling is a serious accusation and has a distinct connotation with a seller who is untrustworthy.  There is no conclusive evidence here that is the case.

Well, I hear what you are saying.  My point above is that there appears to be a heavy-hitting bidder who has had nearly 304 life time bids, who has bid on 149 for just this seller. His bid-to-this-buyer ration is 97%.  That means he signed up for eBay and is camping out on this guys sales.  I won't say that people don't have favorite sellers.  That can happen.  I also guess that that specific buyer might know the seller, and is buying from him because he trusts him.  However, that later scenario doesn't seem too feasible because at some point, you should get with the guy and see if you can work out a bulk purchase deal, that works out better for everyone.

I mentioned that shill bidding is likely confirmed when I made my post, because that one high bidder doesn't make a lot of sense to me.  I don't know if it's friend or a second account, I just can't think of a reason why someone would want to buy up so many gaming items and only buy from one person who seems to only post auctions. But, I'm willing to be corrected.

JB is a high eBay seller, so I do respect your opinion.  Are there any other serious eBay users who researched this further?  EBay allowed us to see these anonymous details so we could try to determine if we thing shilling is going on.  At a 97% bid ratio on this one guy, with hundreds of bids, I think that guy is about as "red handed" as he can get. But, to be fair, I also mentioned that it'd be nice to see how many of these auctions this guy has one, against this seller.  If he's winning most of them, that would be a really head-scratcher, but I'd back down.  Since we can see that, we do have to make a big assumption that he's not winning a lot of these.  In that case... shill bidding is much more likely.

I have a lot of things I have to do today.  Both work and participating in Survivor.  But, I'll try to research this sellers past auctions and see if I can find that guy who pushed up to $4,750 in older auctions.  If he's winning auctions, I'll back down.  If he stops bidding after a "good price" is achieved, then I'm doubling down.  If anyone else wants to try and do that, feel free.  Go to an auction, click on the bid number, and each bidders ID is hashed, but the same for each bid that posted.  Click on it to see that bidders metrics.  It should be easy to find that specific bidder.

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So, I’m very experienced when it comes to game collecting. I have a full N64 set and GameCube set. Including variants. There are only a handful of variants left I need for GameCube. 
 

When it comes to these eBay sales, I believe there is a GameCube collector attempting to corner the market. I’ve also seen evidence of this in Facebook groups. Games being sold for outlandish prices that no one wants to pay. As a collector, I’m used to paying absorbent fees for an uncommon game, but we’re talking major price increases with the only justification being that there aren’t that many copies on eBay. 
 

I believe there’s a collector out there that’s causing a lot of these issues. I’m not ready to make assumptions or point fingers. But I’ll say again, the seller refunding me $300 when he wasn’t asked, and was under no obligation to, speaks worlds of his character. If he was out to make unfair money, he wouldn’t have done that. 

Edited by N64Life1001
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I’m glad I never went for variants in any set except for major variants with NES. I never wanted Majesco, players choice anything or any other variant of the same game (it’s enough when you have 4 of the same game across different systems for the sake of a full set). I knew that decision I made over a decade ago would pay off and a ton more shelf space to dedicate to other sets. 5k+ for an outer sleeve I can’t criticize but thankful it isn’t me. 

the seller is cashing out at the perfect time... I tip my hat to him however or whoever is pushing it to the sky. 

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On 5/1/2020 at 12:05 AM, doner24 said:

Why do you ( ) your s like that? 

That generally indicates that it could either be a single or more than one - poster wasn't sure which was the case so they covered their bases. Similar to using his/her when one isn't sure on the gender.

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The winner looks to be the same person that won many of the interesting variants or games with extras.  The Sealed Dragon Ball guide blister pack, Crystal Chronicles gba cable blister, Crystal Chronicles with magnets, the mega man network transmission with pin, sealed Bratz, sealed grim adventures dvd bundle, the killer 7 bundle, hobbit with extras, MK with adema soundtrack and more.

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4 hours ago, Romiked2689 said:

I wish I got this love collecting for the GameCube 

I don't want to tell you how to collect, but I feel like you dodged a bullet. $6,000 for a slip case? I've bought some ridiculous things in my collecting days, but this is both exceedingly expensive and exceedingly boring. It's like the worst of both worlds.

Any thoughts on what this would have gone for if it was graded?

Edited by DoctorEncore
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@jonebone Shout out... I'm going to walk down my expectations that this might have been shill bidding.  I don't know who this seller is but looking at the winner and other bidders, I guys this seller just has a solid following.  Regarding the winner, he posted his bid within seconds of the end.  This is someone with deep pockets who appears to love Game Cube collecting and is posting guaranteed-to-win prices on auctions since his one bid has won MANY auctions from this seller, whoever they might be.

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On 5/1/2020 at 2:26 PM, N64Life1001 said:

But I’ll say again, the seller refunding me $300 when he wasn’t asked, and was under no obligation to, speaks worlds of his character. If he was out to make unfair money, he wouldn’t have done that. 

This sounds like a major red flag to me.  Sure, people can be unexpectedly nice but refunding $300 for no real reason seems very fishy.

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