In other off-topic randomness:

michael marconi - Amazon Marketplace
Item: Dungeon Crawl Classics 35 *TOS: Gazetteer of the Known Realms [Paperback] [ASIN: 0977960226]

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Hello

I will give you $75.00 for this item and not a penny more. Goodman games has stopped supporting this item and will be making a new Dungeon Crawl Classic in November. I sent the same email out to all sellers of this item The first one to contact me and sell for $75.00 gets my cash. Do I really need it...no, but could use some of the older maps to work with.

Thx
Mike

As a response I raised the price of my DCC 35 by $20.  

Although I've been tempted every now and then over the years, I'm really glad I never got involved with Ebay - buying or selling.

JohnGaunt wrote:Heh.  The communication that I posted came through Amazon.  

I've been having similar experiences on eBay, though. I just recently started experimenting selling with Best Offers, and many of the offers I've received have come complete with convoluted (and in some cases quite convincing) reasoning why the amount being offered is the right amount and my BiN is outrageous. Some of it is entertaining, at least. One example: a first print Gamma World set w/ the dice in the original bag... The guy tells me that it's worth what he's offering because the low-impact dice are crap (true), and that he's just going to use the set for gaming anyway (like it matters to me what he does with it; he could store dead mice in it for all I care ) and will have to buy a brand new set of polyhedrons...

Agent Cooper wrote:I stand corrected, but I'm still glad I never got involved with ebay and this is reinforced pretty much every time I peruse this board.

I use Amazon as a buyer all the time, but only very rarely for D&D stuff because the prices for those items on Amazon seem very high.  You have to really look for anything that's priced reasonably.  I'm not sure why that is.  

Other than that I'm very confident buying on Amazon since they protect their buyers very well.  I like that I pay Amazon directly and they credit the seller.  Ebay seems too much like throwing your money into some annonymous void and hoping it'll be okay.

I've never sold on Amazon so I'm not sure what that's like.   

I've only been screwed over once with Amazon, it was years ago and it was pretty minor.  I bought a fairly hard to find comic book from a seller that guaranteed the book listed was in stock.  It wasn't.  And he was not up front about it right away.   Seller kept stalling me telling me it was on the way, probably trying to obtain another copy in the meantime.  After a few weeks I did the Amazon equivalent of "negging" him, after which he finally admitted he did not have the book and refunded my money in exchange for retracting the "neg", so no big.

Edited to add- Regardless, Mr. "I Will Only Pay $xx Guy" above sounds like somebody to avoid.

You're cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Over the last 13 years or so I can't tell you the amount of goodies I've gotten off Ebay, sometimes for a steal on a quick buy it now, 99% of the time problem free.  The system is very biased towards the seller now, so I don't think you'd have any problem with a bad sale.  On these sorts of boards  you tend to hear about the one sale that goes awry and not the other 99 sales that go perfectly well.  For the buyer, I don't see anything wrong with the experience; it's as a seller I have all the trouble with ebay (mostly because they keep raising fees, adding restrictions and not providing any additional services).

For me, I don't like Amazon. Prices are far too high, and you aren't actually dealing with the seller but with Amazon, so IMO that limits the amount of hand holding you might get. I personally enjoy interacting with customers, as it can lead to off-ebay sales and relationships.  I met Rhynne here on the boards from ebay sales, and encouraged him to register here. I don't see that sort of person to person interaction on Amazon.  Another guy is in the process of buying a bunch of books from me at $30 a pop, he bought a few items from me on Ebay and then suggested he buy the rest off ebay to save us both money....I don't have to mark up my product to pay fees, and he trusts me enough to send me the money a little bit at a time until I have the entire amount and can send his books. Amazon seems to me to be a much more standard customer/seller experience without all the back and forth.

Mike B.

Badmike...I have found the promised land!  
I have never heard of this stuff before.

http://www.baconsalt.com/

As that company describes it:

Bacon Salt, a low sodium, zero calorie, zero fat, vegetarian and kosher seasoning that makes everything taste like bacon.

Kingofpain89 wrote:http://blogs.aljazeera.net/americas/201 ... al-jazeera

Nice quote from the comments section, by one Ken Kennedy:
"Try sneaking a joint in Iran, you'll get stoned plenty."

I wonder what the reality behind that statement is?

sauromatian wrote:
Nice quote from the comments section, by one Ken Kennedy:
"Try sneaking a joint in Iran, you'll get stoned plenty."

I wonder what the reality behind that statement is?

I'm pretty sure they only stone female adulterers, not drug users.

Mike B.

Kingofpain89 wrote:It's not everyday that my hometown of less than two thousand people is featured on Al Jazeera:

http://blogs.aljazeera.net/americas/201 ... al-jazeera

Sounds like a simple culture clash.  I suspect the Al Jazeera reporter got exactly the story he was looking for, if you know what I mean.  The only way he would have been happier is if a bunch of booted cowboys kicked his ass all over the parking lot while drinking beer and driving a pickup truck. He actually looks sad in the picture that no one took the time to beat the shit out of him...but cmon, it's Texas high school football, what's more important here?

Mike B.

Peyton out for season? That's tough luck. Andrew Luck that is.