About a year ago, I decided to sell my FLCL box set on eBay. If you read that and went “FLCL? What the hell is that?” well, click here. And for those of you who do know what it is, I tip my hat in true fandom. I really loved this series – it turned me into a lifelong fan of The Pillows and rekindled my appreciated for Gainax. I dragged this boxset with me to Japan, where I shared it with a million students and friends, and back to the States, where it just kinda sits on a shelf. I dust it sometimes but it was sad and I figured it needed a new home.
The FLCL boxset in pretty good condition (as mine was) is pretty rare, especially with the first edition box. Not that I care about stuff like that but some people do. So I put a reserve price on it for the amount I thought it was worth and sent it off to auction. Instantly came the flood of folks dangling the carrot of NOW READY CASH in return for ending the auction early. As annoying as this is, it’s usually an indication that what I’m selling is something a fair number of people really want. And so began my amusing conversation with an eBayer I’ll call g-jizzle.
g-jizzle: Would you want to work out a deal on this like a best offer sort of deal?
me: Sure. What’s your offer?
g-jizzle: Does $35-40 sound good?
me: Sorry, that’s not quite what I’d like to get for this set.
g-jizzle: I see. Well how much would you prefer to be paid for this item?
me: At least $75, not including shipping.
g-jizzle: Wow, haha, that’s quite a bit. I guess I’ll have to drop out of this deal then. Thanks for letting me know though. I hope your auction goes well. :)
I didn’t expect to hear from g-jizzle again but three days later (into a 5 day auction), the following message arrived in my inbox.
“If this item doesn’t sell by the time it ends, would you be willing to make a deal then?”
-g-jizzle
By this point, the boxset was hovering around $65 and I was pretty confident it would reach the reserve price I had set of $75. It had more than 100 watchers and had generated plenty of interest so I didn’t bother writing him back. In fact, I was so confident that, not only did I ignore his request but I also didn’t bother checking back on the auction progress until two days later when I got the congratulation emails from eBay along with the following last-minute rant from g-jizzle, where he finally told me what he was REALLY feeling:
“The reserve price is really annoying. Would you mind taking it off on your next auction? I guarantee this item isn’t going to sell in the next 11 hour because of that reserve price. Nobody wants to buy this object for more than the retail value of it. All fans of the show know that the retail for this item goes to about $65 max. Just make an auction with no reserve price so people actually know what they’re bidding for this thing. I would love to buy it, but I’m not willing to pay like $75 for it, you know? Anyway, I’m sorry for being rude. I hope you understand where I’m coming from.”
-g-jizzle
Since it had sold for a nice bit over reserve to a nice guy from Canada, I wasn’t too concerned about his guarantee that the boxset wouldn’t sell. The part that really stuck in my craw was where he decided that I must not be a fan of the show since clearly “all fans of the show” know what its retail value is. My fangirl pride was wounded almost as badly as the time I stood in line for nearly two hours to watch an advance showing of Vampire Hunter D, where one skinny goth girl had the following conversation with her boyfriend:
SGG: “Are you thinking the same thing I’m thinking?”
BF: “Yeah, like where are all the REAL anime fans?”
SGG: “I know! Like everyone here is old!”
“Yeah, like old enough to have actually seen Ghost in the Shell in a theatre. Twice. And probably before you were even in middle school. Young punks,” I thought defiantly before musing to myself, “Huh… When did I stop being a young punk?” The answer came back pretty fast.
“Never.” And I grinned.
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