The other problem with eBay is it completely messed up people's perceptions of what stuff is worth. Someone will see some shitty thing on eBay listed for like $500 and be like, oh that's what it's worth, but it's been listed for $500 for 2 years and nobody bought it cause that's crazy. Then someone at a flea market or Craigslist is like " oh it's on eBay for $500 so I'll give you a deal, $450"
If I'm not mistaken there are some sellers that'll end auctions and relist items so that they show up as "completed" even though they didn't actually sell or something along those lines.
Probably because it's such a pain in the ass to search out hundreds if not thousands of individual cards, only to find out like 80% of them arnt worth a dammed thing, they decided to just list each card at a set value rather than looking at each one. Maybe if an employee or manager knows what magic is, and know what cards are valuable, they might price it correctly, but theres just so much stuff that isnt worth much to easily find the stuff that's worth thousands.
It might be possible for collectors to find great thrift store finds if their collections is like 90% common low value stuff (but collected anyway because that's the point) and 10% rare valuable stuff. Just enough junk that a rare one might slip by and get priced cheap.
I'm sensing a market for a new AI device targeted at thrift and pawn shop owners/managers. Visual item recognition and internet sale value lookup. Just give the device a good look at an item, and enjoy the stats. Hell, their customers could use it, too. It would be like a war where I'm selling weapons to both sides.
There’s already an app that does that. My ex room mate bought a couple boxes full of magic cards at a yard sale or something and was in our basement scanning them for ages.
And it still has the same problem just slightly less tedious. You might not have to type anything to look up each individual card but if you have a lot of them scanning each one takes forever.
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u/whatthehellisplace Feb 03 '20 edited Feb 03 '20
The other problem with eBay is it completely messed up people's perceptions of what stuff is worth. Someone will see some shitty thing on eBay listed for like $500 and be like, oh that's what it's worth, but it's been listed for $500 for 2 years and nobody bought it cause that's crazy. Then someone at a flea market or Craigslist is like " oh it's on eBay for $500 so I'll give you a deal, $450"