rhynne wrote:

Sea-to-sky-games wrote:GAZ4 in shrink. BIN $30.


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Hey everyone,

Seller's name looks familiar.
Is it someone who is a member of the ACAEUM?

Best regards,
Ronald

I know that bastard! He owes me money! (A joke, son, a joke. He's a wonderful fella, brings his mother flowers and things).

Mars wrote:

Sea-to-sky-games wrote:GAZ4 in shrink. BIN $30.


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Wow!  Some crazy prices on almost everything else.  Dwarven Glory reprint for $125.  To think I gave my last 3 copies away for free and even paid the shipping - maybe I'm the crazy one

I'd avoid this seller at all costs.  Check out this auction:


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The seller has pawned off this one book from The East Mark Gazetteer for $90 and does not even state it is missing the folder, gazetteer book and maps.  Someone who clearly puts the $$$ before honesty.

FWIW: NTRGPCon Reprints:
The Dwarven Glory Reprint alone I have sold for no less than $125 and The Ghost Tower of Inverness Reprints are selling for $80 (in private sales; I have sold several copies).
Through e-Bay (recently) I had four sets of both (The Dwarven Glory plus a mysterious bonus item TGTOI) and all of them sold, plus 2 extra sets off of e-Bay for 6 sets total... all for $160 or more, plus one extra copy of The Dwarven Glory alone (buyer did not want the extra).
One of those deals ended up being a trade wherein I traded those two for several items from his e-Bay store.

As for the Mouths of Madness book... THANK YOU FOR POINTING THAT OUT!
Could not believe this guy is doing that.
Have had some good dealings with that seller before and I think if someone speaks with him it might get fixed.

Badmike wrote:I don't see any prices on there too out of line, honestly.

$500 for Phantasy Conclave... Not "too out of line" for you? I don't think anyone would pay more than $100-120 for it (and I think a "normal" price would be more in the $80 range considering that only a half-dozen of persons could be sufficiently interested in to pay more than $100 for it).
I would have think about buying it if it has been listed at around $100.

Gnat the Beggar wrote:

Mars wrote:

Wow!  Some crazy prices on almost everything else.  Dwarven Glory reprint for $125.  To think I gave my last 3 copies away for free and even paid the shipping - maybe I'm the crazy one

I'd avoid this seller at all costs.  Check out this auction:


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The seller has pawned off this one book from The East Mark Gazetteer for $90 and does not even state it is missing the folder, gazetteer book and maps.  Someone who clearly puts the $$$ before honesty.

FWIW: NTRGPCon Reprints:
The Dwarven Glory Reprint alone I have sold for no less than $125 and The Ghost Tower of Inverness Reprints are selling for $80 (in private sales; I have sold several copies).
Through e-Bay (recently) I had four sets of both (The Dwarven Glory plus a mysterious bonus item TGTOI) and all of them sold, plus 2 extra sets off of e-Bay for 6 sets total... all for $160 or more, plus one extra copy of The Dwarven Glory alone (buyer did not want the extra).
One of those deals ended up being a trade wherein I traded those two for several items from his e-Bay store.

As for the Mouths of Madness book... THANK YOU FOR POINTING THAT OUT!
Could not believe this guy is doing that.
Have had some good dealings with that seller before and I think if someone speaks with him it might get fixed.

Could also point out that tha seller is me JJ, if you remembered.

I actually didn't know that the Mouths of Madness is from the East Mark Gaz. As much as I like Gygax material I haven't paid much attention to the Castle Zagyg material outside of the boxed set. I'll contact the buyer and see what they want to do. The Mouths of Madness has the look of a separate adventure from the series with CZ9 in the top corner.

I have Mars on ignore so I didn't see him bad-mouthing me. I don't know why he didn't point out that the selleer is me, since he knows it very well, except to try and hurt my reputation as a seller.

I've been on ebay for nearly 15 years, but not as active anymore so I don't have the DSRs right now, though I welcome anyone to scroll through my feedback. as for the Phantasy Conclave, I have never seen one before and I only know of one or two others, though the original writer/publisher said he had a dozen or so. My pirce on ebay is a part with price, and after selling RPGs online for nearly 20 years I don't think it is too outrageous. I doubt I will ever see a copy again.

Actually the Phantasy Conclave set is where I started my Love affair with sweet, sweet Mars. I felt that coming up with a ridiculous low ball offer to the original writer/creator was underhanded and wrong. Contacting these guys, the small time old-school writers/publishers of small game and fanzines or obscure RPG material and scamming them out of their few remaing copies or issues for a song harms the hobby. A lot of these guys could come back into the hobby and make their obscure material available again through print on demand or now small kickstarter projects. How many have a sour taste in their mouth after being cold-called, told their old material is only worth a few dollars and scammed out of rare, hard-to find and obscure little bits  of gaming history? The Phantasy Conclave creator faded back into obscurity with his few remaining sets in what I feel is the same way someone out camping might squirm away from a snake curled up in their sleeping bag.

There are also the old time gamers who come here with collections trying to find out there value. One of the latest was a guy with two or three very rare old adventures. Mars made him a generous private offer for them (the old thread is around here somewhere) before the guy had a chance to work out their potential value. They ended up selling on ebay for a substantial amount more.

Am I shady? I put the price I want for an item up front. I don't try to buy items off of people by lying to them about their potential value. I will jump on buy it nows or go for a low bid on an auction. I will also give anyone posting here trying to find the value of their collection the best advice that my 25 years experience of selling RPGs can provide.

So, Mars, I don't like the guy. He used to buy from me and had no problem. I called him out on the Phantasy Conclave business and a few other things he does here on the acaeum, and now he wants to hurt my rep as a seller.

About the Mouths of Madness, I'll contact the buyer but it certainly looked just like the other items in the series, Town Halls, Store District, set up the same way. And stored by me separately (probably because the folio didn't fit into a magazine box if I remember correctly) so when I started grabbing things to put up on ebays free listing day I didn't notice and didn't remember (how long has it been since it came out, 5 years?)

I explained about the Phantasy Conclave. If I saw these at $100 I'd buy them in the same way that if I saw a Castle Zagyg Upper Works Boxed set at $150 I'd but that. (The auction for one last night at $280 was surprising).

Mars seems to have a deep pyschic bond with me, since he knows my motivations for selling that Mouths of Madness enough to call me a shady seller and tell people publicly to avoid me. Yes, after 15 years on ebay (and without many recent feedback as a seller) I am so desperate for $90 that I am going to want potential low DSRs and a negative feedback (and an unhappy customer who may want to come back. Most of my business on ebay involved repeat customers)(That is sarcasm by the way).

On this forum and publicly calling a seller shady and telling people to avoid them is a very serious accusation. What does he have to back up this claim? I offer my ebay rep as a seller and my dealings with people here (thought they may be few as I haven't done much with the classifieds) or anywhere else online.

"He who steals my purse, steals trash, yet he who robs me of my good name steal nought that will enrich them but makes me poor indeed." (Loosely quoted or misquoted from Shakespeare).

lokiwookie wrote:

Badmike wrote:I don't see any prices on there too out of line, honestly.

$500 for Phantasy Conclave... Not "too out of line" for you? I don't think anyone would pay more than $100-120 for it (and I think a "normal" price would be more in the $80 range considering that only a half-dozen of persons could be sufficiently interested in to pay more than $100 for it).
I would have think about buying it if it has been listed at around $100.

It appears to be a seller's market there, as there are no other copies available anywhere (checked Troll & Toad, Noble Knight, and they didn't even have the game in their database...which means they have NEVER had a copy to sell, ever).  It's considered one of the rarest RPGs ever published...stupidly rare. As in, some people who have experience in collecting have never seen a copy.  It's in shrink. Yeh, $500 is about what I would put on it myself until someone put up a copy cheaper to show me how much I was price gouging. Due to it's scarcity and lack of any competing prices, Jason would be dumb to price that at anything less than what he thinks it might sell for...now, if half a dozen other copies were on ebay for about $100-$200 each, I'd have to agree with you that this copy is overpriced. Didn't the author pop in here awhile back and sell all his copies?  Or did he just disappear?

Often collectors mistake their interest in an item for what the item is worth.  Because you aren't willing to pay more than $100 means nothing.  Hey, I'm not willing to pay more than $100 for an ST1, but I doubt I will ever find one for that price.  The best thing for Jason to do (for all of us, not necessarily for him) would be to put the thing up for auction. $500 might be light if two determined bidders went at it.

For someone who sells 100's of items a year and tens of thousands of items over the last decade, it is always amusing to hear those who don't have that experience talk about what items "should" sell for. If there is one lesson I have learned, it is that items sell for what they sell for, regardless of what anything thinks they are worth.  It is much better to price an item high and lower the price as necessary, you'll come closer to finding the true worth.    I personally have a database that I update every few years that show prices I have gotten for various items...in the long run they are usually remarkably consistent.  You wouldn't believe private offers I've gotten from determined collectors over the years which were several times what I would actually sell an item for, just because they wanted it NOW and didn't care about the price as long as it was theirs right then.  

Mike B.

Mars wrote:

Badmike wrote:Apparently someone is willing to pay $90 for just the Mouths of Madness book; since the entire set is about $300 maybe they just wanted that one item (hard to believe, but they did pay that much).

The East Mark Gazetteer is worth $300?  I don't think so.  When a super-high-priced seller like The_Collector's_Trove can only get $86 for a copy in shrink:


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For $300, I think everyone would rather buy a copy of Castle Zagyg: Upper Works boxed set instead of the mass produced, multiple printings of East Mark Gazetteer.

Also, its not the selling price that concerns me - its the fact that the seller knows 100% that they are selling an incomplete item but makes no mention of the fact and that's just shady!  

But yes, I do think many other prices are high.  Do the comparative shopping and you'll find that resellers like Noble Knight come in a bit cheaper.  City of Brass, I have a few more copies and even with hideous shipping costs from Canada -> US can do it for $75 shipping included.

I was offered over $200 for my East Mark Gazetteer, and probably was stupid not selling it for that then...however, I just notice that the copy auctioned by Collector's Trove was NOT described as being signed and numbered...perhaps if the Trove had emphasized that, it may have gone for quite a bit more. Either that, or the Trove's copy is NOT signed and numbered.  So I suspect that $86 is an outlier due to either a bad description or not being signed and numbered.  BTW, there are only 300 copies of the signed and numbered version available....surely that is not a definition of "mass produced" (my copy is #136 of #300) and there are less of those than Castle Zagygs. Yeh, I'll stick with $300.  

City of Brass is $70-$80 at Noble Knight, so it's not like $90 is completely bat shit insane.

Mike B.

Ok, so after reading Gnat's description, the version I have is definitely a special signed and numbered version. Gary's sig is right across the cover of the Gazetteer, the numbering is inside the top fo the Gazetteer folder.

So, worth far more than the $86 version The Collector's Trove recently sold....

Mike B.

I think there are 3 pretty distinct price points for uncommon/rare small press stuff... the $40 items (eg Companions, Dimension Six, Ragnarok, Midekemia, Wilmark, etc), the $90 area for more obscure publishers (Entertainment Concepts, Quicksilver Fantasies), and the low to mid $300s for very limited and/or iconic items (Haunted Ligthhouse, Imliv River Valley recently, that Mercury Games auction)... I bet Phantasy Concalve is pretty solidly in that last group and would sell pretty quick if the seller tried a $350 BIN.. nobody's business but his own if he wants to do that though.  Sorry just realized this isn't the Appraisal thead, only my 2 cents,

Badmike wrote:Was the East Mark Gazetteer originally signed and numbered, or do I just have a special print run limited to 300 copies?

Yes, without the map the Mouths of Madness booklet would be kind of useless.

Mike B.

Absolutely, a Gygax signed East Mark Gazetter is worth the $200+ but that was a GenCon exclusive.

The_Collectors_Trove sold a regular version for $86 in shrink which is high because of the exposure his name brings - its the highest priced regular copy I have ever seen.  I'm not sure if Ian is still sitting on a stockpile of these or not.  Now, crack open the shrink, take out 1 of those books and ask $90 for it by NOT stating that its incomplete, etc.  That's what most people call a scam from a shady seller.